Tag Archives: Todos Las Dias

by CigarCraig | May 20, 2018 · 10:17 am

An Evening at A Little Taste of Cuba and Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust Cigars

The last month or so I’ve been resisting going out to cigar shops. I’ve been antisocial, careful with dollars, and busy hunting for the next opportunity. I still get my daily walks in with a cigar, but have been laying low as far as cigar events go. Last night my wife and I took a drive to Princeton, NJ to A Little Taste of Cuba. You may recall last year we visited the A Little Taste of Cuba in New Hope, PA to meet up with Kevin of CigarProp fame. A Little Taste of Cuba is owned by Jorge Armenteros, who is the guy behind Tobacconist University, which is a course that teaches about everything cigar, pipe and tobacco. Jorge describes the Princeton store the flagship store, and it’s a very nice shop. It’s New Jersey, so I had a little sticker shock being used to PA prices, but they offered a Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust sampler with a Sobremesa Short Churchill (which I smoked first), Mi Querida Ancho Corto (smoked second) and Gordito, Todos Las Dias Double Wide Belicoso and an Umbagog Short and Fat. Honestly, I would have bought a handful of Umbagogs and been happy, but the price of the sampler versus the price of the Umbagogs made the sampler a better value. Of course, the two cigars I smoked were fantastic. Unlike the New Hope shop, the Princeton store has a lounge a half a flight up from the store area. The seating was comfortable, and the smoke eaters were noisy, but effective. There were a dozen to 15 people in there smoking over the course of the evening and it wasn’t that bad.

Did I mention Steve Saka and his wife, Cindy, were there? It was a casual non-event event, they were just there to hang out and we decided to run out there and hang out with them. Steve was losing his voice, which made it hard for me to hear all the nuggets of wisdom emanating from him, but a lot of it I’ve heard before. My hearing is impaired, so the combination of the drone from the air cleaner and Steve’s gravely voice made it hard to follow any one conversation, but I was enjoying the crap out of the cigars I was smoking, so it didn’t much matter. It’s always great to spend a little time with Steve and Cindy, terrific people. I also ran into my old friend Alex Martinez, who I met back in 2013 when I was up in the Lyndhurst, NJ area for a few days. Always nice to reconnect.

Two more quick little things n my mind: First, we were out at a fabric store yesterday with one of our granddaughters getting her some patterns and fabric for projects, and I came across some interesting fabric. Fabric stores make me anxious since childhood, not sure why, maybe it’s the overwhelming variety, or the cluttered feeling, but I’m uncomfortable in them. So I wasn’t just pacing around with my hands in my pockets, my wife told me to go look for some cigar fabric, and don’t you know I found some, and bought the whole bolt! Oddly, there’s a billion patterns for women’s clothes, but only like seven for men. I guess we buy our clothes as opposed to making them! Second, I once again found that smoking a strong cigar late at night gives me some weird-ass dreams and isn’t good for my sleep! No cigars after 9pm, I guess! Crazy!

That’s all for now, until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Filed under Review, Stores

Tagged as A Little Taste of Cuba, cigar, cigars, Dunbarton, Mi Querida, Sobremesa, Todos Las Dias, Umbagog

by CigarCraig | November 29, 2017 · 9:29 pm

Todos Las Dias Double Wide Belicoso and an Umbagog Cigar

A couple of weeks ago I smoked a Todos Las Dias from Steve Saka’s Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust in the Robusto size that Steve gave me at the IPCPR show after testing the internal humidity (video here), ironically the cigar smoked wetter than I’d like. I saw the promise, and was anxious to revisit the cigar. While I was at 2 Guys in New Hampshire last weekend I picked up a couple of the Double Wide Belicoso, the 4.75″x 60 figurado which is identical in size to the Joya de Nicaragua Antaño Gran Consul and the Rosalones 460, using the same molds and made in the same factory. The Todos Las Dias (Steve’s Spanglish for “All the Days”) is a Nicaraguan puro, with a sungrown Nicaraguan wrapper, and fillers from Esteli and Jalapa. I’m sure I’m oversimplifying as I don’t have the farms and primings that Steve usually supplies. So, I did something I don’t usually do this week and smoked the two Double Wide Belicosos I brought back from New Hampshire.

Let me preface what I’m about to say with this: Saka has been telling me for years that his cigars aren’t for everyone and he’d rather make cigars that some people love than something everyone likes, or something like that. I found that I wasn’t getting this cigar, which is why I’m smoked two. It’s got some strength, that’s for sure, but I found it more on the savory side, lacking the sweetness I like in a cigar. I missed the dark chocolate and chili pepper that I should’ve gotten, per the info from Dunbarton. The burn was great, and I smoked it to a nub, and didn’t feel any effects of the strength. I still have a couple more in the humidor that I look forward to smoking in a few months. Perhaps I’ve finally found one of Steve’s cigars I don’t love. I’ve loved his other offerings, perhaps my expectations were too high? Just because I didn’t love it doesn’t mean others won’t

Tonight I went for a cigar I do love, the Umbagog Corona Gorda, the 6″x48, which is the ugly sibling of the Mi Querida Fino Larga. The Umbagog uses the same Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper as the Mi Querida that Steve deems too unattractive to use on that line. I don’t know what he’s looking at, there was not a damn thing wrong with it. Certainly it’s a hearty leaf, and the fillers may not be exactly the same as the Mi Querida, which I smoked and enjoyed last week. The Umbagog smoked great, it was exactly what I like in a cigar, rich, sweet and well-behaved. Since these are fairly limited due to production being predicated on wrapper being the rejects of the more expensive line, and costing the same, if Steve lowered his standards they would be even more scarce. He won’t lower his standards though. The Umbagog, like the Mi Querida, is one of my favorite cigars.

Here’s a couple of links to check out when you get a chance:

https://cigarsforbeginners.famous-smoke.com/

https://www.holts.com/clubhouse/

There’s only a few days left to get in on the CigarCraig.com Secret Santa exchange. We need an even number so I can jump in! Email me your name and address!

That’s all for tonight, until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Filed under Review

Tagged as cigar, cigars, Todos Las Dias, Umbagog

by CigarCraig | September 13, 2017 · 9:34 pm

AJ-Booth-Caldwell, Hamlet and Todos Las Dias Cigars

I smoked three cigars from the IPCPR show this week so far, and I’m not entirely sure any of them are on tobacconist’s shelves yet. I started with one of the cigars Matt Booth had at the show. Let me express my disappointment that the video I did with Matt had no audio, and what fun is that? Not that Matt might or might not have visual aids, but his booth was a collection of arcade games and nothing else, and interviews with Mr. Booth are always informative and hilarious. Sad that the audio wasn’t there, I wish I had known. Anyway, one of the cigars he had at the show was a collaborative effort with AJ Fernandez, Matt and Robert Caldwell, which was supposed to be called “Truth”, but a late trademark issue got in the way, and the samples he was handing out had the simple band pictured. I’m just going to call it ABC in the interest of brevity. So this is a nice box pressed 6″ x 52 toro and is a Nicaraguan puro, with a dark maduro wrapper. Upon lighting the cigar I quickly realized that if I were to blend a cigar, it would taste very much like this one. Regular readers will know that I love a cigar with loads of rich cocoa and coffee with a bit of spice. This one had some strength also, which was a perfect complement to the flavors. I loved it, I can’t wait to see what this evolves into. It’s a shame they had to abandon the name and packaging, but Matt is a creative guy, he’ll come up with something fantastic, like this cigar was.

Last night I tried the Hamlet 25th Year robusto from Rocky Patel. I liked the 5½” x 50 robusto, the slightly longer length appeals to me. This is totally different from the Tabaqueros that Hamlet produced a year or so ago for Rocky Patel, that cigar was Hamlet’s first foray into blending a cigar that wasn’t all Cuban tobacco, for those who don’t know, Hamlet Paredes was an ambassador for Habanos S.A. and traveled the world ding rolling events. I guess it’s accurate to say he defected from Cuba and found a home working with Rocky Patel. I loved the Tabaquero, and this new offering is very different, but very tasty. It has an Ecuador Habano wrapper, Pennsylvania Broadleaf binder and fillers from Honduras and Nicaragua. I thought it was, dare I say, Cubanesque in that it was on the milder side, but had a lot of good flavors, some vanilla creaminess, light fruit and chocolate. This is yet another cigar I look forward to trying again.

Tonight I got an unexpected phone call from (I’m going to name drop here), Jose Blanco, who was in the general area, but I wasn’t able to met up with him. In our conversation about cigars from the IPCPR show he mentioned Todos las Dias from Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust and how he thought it was the best cigar Steve Saka had made so far. I’ve had a single robusto from the show that Steve gave me as he was testing the internal humidity (see the video here), and I assumed it was from the “passed” pile. I figured tonight was the night to smoke it, it had been in my humidor since the show in July, the same humidor all the IPCPR samples were in and have been smoking well. The Todos las Dias is Saka’s first Nicaraguan Puro, with a Sun Grown wrapper and fillers from Jalapa and Esteli, rolled at the Joya de Nicaragua factory. I noted a couple ironies. First, the Dunbarton website lacks detailed information on this cigar, the Sobremesa and Mi Querida are detailed quite nicely, with only a passing mention of this and his other lines. This is very un-Saka. The second and more important irony was that this cigar smoked like it was over-moist. The humidor this has been in is at 68%, and I saw first had that the internal humidity of the cigar when it came into my possession was under 12%. Steve wasn’t handing out cigars that weren’t going to smoke perfectly. My only thought is that the heavy tobaccos in this cigar sucked up the ambient humidity when I took it out. It had rained here and was very humid outside. Flavor-wise, I see where this is a great cigar when it burns like it should, and as son as I see some in the wild I’ll grab some and try them under the right conditions. I’m particularly interested in trying the Double Wide Belicoso, which appears to use the same molds as Joya de Nicaraguas Gran Consul (I have some Rosalones in the same size too). Flavor was full, lush and yummy. I have to defer to Jose on this one for now, a Sobremesa El Americano I smoked Sunday was perfect.