I read somewhere that today is World Know Tobacco Day, so I said to myself: “hey, I know tobacco, and I really like it!” It’s been said that tobacco cultivation has been done for ten thousand years in the Americas, the indigenous people used if medicinally and ceremonially long before Europeans “discovered” the Americas. The Europeans took a shine to it, and its use was met with mixed opinions, some of the more enlightened (tongue firmly planted in my cheek) thought people with smoke coming out of their mouths an noses was a sign of demonic possession while others saw the economic potential. Our beloved nicotiana tabacum was the currency that underwrote the war of independence and made the United States the independent country that it is today. Of course, nobody remembers that, and it’s again demonized by the less enlightened. Just the other day I was yelled at by a woman on our local multi-use trail where Macha and I take our daily walks. She ran past me and yelled “how can you be smoking on a trail where people are running?” I chuckled at her rudeness, an imagined that it offset any of my own rudeness for daring to enjoy a legal product. I wonder how people can live in a world where people do things that they don’t like. I don’t appreciate all the sweaty, stinky runners and cyclists disturbing my relaxation on the trail, but I’m not so rude as to point it out! Perhaps if I had a stick up my ass I’d have a different opinion. Anyway, tobacco is now grown in beautiful countries, tended by passionate and caring people, rolled into cigars by artisans and smoked by intelligent and humble people like us. Hopefully now you know tobacco a little better and can properly celebrate this World Hedonism Organization (WHO) holiday with a fine cigar. I got that all right, didn’t I?
I celebrated tonight with a cigar from the folks at Ventura Cigar Company, the folks that make the Psyko 7 and Project 805 cigars. I’ve been a fan of the Psyko 7 line since I had one in late 2013 as a guest on The Cigar Authority radio show. I have a neat Psyko 7 humidor that my wife won that works quite well, and have a cool light-up Psyko 7 Maduro sign hanging in the smoking porch. So I was pretty excited when I saw the Archetype line displayed at the IPCPR show last year, but I couldn’t really find anyone in the Phillips and King International booth to help me. Not their fault, they were busy and I’m not the guy at the show that’s high on the priority list. I managed to get my hands on some of the Archetype Axis Mundi Coronas, which was tonight’s smoke. I also got some of the Initiation in the same size, and the one I smoked last night tasted great, had a really unique flavor that I loved, but half way through it died on me, one of those strange situations that blowing through the cigar gives plumes of smoke, but drawing gets nothing. I tried and tried, but it frustrated me. I have more, I’ll come back to that one at a later date because I really liked the flavor. To be fair, it had spent a couple of hours in a case in my pocket on a humid evening, which may have contributed to my problems. The Archetype Axis Mundi has a Habano Ecuador Maduro wrapper, Indonesian Sumatra binder and Nicaraguan Habano filler. This is on the stronger end of the spectrum, had a great burn, although I let it go out a couple of times because I was trying to maximize the time smoking. It was great for a three-mile walk on the trail where nobody complained. It had some burned wood, savory and sweet dried fruit kinda flavors with a hint of spice. I really enjoyed this, I’ll be on the look out for larger vitolas in both this and the Initiation lines and would recommend it highly.
That’s all for now, unless you’re looking for Father’s Day gift ideas, then Holt’s has a nice selection on their Father’s Day Cigar Deals page, or the folks at Stage V Clingers are still running a special on their four-pack with the “StageVdad” code. Until the next time,
CigarCraig
