Delaware Cigar Festival 2012 Event Report

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of attending my second Delaware Cigar Festival.  This festival is held at Delaware Park Racetrack in (duh) Delaware every year and organized by Gary Griffith of Delaware Cigars and Emilio Cigars fame.  Gary brings together a bunch of cigar makers and reps and paying attendees get a nice bag of about 25 cigars and the vendors are selling cigars for $3 to $9 with all of the money going to charity. Instead of going from booth to booth getting a cigar from each vendor, you could buy the cigars, many of which retail for much more than $3.  I haven’t heard the final tally, but I’m sure they raised many hundreds of dollars for the charity of their choice, The La Musa School of Artl in Esteli, Nicaragua.  

Besides having he chance to purchase cigars cheap and talk with the reps and cigar makers, it also provided the opportunity to spend a beautiful afternoon talking to fellow cigar lovers from all over.  I spent some time with my old friends Rob Heming and Dennis Shaffer, who rode their motorcycles from the Pittsburgh and Cleveland areas respectively.  I had found a great parking spot and saw them circling the lot looking for a space so I invited them to share my spot.  We ended up packing 4 bikes into one spot (I also finally met a gent named Ralph who rode down from north of Philly, who I had corresponded with before).  It had been several years since I’d seen Rob and Dennis and it was great getting caught up.  I also was  happy to spend some time with Charlie Greenbacker, who I had met at this event last year, as well as meeting Irv from CigarNews.com.   It was a great afternoon, great folks and great cigars.

I started the day with an Ortega Serie D maduro, which I had been craving and headed straight for Eddie’s table upon arrival.  It was awesome, of course (the “D” is for delicious!).  Next I smoked an Undercrown Corona Doble, which was also awesome.  I hadn’t smoked a cigar that large in a while, but I had the time.  I wrapped up the afternoon with a Cubanacan robusto from Eddie Tarazona, which was a nice, mild smoke with a nice flavor.  This is a cigar that comes in boxes of fifty and has a price-point around$6 (if I recall).  Solid, well behaved smoke with was a nice way to end the day.  If you can manage to attend this event in the future you should try to do it.  I have a video from the event as well as some photos below.

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

CigarCraig