Tag Archives: Tortuga

by | July 29, 2012 · 7:47 am

A Couple Pre-Release Cigar Samples and the Final Hoyo de Monterrey Contest!

Victor Vitale, the man behind Ortsac 1962, Tortuga and others, sent a few pre-release samples my way a few weeks ago. I wanted to smoke them and give him my input before I ran into him at the IPCPR show and he said something along the lines “what about those cigars I sent you, you mooching weasel?” So I started with the sizable 7″ x about 54 box pressed parejo.  If I had to guess, I’d say it had a Habano wrapper, and was predominantly Nicaraguan.  It really was an attractive cigar, and it burned perfectly.  It was solidly medium in strength, but loaded with flavor.  It burned a little quicker than I would have thought, and I’ve been smoking much slower in the last few years.  I think I got an hour and a half out of this, including a lap around the neighborhood with the dog.  All in all, I really liked this smoke. It was well balanced and flavorful.  A perfect way to wrap up a Friday.

 

Saturday I selected the San Andreas Maduro from the same batch of cigars from Victor.  I fully expected to smoke this one first, given my affinity for that wrapper.  However, the San Andreas is a 5 x 50 (it might have been 5½) and I had more time available Friday evening for the larger smoke.  I like to take into account the time I have when I select a cigar, and it’s a rare occasion that I smoke anything longer than six inches.  This cigar had an unusual color, and I have to say that it wasn’t a really appealing shade for a maduro.  It was almost dark grey, instead of a very rich, deep brown like I’m used to seeing on this wrapper.  None the less, it was delicious. It was incredibly smooth and almost creamy.  It didn’t have any sharp edges at all and was a delight to my palate.  It had a uniqueness that set it apart from other San Andreas Maduro cigars, like Victor’s Tortuga Maduro is unique, but in a different way.  I know that sounds redundant,  but I can’t figure out another way to say it. I have one more cigar that he sent, another 5 x 50 that’s labeled as a Habano Rosado wrapper, with Nicaraguan filler and binder.  It will be interesting to see if this is the same blend as the first cigar in a different size, or  the second cigar with a different wrapper.  Victor tells me that he doesn’t know what these will be yet, but whatever they end up being, they will be excellent!  I appreciate the opportunity to try them!

 

Contest

Today starts the fifth and final week of my Hoyo de Monterrey Reposado en Cedros contest.  Hoyo de Monterrey’s Box-a-Day contest runs through Tuesday.  As I said before, I can’t promise when I will announce the winner, as I’ll be driving to Orlando on Wednesday and Thursday, and I’ll be dependent upon WIFI connections while I’m on the road.  I will announce a winner eventually, so leave me some comments for a chance to win two (2) three-packs of Reposado en Cedros cigars, courtesy of General Cigar Co.  Usual rules apply, if you’ve won one of my contests in the last three months you’re ineligible.  It’s also important to note that in order to receive the prize, you must get in touch with me with your mailing address!

 

So that’s it for now, stay tuned for IPCPR coverage starting sometime around the end of the week.

 

CigarCraig

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by | April 29, 2012 · 10:19 am

A Griffins, a Band and a Tortuga EL and Some News

Thursday was a big day for my youngest son and his band, Air Sur La Terre.  They’ve been playing together for a few short months and are really coming together.  They were interviewed on a local AM radio station in the afternoon, the podcast version can be heard here, and played at an open mike night at a coffee house in the area.  While at the coffee house, I decided to take a Griffins 500 for a little walk down the street to check out a new “smoke shop”.  I walked in, cigar in hand, and asked if smoking was permitted, and was told no.  So I turned around and left.  I noticed two cabinet humidors with what appeared to be a very modest selection of cigars.  They seemed to specialize in roll-your-own and “glass wear”, so you get the impression that premium cigars are not the focus.  Now I know, and don’t have to worry about going there again!  On my way back to the coffee house, I snapped a picture of the Griffins in front of the iconic Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, PA.   This theater was immortalized in the classic 1953 movie ” The Blob”.  The kids put on a great two song set, they have videos (I took them with my iPod, so please forgive the quality) as well as their single, “Fade Away” on their website.  The cigar is a classic Connecticut shade wrapped cigar with plenty of flavor and a perfect burn.

 

Tortuga Edicion Limitada 2011 Torpedo that Victor Vitale had sent me a while back.  The EL 2011 is made in the Dominican Republic with Honduran and Dominican fillers and Nicaraguan wrapper and binder.  It’s a pretty cigar, they wrapper is dark and a little mottled and it’s rolled with a very pointy head.  Draw and burn were very nice, although it needed a few touch ups here and there which can be contributed as much to the breeze as the cigar.  It had a really good flavor, and was solidly medium in strength to me.  If you can find these, try them.  I will admit that of the three cigars in this line, the EL 2011, 1948 Connecticut and 1950 Maduro, the EL was third on the list behind the Connecticut and Maduro, with the 1950 Maduro being my absolute favorite.  The Connecticut and Maduro each had unique flavors that really distinguished themselves to me, and the Edicion Limitada while an excellent cigar, didn’t hit me with any of those surprises.  This is an exceptional line which deserves your consideration, and Victor is a terrific guy, and I appreciate the opportunity to try these special cigars.

 

News

On the cigar event side, Butthead’s Tobacco Emporium announced that they are going to host a series of cigar events in their stores in Connecticut which they will stream live video from and offer the same deals to their on-line customers.  This is a pretty cool way to see what’s going on at the events if you can’t get to them yourselves, or live someplace where there are few events.  You can see the press release for this at Cigar Coop’s site here, and here is a sample promo video for your entertainment.

httpv://youtu.be/kJS4qV2yi_8

More News

In other news, You may recall a month or so ago I posted an article about the IPCPR‘s Internet Media Membership.  I’m pleased to announce that the organization had decided to change the membership in such a way that the benefits are more equal to the other membership levels.  I still need to figure out the details, but it looks like I’ll be attending the show.  Thanks to last year’s media members for their contributions and to Bill Spann and the board for their consideration.  Also, I’d like to welcome a new sponsor,  BnB Tobacco to CigarCraig.com.  They have a great selection and prices, so check them out the next time you shop.

 

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

CigarCraig

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by | March 21, 2012 · 8:59 pm

A Tortuga, a Berger and Argenti, a Little Rant and a Macanudo

Sunday afternoon I grabbed a Tortuga 1948 Connecticut Torpedo that Victor Vitale had sent me a couple months ago.  This is a 6½ x 52 torpedo with a flawless Connecticut shade wrapper rolled in the Dominican Republic.  This might have been one of the best shade wrapped cigars I’ve smoked.  There’s a trend toward stronger blends with an Ecuador wrapper, and it’s becoming a little cliche, in my opinion,  that everyone states that theirs is not like the rest of the mild Connecticut cigars out there.  Anyway, I don’t have anything against the cigars, I always enjoyed the flavor of a nice Connecticut wrapper, USA, Ecuador or whatever.  The Tortuga is an extremely smooth and flavorful cigar.  I had trouble putting it down and smoked it to about a half an inch nub, burned my fingers, it was that good. After smoking the 1950 Maduro, and this 1948 Connecticut, I can’t wait to smoke the  Edicion Limitada.

 

Monday night I lit up a Berger and Argenti Entubar v32 Rogue Rothschild.  I’ve enjoyed many of the cigars in the Berger and Argenti line, so I had an expectation that I’d like this one too.  I was expecting a super strong cigar, but this one wasn’t, it was very much a medium bodies cigar with a great flavor.  This 5 5/8″ x 54 cigar has the same little tube of ligero protruding from the foot that the regular Entubar line has, and the same warning band cautioning you to toast the entire foot, not just the ligero part.  It’s also a good idea to remove that band before lighting, which I almost forgot to do.  It’s a fun cigar to smoke, and tasty and well behaved.  I have a couple of the Khilla Korona size that Al Argenti sent me to try to, I’m sure they will be just as good.

 

The Rant

I had to take a little detour on the way home from work tonight and it took me past a cigar shop that I don’t get to very often. My wife had instructed me not to stop in but I defied her instructions and stopped in to see if they had the new Ortega line. This shop is a “premier” smoke shop, and is supposed to be the flagship store of the five store chain. I asked the young guy if they had the new Ortega line and he said “oh yeah, the Omar Ortega is over here” and I said ” no, that’s Omar Ortez. I’m looking for Ortega, you know, Eddie Ortega? 601? Murcielago?”.  Blank stare.  I say “they are distributed by Rocky Patel”. He says “the only Rocky Patel we have is the Edge, right here”. I thanked him and left. OK, I know I’m a cigar geek, and probably know more than the average person about cigars, but don’t you think if you worked in a cigar shop you’d keep up on what’s going on in the industry? It’s just hard for me to wrap my head around! I guess the owner doesn’t really worry about the new stuff and this is one of the reasons I don’t go to this shop too often. The moral of the story is that I should have listened to my wife!

 

Tonight I smoked the new 6″ x 60 size of the regular Macanudo Cafe line.  I was pretty impressed with the flavor of this classic Connecticut cigar.  I’ve smoked dozens of this cigar in various sizes and I forgot that they aren’t necessarily the bland, tasteless cigar everyone thinks they are.  Smooth and flavorful, if you like that sort of thing, I guess!  The first premium cigar I ever smoked was a Macanudo and I was underwhelmed, but I’ve come to appreciate the flavors of a really broad range of cigars.

 

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

CigarCraig

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by | January 29, 2012 · 10:22 am

Some Thoughts on Taste and A Tortuga 1950

My wife and I took the train into Philly yesterday to go to the Reading Terminal Market.  We have both lived in this area pretty much our whole lives, and had never been there.  This is a huge, indoor farmers market with produce, meats, fish, ethnic food, just about everything one would want.  One of the first stalls we came across was a candy counter.  I’m a nut for black licorice, so I purchased a mixed bag of “salty” licorice.  I had never had salty licorice and was curious.  Some of it wasn’t bad, some of it had a distinct ammonia flavor, which I can’t say that I enjoyed, I mean….who would?    It seems that this is a common treat in Nordic countries and Northern Germany, and is flavored with ammonium chloride, which explains the ammonia flavor I got.  This all got me to thinking of the way everyone’s tastes are different and how that translates to cigars.  This is no great revelation, we all know that we have different tastes, that’s one of the things that makes life interesting, but it reinforced the point to me when I thought ” who in thier right mind would enjoy this flavor?”  It seems that somebody does, and the same is true with cigars.  I’ve smoked some cigars that I consider to be vile, nasty tasting cigars that I can’t imagine anyone would want to smoke.  Obviously, the guy who makes the cigar likes it, and, let’s face it, considering all of the work that goes into making a cigar, who’s going to waste all that time and energy making a crappy cigar?  I know that as someone who apparently has a voice in the industry, it’s my responsibility when I talk about a cigar, to not denigrate a cigar just because it isn’t to my taste, and to allow for the myriad of variables in construction and storage that could cause a less than ideal cigar experience.  That same candy counter did have some chocolate cigars!  I passed since I can get a real cigar for the same price and have an hour or so of pleasure instead of the few minutes the candy variety would give me.  This bag of unusual licorice will last me a lot longer than a similar bag of sweet licorice would, as I can’t stop eating it once I start.   It’s one of my many failings…

 

Upon my return, I selected a Tortuga 1950 torpedo for an afternoon smoke.  This lovely dark cigar was sent to me by Victor Vitale, cigar maker, importer & distributor, along with a 1948 Connecticut and an Edicion Limitada 2011 in the same vitola.  There isn’t a lot of specifics on the website, but I assume that this is made in Nicaragua, based upon the “America Central” on the band.  According to information that I received with the samples, the cigar has a Mexican broadleaf wrapper, Nicaraguan,  Honduran and organic grown wild “jungle” filler leaf exclusive to this cigar.  The wrapper on this is beautiful, deep, dark brown, like dark chocolate, and the seems were virtually invisible and the veins were very fine.  The flavors appealed to me quite a bit.  They were dark and decadent, lush and satisfying.  There was an underlying flavor that intrigued me that I can’t put a finger on.  It was different from many maduros that I like, but really kept my attention down to a finger burning nub.  I’m really looking forward to the  other two in this line now, as this was a terrific smoke.  Besides the lack of details on the make-up of this cigar on the website, they also do not list a torpedo, so your mileage may vary when shopping for these.  Certainly a cigar I’d like to smoke more of. The Short at 4½” x 44 looks like a great winter cigar walk size.  I’ve been underwhelmed with Victor’s other cigars, but that’s just me, and, as I said above, taste is a subjective thing and no two palates ate the same.

 

I smoked some other cigars this week, notably a Macanudo 1968, a J.  Fuego Sangre de Toro Original, and a Gurkha Seduction.  All cigars I’d talked about before, and the only thing that bears repeating is how much I like the Gurkha Seduction.  I’ve been seeing a ton of reviews on this brick and mortar exclusive cigar.  I think Mike at MikesStogies.com is currently having a contest featuring these cigars, so check out his review.  I’ll feature these in a contest at a later date assuming I can keep my grubby little mitts off of them long enough!  I also noticed that the Seduction is Doc Stogiefresh‘s cigar of the week for his podcast episode 303.  Also of note was a La Gloria Cubana Artesanos de Tabaqueros with Sumatra and Broadleaf that I got from my visit to Famous Smoke Shop.  Delicious cigar, if you have an opportunity to go to a La Gloria Cubana Retro event and meet Michael Giannini you will be in for a double treat as these cigars are special and Michael is a heck of a guy!

 

One last thing:  Please let me know if you have any problems viewing the site.  I’ve had some feedback that there are still some glitches and some operating systems or browsers, or some connections speeds still have problems.  I want everyone to be able to see the site the way I do, so please let me know if there’s a problem or complaint.

 

That’s all I have for today, until the next time,

CigarCraig

 

 

 

 

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