Ramone Allones | CigarCraig's Blog

Yesterday, Saturday, June 23, I had the privilege of attending the first ever Pennsylvania version of Drew Estate’s Barnsmoker Series. Last year I attended the Connecticut version and found it very educational, and, oddly, I saw many of the same people at this one. I went with a couple of friends who hadn’t been to an event like this before, one who is a cigar enthusiast, and one who is a cigar lover but not an an enthusiast so much (but is an Acid Kuba Kuba fan), but is a foodie and beer and spirits guy. I was interested to see their reaction to this event. Before I get to my perception of that, let me lay out the event from my perspective. A farm in Strasburg PA, just east of Lancaster, was the setting. Strasburg is a nice little Lancaster county borough famous for the Strasburg Railroad, a tourist fixture since I was a little kid, which we all know was a very long time ago. Another notable factoid about this area is that the movie Witness was primarily filmed not far from this area. Bonus for me was that it’s about an hour from my house. The farm was typical for the area, nothing unusual from many farms in the area, except for the huge tent and 500 cigar maniacs.

Compared to my experience at the Connecticut event, check-in lacked any lines whatsoever, it was very smooth. I’m not sure if that was the smaller crowd or what. They did advertise that parking opened at 9, and the event started “promptly” at 10. There was no traffic, no lines, very orderly and almost had me worried as we arrived around 9:40. Check-in consisted of having your ticket scanned and receiving your official Barnsmoker tupperware tub with DE stickers, a poker chip, matches, a cutter, a small vial of tobacco seeds, a cap and the voucher allowing you to buy the cigar sampler for $10. The next stop was the cigar table, staffed by Famous Smoke Shop employees, where you traded the voucher and a $10 bill for the following cigars: • Liga Privada A • Liga Privada Velvet Rat • Kentucky Fire Cured Just a Friend • Pappy Van Winkle Barrel Fermented Limitada • Larutan NDB • Experimental Pennsylvania Broadleaf blend Corona x 2 • Undercrown Sun Grown Toro • Undercrown Shade Toro • Undercrown Maduro Toro • Undercrown Shade Coronets Tin • Undercrown Maduro Coronets Tin. Obviously, paired with the $90 ticket price for the event, this isn’t a bad deal if you like cigars. Incidentally, when I got home I saw someone selling two of their Barnsmoker packages on Facebook for $100 each and had people lined up to buy them. John Drew Brands (www.johndrewbrands.com), MB Roland (www.mbroland.com), Buffalo Trace (www.buffalotrace.com), and Southern Comfort were there providing samples as well.

As with most events like this, it was nearly 11:00 before the festivities got rolling, and Fabian Ziegler was the MC and introduced Jonathan Drew who addressed the attendees. He introduced members of the Welk family, owners of the farm and growers of some of the best PA broadleaf wrapper. The group was then split in three and went to the tree stations of the educational portion of the event. The group I was in started in the curing barn. JD was the speaker here, and spoke about the process of hanging the leaf in the barn after it was taken from the field in the fall. After the leaf is dried in the rafters of the barn is where things are done differently in PA, as they hang it in a damp basement for a while while rotating it through the baling process over the winter to keep it from drying out. it’s a very manual process. From the barn we went to a station with Willie Herrera and the master brewer from Yuengling brewery where they discussed the differences and similarities between blending cigars and beer. There were samples of Yuengling beer here, but no cigar samples, so I wasn’t as interested as I could have been. Obviously with beer there’s more instant gratification than there is with cigars, however patience seems to be a common theme. This station was under a very small tent, and this happened to be the one time it rained during the day, pictures I tried to take didn’t come out due to the lighting, and I never did get a chance to talk to Willie during the event, despite my best efforts. The final station was the field, where Pedro Gomez and Don Welk went through the 7 month growing cycle from hydroponically starting the seedlings to harvesting the full grown plants, as well as the family history and and the Pennsylvania history of tobacco farming. Clearly there are differences between growing tobacco in PA versus Nicaragua, but it’s still a very manual process and there is a lot of risk. Like I saw in Connecticut, one hail storm and a whole year is lost. although in Pennsylvania there are enough tobacco growers that they do have crop insurance (I believe black tobacco is lumped in with burley tobacco for insurance purposes, someone please correct this if I’m wrong). The Time went by way too quickly on this part of the event, it was very enlightening, I’m always eager to learn more about what goes into the cigars I love.

Lunch was served and once again it was delicious barbecue, with the requisite starches to go with it. Food was plentiful, I had various meats with some slaw and mac and cheese, and I heard the ribs were excellent. I smoked one of the “PA Test Blend” cigars that were supplied because, well, I felt like I had to, and it was good, and I look forward to seeing what this will become. I’ll just say that it started off quite full and mellowed, but didn’t feel quite finished yet, like it was missing something. Maybe not balanced, I don’t know. If it ends up being half the cigar the FSG is, it’ll be great (if it’s half the price, even better! 🙂 ). I actually started the day with a very old Tabak Especiale Negra Robusto I brought with me, as I’m not a regular morning smoker, and held off on lighting up as I was taking pictures and trying to pay attention to the presentations without distractions. I really enjoyed the Tabak, as I have for many years as a morning cigar, duh, it’s tastes like coffee. Drew Estate puts on world class events, I can’t imagine they make money off of these things, especially when Operation: Cigars for Warriors ends up with $16k in donations with a large part of that being corporate matching (saying that with the utmost respect for all involved, kudos!). I think a Barnsmoker is a must do event if you love cigars, especially if you are unable to make it to a factory tour off shore, or even if you are, it’s a fun, although often too short, day. My friend Mike, a cigar guy, always enjoys events with an educational component and commented that he’d attend again. My friend Jim, the foodie, found the culture interesting, seemed happy enough with the food and drink and was interested, but seemed like more of a one and done type of attendedee, which is fine, I don’t think he was disappointed. Not everyone is the type of consumer who has to do things over and over, some people experience things once and move on to the next thing, I’m that way to some extent. Much like cigars themselves, there’s something for everyone. Thanks to everyone at Drew Estate, especially Joe, Sam, JD and Pedro for their kindness!

One other cigar that I wanted to mention this week that I smoked was the new Ramone Allones from AJ Fernandez. I went to a nearby shop on a fact-finding mission and these had just come in, so I figured I’d give the robusto a try. First observation is that these are pricey, $11 for an AJ robusto is a bit of a shock. the presentation in the 10 count lacquer box and cedar sleeve is nice, but I was taken aback. So that raised my expectation a bit. General Cigar handed trademark for this over to AJF after they gave a try at re-imagining it a few years ago under the Foundry brand along with the Bolivar. I thought the packaging on both was pretty bad, but I liked the Bolivar a lot although I thought the Ramone Allones was ~~yucky~~ not a good match to my palate. I thought the first half of this new version was pretty darned tasty, rich, dark Habano Oscuro wrapper had some nice cocoa flavor. When it got to the second half I started to get some ammonia notes, unacceptable in any cigar in my opinion, let alone one carrying a premium price tag. This was independently corroborated later in the day in a conversation with a cigar company rep who had the same opinion. My advice to retailers, for what it’s worth, is to put these away for a couple of months before putting them on the shelf for sale, probably not what people want to hear, but I didn’t find the cigar to be ready yet, there are a lot of $5.50 cigars I would rather have bought two of, quite honestly, or the Habanos “Specially Selected probably isn’t that far off of $11. It’ll be a great cigar when it’s ready. Everyone knows it’s not my way to badmouth a cigar.

That’s enough for today, until the next time,

CigarCraig

Thursday I dug into the sampler pack that Gurkha gave me at the trade show, and came out of it with the newest addition to their Cellar Reserve line, the 12 year aged Platinum in the 6″ x 58 Hedonism size. This is a nice perfecto shaped cigar with a Ecuador Oscuro wrapper (and I can’t guess what actual varietal that might be, couple be a Connecticut fermented to a dark color, or something else…hard to tell). The band boasts a “blend strength” of 98%, again, not sure what that means as it was a perfect medium in strength to my palate. It also has a Nicaraguan binder and 12 year old fillers from Esteli, Congega and Jalapa in Nicaragua. It’s made in the Dominican Republic. Aside from all the marketing buzzwords and vague information on the blend, what I found it to be was a very good tasting cigar. It was creamy and smooth and quite nice. There was no shortage of flavor, it was by no means mild, and was probably my second favorite of the four blends in the Cellar Reserve line, second to the maduro Limitada with the Brazilian Arapiraca wrapper. I owe the Edicion Especial with the Corojo wrapper another shot as I smoked one in New Orleans outside in hot, soupy weather and it wasn’t the best representation of that cigar I don’t think. There are quite a few Gurkha cigars I like, and this happens to be one of them.

Friday I wrapped up the work week with a 1502 Black Gold toro that I had in the humidor for a couple years. This has always been my favorite in the 1502 range, it’s got a deep, dark maduro wrapper that I want to say is San Andrés from Mexico if I recall. I like the way the wrapper leaf is folded around the foot off the cigar on all the lines, it’s a nice touch, and you get a little bit more wrapper flavor on the light. It has to add cost to the process though. Anyway, it was 1502 owner Enrique Sanchez’ birthday Friday, so I thought it seemed appropriate to smoke one of his cigars. I had some trouble keeping this one lit for some reason, but it has the dark and dirty black coffee and earth flavor that I really like. All of the 1502 cigars are great smokes, this one, when it burns right, is always a favorite. Oddly, when I smoked the 1502 line in the Lancero size last year, I think the Emerald was my favorite, and the same with the coronas. Maybe the flavor I really like from the Black Gold wrapper needs to be tempered by more filler, too much of a good thing, you know.

As usual, when I toured General Cigar‘s booth at the IPCPR show, I had no idea what to expect from their Foundry division. I knew that Sam Leccia was working under that umbrella, but one never can tell what’s going on in the creative mind of Michael Giannini. I was surprised to find that his latest project was the re-imagining of the Bolivar and Ramon Allones brands. I sparked up the Bolivar first in the 550 size. This has an unfinished foot and a curly-q pigtail cap, and is a nice, dark cigar. As is the custom with Foundry, all we know about the blend is that it’s six country blend. If I had to guess, I’d say this has a Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper, based on the delicious and lush espresso/cocoa flavor. As you might guess, I really liked this cigar, it had the dark, bitter flavors I like, with a hint of sweetness. It burned perfectly and that uncut foot gave a huge blast of wrapper flavor on the light. The box art is pretty sharp, featuring images of the bands that Bolivar has used over the one hundred or so years it’s been on the market. I am not over fond of the bands on the cigars, though, I am afraid it makes the cigar look like an inexpensive bundle instead of the fine premium cigar that it is.

The Ramon Allones 550 shares the same sizes as the Bolivar line, but is a Nicaraguan puro, and that’s all the information available on the blend. The presentation follows the same theme as well, with the Ramon Allones having a blue band where the Bolivar has red. I will never forget the first Cuban Ramon Allones I ever smoked, a “Specially Selected” robusto back in the late ’90s. This cigar was so peppery that I could still feel the tingle on my tongue the next day. I’ve had others since and never had that much pepper, but still enjoyed the cigars. The new version Michael Giannini has put together has none of that. Once again, the uncut foot showcases the dark Nicaraguan wrapper upon lighting, and it’s a blast of what I can only associate with sourdough bread. The sourdough flavor persisted throughout the cigar. Again, the construction was perfect, and it burned and drew great. I have to say, I would lean toward the Bolivar if I had to choose between the two, I’m not a fan of the sour flavors, but there are those who are, and the Ramon Allones is a very good choice if that is your preference. I look forward to trying both of these in the other sizes to see how they differ. Again, I’d like to see a classier band, but that’s just me, there’s no denying that they will stand out on the shelf.

One thing I’ve noticed as I’m writing this article is that companies are still slow to update their websites to reflect the new releases. It’s now almost two months after the IPCPR show where some of these cigars were released and the only information I can find are on media sites. I should think that should be a priority in 2015, and it’s not that difficult to expensive to do, like the old days when they would have to re-print a catalog or something. It’s just something that continues to befuddle me. On another note, since my wife is going to be selling books at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention near Baltimore this weekend, I am going to be looking for cigar shops to waste time in. The Humidour in Cockeysville, MD is first on the list, but if anyone is in the area please let me know, I will be down there Thursday, Friday and Saturday. That’s enough from me, until the next time,

CigarCraig