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CigarCraig’s Holiday Contest Number Four: General Cigar Co. and the Tommy Bahama Winner

Davidoff GolfI hope everyone who celebrates had a wonderful Christmas yesterday. As JJO suggested in his comment on the last post, it turns out I did have better things to do yesterday than post the winner, including having a big breakfast at our daughter’s house with the granddaughters and our kids, then taking a drive to visit more family in New Jersey. While at my bro-in-law’s in Jersey I got to smoke a glorious Sobremesa Short Churchill, which was wonderful. Christmas Eve I managed to smoke a Davidoff Golf Scorecard Edition, a gorgeous 6″ x 55 toro. These are presented in a five pack, ostensibly four cigars for your golf foursome, and one with a gold secondary band for the winner. These carry a pretty hefty price-tag , $114 for 5 at CI, who starts off the description with “Some things Bolivarare matches made in heaven – like bacon and eggs, mac and cheese, and of course, golf and cigars. “, which I find to be a rather pedestrian way to start a paragraph about a pretty expensive cigar! Anyway, it was a spectacular smoke, even though I don’t golf. It had loads of creamy, spicy flavors that were quite entertaining. It turned out to be pretty hard to find something suitable to follow such a stellar smoke, so I went with a Bolivar Royal Corona that had been floating around the humidor for 5 years or so. It was up to the task and was a great smoke, on the milder side, on par with the Davidoff. It was a pretty great couple of cigars on a reasonably nice winter’s day.

 

Contest!

GCCLet’s keep it going! I have some goodies from General Cigar for today’s giveaway!  There’s a Punch Bobblehead, a tin CAO Flathead Steel Horse sign, a pair of very nice La Gloria Cubana Cigar Scissors, and a Macanudo Inspirado Colibri Grip cutter, which is rubberized with orange blades, very sharp-looking. It’s hard to say what else might fall into the shipping box while I’m packing it up too, it’s been known to happen. Anyway, usual rules apply, leave a comment to enter,  I’ll announce a winner on Wednesday!

 

Winner!

 

Island LifestyleI almost forgot to announce the winner fo the Tommy Bahama ashtray and travel humidor, and Island Lifestyle Cigars!  I wore my blue check Tommy Bahama shirt yesterday with my blue check Vans, it was quite the look.  Many thanks to Ryan at Island Lifestyle Importers for providing this wonderful present! I can’t say how much I like the Tommy Bahama branded stuff, my wife told me I was crazy to give it away! But, giving is so much fun, so it’s off to Random.org to find the winner!  I’m not sure how this happened, but the winner is Andy Klueber.  Every once in a while someone calls their shot, but Andy chose the opposite, pessimistically entering saying he wasn’t going to win, several times! His number came up this time, and I’ll be sending him some great stuff!

 

That’s all for now! I got some chicken harnesses for Christmas so I can try taking chickens for a walk instead of Macha, that should get the neighbors talking….until the next time,

 

CigarCraig

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CigarCraig’s 12 Spectacular Days of Cigar Giveaways 2015 Day 8: Punch Cigars

It’s Day Eight, and once again my friends at General Cigar Company have come through with another great present for this year’s event.  New this year is the Punch Signature, an Ecuador Corojo wrapped robusto, with a Connecticut Habano binder and fillers from Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. These smoke very well, and taste great. As a mater of fact, I have one set aside for tonight, and have really been looking forward to smoking it! It’s a box of eighteen 5″ x 54 Robustos, many thanks to Victoria and everyone at General Cigar Company for today’s treat.

 

Punch

 

Yesterday we featured a travel humidor vastly improved by the talented artwork of Eric Whitfield, The Cigartist.  Make sure you visit his site and buy some of his work to class up your mancave!  There is one person who won’t have to buy a piece of his art, and that is Mike Hanna!  Please send me your address so I can pass it on to Eric.  Thank you to The Cigartist for providing this  great item!

 

 

You know what to do now, leave a comment here, check back tomorrow to see if you won!

 

RULES

 

All you have to do to enter is to leave a comment on the post of the day, if you can, try to post what you know or how you feel about today’s present, the folks donating the gift should get some feedback for their troubles! It’s not a condition to win, but it’s nice to have something to read. We did this last year and it benefits everyone. Once you’ve won, you’re out, let everyone else have a chance. Must be over 18 to win. Also, be sure to visit the links for each item. Comments on Facebook, Twitter, or anywhere else will not count, but feel free to spread the word!

 

Until tomorrow,

 

CigarCraig

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Psyko 7 Maduro, Fuente, CroMagnon, Gran Habano and Punch Cigars

Here we are on July 5th already. It seems like the summer is flying by and it’s barely started.  In two weeks I’ll be in New Orleans at the IPCPR show, doing my best to collect information about the newest an

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d greatest products.  I don’t think I’ll do too many of the video interviews this time around, but I do have a little something special planned. We’ll see how that all turns out. I managed to smoke a few cigars this week, let’s have a look.

 

Ventura_Psyko7Maduro_RobustoI received some Ventura Cigar Co. Psyko 7 Maduro Robusto samples a couple of weeks ago, and was really looking forward to trying them out. I had first smoked the natural wrapper Psyko 7 back when I was a guest on The Cigar Authority show back in November of 2013 and was really quite impressed.  This is another impressive cigar, right up my alley.  It’s got a San Andrés wrapper, an Ecuador binder, and an interesting blend of fillers including ligero from Nicaragua and Pennsylvania, some Honduran and Dominican and Pelo de Oro from Peru!  How can I not like this cigar!  The samples I smoked burned perfectly and had great, complex flavors of espresso, cacao with a nice sweetness. I appreciate the extra half-inch on this 5½” x 50 robusto. This is right up there with the Fratello Bianco as one of my newbies of the year so far.  Very nice smoke.

 

Fuente_DoubleChateau_SungrownAfter I had some more dental work done Monday I celebrated after with an Arturo Fuente Double Chateau Sungrown.  Boy, is this a tasty cigar!  It’s 6¾” x 50 with a cedar sleeve (which I removed before lighting, of course) and a black foot band.  The standard Cheateau series is more common in the Connecticut Shade wrapper, and I’ve enjoyed my share of those over the years, but this Ecuado

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r Sungrown wrapper is quite special. It was solidly medium, but it had loads of great savor flavors.  I would definitely say that in the Fuente line, save for the Hemingway, Don Carlos, Opus, etc, the sungrown wrapper is my choice.

 

RoMa_CroMagnon_Mode5When I visited Holt’s a couple weeks ago I picked up some of the CroMagnon Mode 5 perfectos from RoMaCraft as I’d yet to smoke that shape and have heard so many great things about it.  It’s not a huge cigar, 5″ x 50 in a perfecto format, tapering at either end, your old school, 40’s Warner Brothers cartoon shape. It was quite the fun cigar to smoke, and it was loaded with great, meaty flavors that really made me smile.  Burn was perfect, it was well-balanced and not the powerhouse one expects from the name.  I look forward to seeing Skip and Mike at the show this year, it’s been too long and they are really making great smokes.

 

GranHabano_Gran Corojo No5 Maduro 2011_GranRobustoThe folks at Gran Habano send a few samples a couple of weeks back, and the Gran Habano Corojo No.5 Maduro 2011 Gran Robusto caught my eye.  This is a 6″ x 54 toro with a dark Nicaraguan Maduro wrapper, Costa Rican grown Habano binder and fillers from Jalapa and Costa Rica.  This was a great spicy cigar with some bitter dark chocolate that was really to my liking.  It burned well, the draw was good, and it was a cigar I’ll smoke again.  I find the banding to be a little too close to Cuban Limitada bands, that’s probably what they were going for but I think a little originality from a company that definitely has some original products

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would be better. I’m not going to mistake that beautiful dark wrapper for any Habanos cigars, and I would probably choose this flavor profile over most Havanas as well.

 

Punch_H&F1999_ChurchillYesterday was the 4th of July.  My wife and I celebrate our wedding anniversary that day, as the US celebrates another birthday. I always choose a special cigar to mark the event, and there’s generally an element of civil disobedience involved that I’d like to think the founding fathers would approve of. Yesterday I selected a Havana Punch Churchill that was a gift from a friend a few years ago who serves our country and will remain nameless to protect the guilty!  This particular cigar had the distinction of bearing a “Vintage 1999” secondary band which denotes that it was selected by Hunters and Frankau (the UK importer of Habanos cigars) as an exceptional cigar. I agree with their assessment, it was an exceptional cigar

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. While the draw was a bit more snug than I like, it smoked very well, needing no corrections, and the smoke had a delicate flavor that was quite delicious. It had a bit of the unique Cuban spice, and was a milder, but very special cigar.  It was the perfect way to celebrate a special day.  I wish I could be as complimentary about the Rocky Patel Freedom I smoked later in the evening, there was a sour component to the savory flavor that didn’t do it for me, and I wished I had chosen better, but the red white and blue band seemed appropriate for the occasion. The Punch Churchill was sublime though, and I’m fortunate to have had the chance to experience it.

 

That’s about it for today.  We’re heading in to Philly again today for tea, then maybe a visit to Smoke in Manyunk after. Until the next time,

 

CigarCraig

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Punch, Ora Vivo, Quesada cigars: Go Big or Go Home!

Punch_RareCorojo_El DiabloFor no other reason than I had the cigars and time, I smoked some large cigars this

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week.  Punch has come out with two new sizes in the Rare Corojo line, the Rare Lapiz, a figurado, and the great big El Diablo, a 6½” x 66 box pressed monster.  You’d expect a cigar called Rare Corojo to have a Corojo wrapper, right? It has a Ecuador Sumatra wrapper, a Connecticut Broadleaf binder and fillers from Nicaragua, Honduras and The Dominican Republic, with no real mention of Corojo tobacco in any of the literature!  It’s been a few years since I smoked a Rare Corojo, but I always liked them, there’s a distinct flavor that this line has that I can’t put a finger on, but I really like it. I suppose it’s both sweet and savory at the same time, and maybe a little creamy.  The size was a bit much, although the box press made it seem a little smaller than it’s 66 ring gauge, it was still a devil to hold on to, not real comfortable in the hand. I look forward to trying the 6¾” x 56 figurado (which they only describe as “tapered”). One interesting note, I didn’t feel that the immense size of this cigar watered down the flavor of the blend at all, it tasted like I remember the robusto tasting when I first smoked this maybe ten or more years ago, an impressive feat.

 

OraVivo_WorldEdition_6x56Friday I took a day off to get some things done, and took a nice long on a local trail with a Ora Vivo Armand Asante World Edition 6×56. I wrote about this cigar in the November/December Issue of Prime Living Magazine.  I said: “The brand made its debut in July 2013, with the original blend having sold out, as well as the European blend. The latest release is the World Edition, of which the 6×56 is the subject of this review. The cigar is a Nicaraguan Puro, manufactured in Honduras. The blend is comprised of tobacco from three growing regions in Nicaragua. The wrapper is from the Jalapa valley, the binder is from Condega and the fillers are a blend of Esteli and Condega tobacco. I find this cigar to be smooth, medium bodied, well balanced and refined. The flavors are sweet and earthy tobacco, and the construction is perfect and consistent as one would expect from a premium boutique cigar. The Ora Vivo Armand Assante World Edition is Armand’s tribute to the cigar industry, a cigar he truly loves, and it’s a great smoke.”  Of course, this cigar is a sibling of the Tortuga line, both are from Victor Vitale’s Legacy Brands, and share great flavor and balance. I’m hoping to get together with Victor this week for a smoke, watch Wednesday’s post.

 

CounterandCabinetsYesterday I made some real headway on a cabinet project in a utility room.  The previous owners wouldn’t recognize the room, when we moved in it had walls which were still showing unfinished 1959 drywall and had simple shelves, pegboard and a workbench of sorts and an unfinished concrete floor. In addition to the shiny new furnace and water Quesada_Oktoberfest_Uberheater, it also has a nice epoxy floor, patched and painted walls, and a wall of cabinets and counter we purchased from a medical office clean out for a reasonable price. With my son-in-law’s help we got the cabinets in, I just need to do some finish work and it’s done.  To celebrate, I took a walk with a 6″ x  65 Quesada Oktoberfest Uber (should it be Über? German for “super”). I picked up a handful of t

hese on closeout locally for $5 a cigar, and at that price it’s a nice smoke, I don’t know that I would be as enamored with it at $10. The burn and draw was perfect on this cigar and half of the cigar was good for a two mile walk. I probably spent the better part of two hours with this cigar, and I did enjoy it quite a bit. I was going to crack open a bottle o

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f Goya Ginger Beer with it, but I knew that particular ginger beer would over power the cigar, it’s really spicy.

 

I used a new cutter on the last couple cigars I smoked from the folks at Screwpop, makers of the Screwpop Punch and other key chain multi-function tools. This is a cigar scissors of sorts, which requires a bit of practice.  I closed the blades around the cap of the cigar and applied some pressure while turning the cigar to remove the cap. In the case of the Quesada, this method removed the cap nicely, however the binder was still folded over and I had to pick it out with my fingers. Anyway, I’ll continue testing this new tool and get into it more later. I haven’t tested the bottle opener part yet, but there’s really not a lot that can go wrong with that part.

 

Editorial

In my continuing support of Cigar Ri

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ghts, I  used the CigarRights.org site to send some

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letters to my elected officials this week, and this is the reply I received from my Senator, Mr. Casey. I knew he had been a co-sponsor of the Traditional Cigar Manufacturing and Small Business Jobs Preservation Act of 2015, but I wanted to make sure he knew I was still paying attention!  His letter starts off being worrisome, but takes a turn for the better, I’m pleased to see that this legislator “gets it”. Of course, the premium cigar lobby in Pennsylvania is strong, being that we have quite a great many large retailers here.

 

Dear Mr. Vanderslice:
Thank you for taking the time to contact me about the regulation of tobacco products. I appreciate hearing from you about this issue.
Protecting Americans from the harmful effects of tobacco is a priority of mine, which is why I am proud to have been a cosponsor of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act of 2009. The bill was signed into law on June 22, 2009, and gives the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversight of the tobacco industry’s advertisement and promotion of their products, and the authority to regulate tobacco products. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act became law independent of the World Health Organization’s global tobacco treaty, which was signed by President Bush in 2004 but has not been submitted to the

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Senate for ratification.

Tobacco products are proven to have harmful effects on their users. Cigarettes and other forms of tobacco contain the addictive drug nicotine, which hooks users on the drug and endangers their health. There are also dozens of cancer-causing ingredients in tobacco products. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable disease, disability and death in the United States. Secondhand smoke can also cause premature death and disease in those exposed to tobacco users.
This law is an important step forward because it protects children from being targeted by tobacco companies. It also ensures that tobacco products are appropriately labeled. Please be assured that I will continue to monitor efforts to regulate tobacco products, and will keep your views in mind should the issue arise again in the Senate.
Although I am a proud supporter of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, I am also a cosponsor of S. 441, the Traditional Cigar Manufacturing and Small Business Jobs Preservation Act of 2015. This bill would clarify the Tobacco Control Act by exempting traditional large and premium cigars from the FDA’s regulatory authority. While I understand the serious threat that tobacco products pose to the health of our Nation’s youth, premium cigars are not marketed to children nor are premium cigars easily obtained by children, due to their higher cost relative to products such as cigarettes.
While I support this bill, I am open to reasonable proposals that might further balance the ability of adults to purchase a legal product with our need to fight underage consumption of tobacco products. One concern I had with the version of the bill that was introduced in the 112th Congress involved the definition of “traditional large and premium cigars.” In response to feedback from myself and others, the current version of this bill tightens that definition considerably. I am satisfied that this tightened definition will effectively confine the exemption from FDA regulatory authority to true premium cigars and will not include inexpensive cigars that are easier for children to purchase. Please be assured that

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I will keep your views in mind as the Senate considers S. 441.

Again, thank you for sharing your thoughts with me. Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future about this or any other matter of importance to you.
For more information on this or other issues, I encourage you to visit my website, http://casey.senate.gov.  I hope you will find this online office a comprehensive resource to stay up-to-date on my work in Washington, request assistance from my office or share with me your thoughts on the issues that matter most to you and to Pennsylvania.
Sincerely,
Bob Casey
United States Senator

 

I urge everyone to visit CigarRights.org and send letters to your legislators. Some of them really do listen, and it doesn’t take much time.  It’s important to peoples livelihoods to have premium cigars protected from FDA regulation, not just our personal enjoyment of cigars.

 

That’s it for now, until the next time.

 

Craig

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An Arandoza, a CAO Flathead and a new Sindicato Cigar, and a CONTEST!

OK, lots going on today, so let’s get some cigars out of the way!  My palate’s a little flat still, I blame the change in weather. It’s gotten cold all the sudden, and I tend to gravitate to heavier maduros this time of year anyway, and I’ve been slow in following my own advice. One reason is it’ll be boring writing about the same couple cigars twice a week, and it’ll be equally boring smoking the same couple cigars!  I’ll adjust, it’s like that first day it drops in the 40s and you bundle up with gloves, and by January you’re in a t-shirt when it gets that warm. So I smoked some cigars, came across a neat cigar related item or two, and there’s a contest too!

 

Arandoza_White_RobustoThursday I decided to dig in to the box of Arandoza White Label Robustos that I apparently won in the most recent Cigar Federation Project Mañana Raffle.  I really like the cigars from Arandoza, which are made at Erik Espinosa’s La Zona Factory. This is a nice, refined Nicaraguan cigar with good balance and flavor. I really look forward to smoking more of these, there is just about nothing I don’t enjoy about this cigar, from the smoking to the presentation, it’s first class all the way.  I suppose it’s possible one of these falls into the contest box when it mails out. Stranger things have happened.  Thank you to Arandoza Cigars and Cigar Federation for supporting a worthy cause.

 

CAO_Flathead_CamshaftTo give my palate a proper test, I decided my Friday evening smoke should be a favorite cigar that I’ve smoked a bunch of over the past year or so. I really like the CAO Flathead line, with the only possible gripe I have being that the only real neat and tidy way to cut these is with a punch, which actually works out nicely for today’s post.  I used the first edition of the Screwpop Punch on the Flathead (if you don’t know, the head is flat, so it’s really hard to use anything but a punch on these).  I smoked the 556 Camshaft size of the Flathead, with is basically a toro, but I can recommend any size (including the 770) to anyone who enjoys bold, heavy bodied maduro cigars. These are about the perfect autumn cigar for me.  Another benefit is that they don’t roll off the table when you set them down!  Good stuff from Ricky Rodriguez and his team at CAO.

 

Yesterday, after spending time at the new house clearing brush and ancient overgrown hedges for a fence to contain Macha (and keep the 16 year old Cocker Spaniel from wandering off), I came home to a cool package in the mail. This package contained the redesigned Screwpop 2.0 Cigar Punch. When I tried the original punch almost two years ago, I made some suggestions to Brett at the company on some ways I thought it could be improved. One suggestion was to reverse the design so that the punch came off of the clip/opener end so that it could remain clipped to something, and the other was to make it self clearing, as the original version tended to keep the cap cuts in the body of the unit.  It seems my suggestions were taken to heart, and here we have the new version of the punch.  Of course, I had to try it out.  I Sindicato_Maduro_Magnumreceived some samples of the new Sindicato maduro last week, and these looked really good.  The samples were all of a larger size, so I went up the middle with the 6×60 Magnum size. This wasn’t the best test for the Screwpop 2.0 becuase the folks at Casa Fernandez, who make this cigar, use a bit of a pigtail cap. Not to be deterred, I gave it a punch. The 2.0 is a slightly larger bore than the 1.0, which is good, since it doesn’t render my old trusty punch obsolete. The cigar has my favorite San Andres Morrón wrapper, and has a nice, rich cocoa flavor. The 60 ring gauge was very comfortable given the box press, so it felt a bit smaller.  It burned very well and I can’t wait to smoke the Churchill and Toro sizes.  It smoked very well and was a fine way to wrap up a tiring, but productive day.

 

And now for something completely different

I received a note from one of my readers, Josh, in Salt Lake City, pointing me to his Etsy store.  He’s been making some really cool lamps from cigar boxes.  These have a really nice kind of steampunk feel to them and are very high end.  Take a look at his site when you get a chance! https://www.etsy.com/shop/saltcitylampworks

 

Contest

screwpop2.0Since Brett at Screwpop Tool, LLC was kind enough to send me more than one Cigar Punch 2.0, I figured it only made sense to have a contest and give one away!  Strike that, I’ll give TWO away!  Be aware, I can’t just send out a punch without including something to try it out on, so, invariably, some cigars will fall into the shipping boxes when they go out. I can’t help it, it just always seems to happen.  So to recap, the Screwpop 2.0 Cigar Punch no only bores a nice hole in your cigar and  cleans itself out, but you can also use it to take the cap off your favorite bottled beverage.  It’s got a handy and fashionable gated clip so you can wear it with pride or clip it to your key ring.  These are black anodized aluminum and look really sharp.  Leave a comment to enter and I’ll select two winners at random on Wednesday.  If you’ve won in the last six months you aren’t eligible, sorry.

 

That’s it for now, time to head over to the new house an clean up the mess we made yesterday!  Until the next time,

 

CigarCraig

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