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
You learned a lesson I learned 33 years ago. Always listen to your wife. I mean my wife, not your wife, well you know what I mean!
Great blog today as usual. I too get frustrated at the lack of knowledge at some of the cigar stores in the area. I don’t know 10% of what you know, and still get frustrated when the clerk would rather make up some crap about a cigar rather than just say, “I’m not really sure.”
Let’s smoke one for our wives keeping us in line!