CigarCraig's Blog

May 24, 2026 · 10:17 am

Powstanie Sumatra, West Tampa Barbershop and La Gloria Cubana Intención Cigars

It’s Memorial Day weekend, and it feels more like a rainy Thanksgiving! Last week started with days in the 90s, we’re back in the 50s now. That’s why I’m not enjoying a cigar while I type today! Anyway, tomorrow is the day we remember all those who made the ultimate sacrifice so that we can do stuff like smoke cigars and live our lives. Thank you to all who’ve paid the price. Anyway, I smoked a few new cigars this week. I am a regular listener to the A Cigar Hustlers podcast, which is hosted by the two Mikes, Palmer and Szczepankiewicz and comes out every weekday. I heard them talk about the new Powstanie Sumatra and that it’s available in a Churchill, which led to an unintentional mooch. All I wanted to know was where I could buy some! Anyway, a couple showed up in my mailbox and I smoked one. This is new core line is pretty much the same blend as the Catastrophic Failure, which was a limited release lin 2024, which I wrote about here. They’ve made this line in four sizes that they haven’t used in their other lines, a petit robusto, gran robusto, gran toro and Churchill. These are all box pressed, have an Ecuador Sumatra wrapper, Mexican and Pennsylvania binders, and Dominican and Nicaraguan fillers, made at Nica Sueño in Esteli. I expected a little more of the sweetness I usually get with a sumatra, and got with the Catastrophic Failure, perhaps the larger size tempers this a bit. It was still a delicious cigar that I had to smoke slowly so as to not overheat it, the draw was on the open side. Obviously this has well worked tobaccos, given the factory, and is a cigar I will smoke again. I’ll be sampling other sizes, but I always get excited about 7″ x 48 (or 47) Churchills, it’s becoming a forgotten size, and is one of my favorites.

Last weekend I missed seeing Ricky Rodriguez of West Tampa Tobacco at Smoke-onos, but Dan, who does sales for the company handed me their new offering, the Barbershop. I smoked the “Clipers” size, which is 6″ x 54. This is a new core line cigar, offered in three sizes, with a Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper, Nicaraguan binder and fillers from all over Nicaragua. It’s box pressed and I’ve heard comparisons to another broadleaf box pressed cigar that Ricky was involved with, although I did not need to get my large punch cutter out for this one. This one also had an open draw, so I smoked it slow. There’s a savory sweetness, if that makes sense, very tasty. There was some leather and dark chocolate, absolutely no hints of Clubman or talc. I appreciate any cigar with dark chocolate flavors, I love dark chocolate, but lately it’s a migraine trigger for me, so I avoid it. This is another really nice cigar, and I’ll try the other sizes, which include a 6½” x 64 called the Barber Chair, and a 5″ x 52 called the Straight Razor. A lesser brand owner would just have called them toros and robustos, bt Ricky likes clever names.

Lastly, La Gloria Cubana has a new offering called the Intención, made at the STG Esteli factory, and ranging from $6 for the Gran Robusto, which is what I sampled, to $8 for the Gigante (6″ x 60), there’s a toro right in the middle both size and price-wise. I’m reading the info sheet and wondering if I smoked the right cigar, it has the Intención band on it, but it really doesn’t look like a San Andrés wrapper, it looks lighter than I expect. Not all San Andrés wrappers are maduro, so I’ll let that slide. It also has an Indonesian binder and Nicaraguan and Honduran tobaccos, with ligeros from both. I found this to be a medium cigar, with some baking spices to start and a heavy citrus tang throughout. The data sheet cites spiced chocolate and leather, neither of which I got at all. The cigar I smoked was excellent, I enjoyed it quite a bit, but it was very different than the literature would suggest, and I think others might agree. Of course, I’ve always been a fan of the La Gloria Cubanas, this one is a winner, I’d gladly add a box to my humidor.

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

CigarCraig

😃+

CigarProp 10th Anniversary Cigar and the Smoke-onos Festival

Yesterday I had the great pleasure of attending my 3rd Smoke-onos event hosted by Best Cigar Prices in Drums, PA. But first, I want to talk about the new cigar from CigarProp celebrating their 10th anniversary. A little history: I first heard from Kevin on February 4, 2014. He was trying to get into the cigar tube business, having made some single cigar tubes on his lathe at home. I recall contributing to his Indiegogo campaign, I have no idea how much he raised from that. I’m kinda glad he moved into the prop space, as I don’t find a lot of use for a single tube, as nice as they were, I rarely travel with one cigar. I have a pretty good collection of Cigar Prop prototypes, including a portable prop that Kevin caled the XC, with the C honoring me, for some reason! I have spent many hours with Kevin (and Jessica), over the last dozen years. We differ greatly in a lot of ways, but we have a kinship somehow. The 10th Anniversary is made at Fabrica Centroamericana de Tabaco S.A., the factory that makes Cavalier Cigars. The cigar is a toro (yay!), and is mostly Honduran with an Oscuro wrapper from Jamastrán, what I assume is a Connecticut broadleaf grown in Honduras for the binder, Visos from Copan in Honduras and Jalapa in Nicaragua, Ligero from Jamastran and a Sumatra seco. I’ve smoked a couple, I’m smoking one as I write this rather early on a Sunday morning, and it’s a delightful cigar. It has some sweet chocolate notes, and works very well with my black coffee (a store brand k-cup, I know, I’m a heathen). It’s silky smooth with no spice, although it will build a little spice, but what cigar doesn’t, really? Kevin is also becoming the go-to guy fro 3D printing, and made the boxes for these, available as an add on, in 5 and ten count versions. I was talking to Coleman of Sinistro cigars yesterday about this since Keven made the boxes for their upcoming No Etiendo line. This is a really nice cigar!

Yesterday was the Smoke-onos cigar festival at Best Cigar Prices/Pub in Drums, PA, which is near Wilkes Barre, PA. It’s about an hour and a half drive from my location. The name is a bit of a misnomer, as it’s technically just outside of the Poconos region, but it’s still quite a picturesque spot. This fest fills the void left by the Cigarfests that CI had, which I never attended , 3000 people each day for two days is more than I care to handle. I want to say there were 1500 at this event, and it’s laid out in such a way that it never felt crowded. I took another Craig, the Breadman, Craig Gilpin, who you may recall helped me out on these pages last year when I was otherwise occupied. I made various “two Craigs are better than one” jokes throughout the day. As I have attended events like this solo many times, it was excellent to have a friend along. I honestly hope that they don’t let these get any bigger, as it’s just better for attendees and vendors alike to keep it relatively intimate. I like to go and visit with my friends in the industry, stay on the radar, and catch up.

I had the good fortune to hang out with Terence Reilly while he ate a cheesesteak, and catch up with a ton of other folks. I think it’s kinda funny that folks like Rocky Patel can walk around, but Jonathan Drew (Sann, now) has a line of people waiting for a word and a picture. I did see JD smoking a cigar in person, and managed a wave. Saka was jovial, Jack Torano was grumpy, and I missed some notable folks who I’m sure would rather have been there than home recuperating from illness. I highly recommend this event next year if you can make it. My only complaint, as with every event, it seems, is that the music was too loud, I hate yelling at people. The band they had, Amish Outlaws, was really quite good, and a bunch of guys dressed like the Amish playing dance music is kinda funny. The weather was perfect and it was a great day of cigars and camaraderie. Best Cigar Prices treated us very well, and I thank them very much!

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

CigarCraig

😃+

4 Comments

Filed under Events, Review

Tagged as 10th Anniversary, Best Cigar Prices, Best Cigar Pub, cigar, CigarProp, cigars, Smoke-onos

May 10, 2026 · 9:42 am

Casa 1910, SP1014 and Alec Bradley Thirtieth Cigars

I somehow chose three cigars with numbers in the names this week. Purely unintentional, but maybe I should buy a lottery ticket? Lets see, 19, two 10s, a 14 and a 30….how can we make that work? It would be a stretch…nevermind, I’ll save my money. I started out with the Casa 1910 Chuchillo Parado in a 5″ x 50 Robusto. This came from Freshbox Cigars, by the way, I’ll be announcing two winners at the end of this post who will get a Freshbox starter kit (and there’s some space in the humidors, extra cigars may fall in while I’m packing it! Anyway, I smoked a Casa 1910 Chuchillo Parado, which is a 5″ x 50 robusto and seems to be only available in this size. I was sure I selected the Toro, which is the Tierra Blanco, but either I goofed or they made a substitution. It seems I smoked one of the Chucillo Parado after the 2021 PCA show sometime, because it shows up in a blog post from January of ’22. I apologize, I try not to repeat cigars. I will make an exception because it was a worthy cigar, and it promotes the folks at Freshbox, who we have to thank for sponsoring this giveaway. I am plagiarizing myself a little in the next couple sentences. It’s a Mexican puro, with San Andrés Negro tobaccos wrapped in a Mexican Sumatra wrapper. It was a very nice looking cigar, not at all like the Mexican puros I started out smoking in the 90’s. Nor did it taste like those cigars, which were almost a dirty flavor. This had a unique spice component, which stuck to the palate, almost, like licorice, but not licorice, if that makes sense. This cigar smoked really well, and was quite satisfying. Maybe I remembered from a few years ago (not likely), but I nailed that the wrapper was a Sumatra variant, it has that odd sweetness. It was good, I stand by my previous comment that I’d buy tese again because I did (accidentally).

Next up was another cigar generously gifted to me by Phil at CigarsComedyMusic.com, an SP1014 Red from Sanj Patel and Chico Rivas. This is supposed to be a Dominican Corojo Puro, which is certainly interesting. It’s also supposed to priced at 1992 pricing, which I don’t quite get because a $9 cigar in 1992 was a very expensive smoke. Opus weren’t $9 because they didn’t exist, but when they came out a few years later they were not far off. Unfortunately, $9 is reasonable now. This is another interesting cigar that I would try again given the chance. It starts with a sensation like warm, spicy bread, then the spice builds. It’s an engaging smoke, different enough to be interesting and enjoyable. One of these days I’ll venture to Sanj’s shop in new Jersey.

Finally I decided to give the new Alec Bradley Thirtieth a try yesterday afternoon. This celebrates Alec Bradley Cigars Thirtieth anniversary, “Thirtieth” would be kind of a silly name otherwise. Since Scandinavian Tobacco purchased Alec Bradley, their release have been hit or miss, I have to say that none of their three iteration of the Chunk have been to my liking, which may be why you haven’t seen them appear here. I keep trying, and when one hits me right, I’ll let you know. Others have been OK, but this Thirtieth is really good. It should be good to celebrate a milestone, considering Alan Ruben started the company selling cigars to golf courses and ended up selling it fro $73m twenty five years later. This cigar is made at Raices Cubanas, where a lot of AB cigars were made from the beginning. It’s a blend of Nicaraguan and Honduran tobaccos, and it somehow has a delightful citrus tang, refreshing almost. It’s medium and eminently smokeable. I want another one right now! Maybe later. This is probably the best Alec Bradley cigar since the aquisition, and it should be. Nice work.

It’s time to select a couple lucky people from the comments for me to ship some humidors and cigars to! I have consulted Google’s random number generator ( I think I’m going to look into a wheel next time, that looks fun), and was given the numbers 16 and 5, which correlated with DCT and Mike McCain! Please send me your contact information so I can ship these out to you. Thank you to Freshbox Cigars for providing these goodies! That’s all for today, until the next time,

CigarCraig

😃+

4 Comments

Filed under Contest, Review

Tagged as Alec Bradley, Casa 1910, Chuchillo Parado, cigar, cigars, Sanj Patel, SP1014, Thirtieth

May 3, 2026 · 9:57 am

Gold Star, Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust and El Titan de Bronze Cigars

First off, go back to my last post and comment to enter the giveaway! These Freshbox humidor starter kits are nice! There’s the humidor, cutter, lighter and 12 cigars from major brands. It’s possible that some additional goodies might fall into the box when packing them for shipping! These take coolerdors to the next level!

That’s all for today…just kidding. I smoked a few cigars this week that I hadn’t smoked before, the first of which is the Gold Star from United Cigars. Oliver at United was kind enough to send me a couple of these a few weeks back, and I was excited to try them. I thought originally these were made to commemorate Gold Star families, families who’ve lost children in the line of duty. Looking at the website, there’s a different story, one of a gold star painted on a tobacco barn. I kinda like the first story better, but maybe there’s excess baggage that goes along with it. Anyway, this toro, 6″ x 54, has a Habano 2000 wrapper, grown in Ecuador. Thirty years ago when the Hanaco 2000 wrapper was developed as a disease resistant strain, one of the byproducts was that it was also flame resistant. You could make kids pajamas out of those wrappers! It’s improved. The binder is an Indonesian Sumatra, and the fillers are Dominican Ligero, Criollo ’98 and Corojo ’98 and Connecticut Broadleaf. The website also mentions some flavor components I don’t know anything about: “Bohea tea, kalamata olive”. I have no reference for these, nore have I ever heard the words (Bohea and kalamata, tea and olive I’m familiar with). Maybe those flavors are there, who knows. I know that I got a bready sweetness, maybe some leather, and the spice built as I smoked. Overall, I liked the cigar, I’d buy these, but I don’t know of any United retailers locally.

Next up is the Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust 10th Jubilee. One of my local shops, CigarCigars in Frazer, PA, has Dunbarton cigars now. I’m happy that the new ownership has brought in Dunbarton, as well as some other brands I like. This cigar was outside of my price comfort zone, but I bit the bullet anyway and justified it by spreading the cost out with some less expensive cigars. OK, I just wanted to try this one. These are dangerously close to $20 in PA. This is a 5 5/8″ x 48 corona gorda with an Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper, a Mexican binder and fillers from Condega, Estelí, Jalapa and Ometepe. These are made at the NACSA factory where Mi Querida and Red Meat Lovers Cigars are made. Saka says that he hadn’t used any of these specific tobaccos in his prior blends. While I enjoyed this cigar, I think if I’m going to splurge on a cigar, it’ll be on a Sin Compramiso which better suits my palate. This was a really interesting cigar. It started out with what I think of as umami, with a mild spice. I swear I got a cinnamon flavor around the halfway point. I don’t have a great palate, and sometimes subtleties elude me, but there were some neat flavors in this cigar. No regrets, I might pick up another one if I’m feeling reckless with money (which I rarely am).

The last cigar this week was the new El Titan de Bronze Nicaragua. I have smoked a couple of the new Cohiba M Reserva Plata, which is made at El Titan de Bronze in Miami with some mixed results. I thought it was weird to get Cohibas made in Miami and El Titan de Bronze cigars made in Nicaragua in the same shipment. I’ve smoked and enjoyed El Titan de Bronze cigars from the miami factory before, and had high hopes for the Nicaraguan. These come in in the $8-10 range, which would be impossible for a Miami made cigar, I suppose. Like the Dunbarton 10th Jubilee, these are made at NACSA. I smoked the 5″ x 54 robusto which has a Broadleaf wrapper, Mexican binder and Nicaraguan fillers. On paper I should really like this cigar. My notes are pretty limited on this, I just wrote down meaty…charcoal grill meaty. This was totally savory without a hint of sweetness. I will have to smoke a few more of these, I’m not quite sure how I feel about them. I might also have to dig out some of the El Titan cigars I picked up at the factory when I was there a few years ago (sheesh, 7 or 8 years? , time flies).

That’s all for today, don’t forget to go back and enter the contest! Until the next time (for real this time),

CigarCraig

😃+

3 Comments

Filed under Review

Tagged as 10th Jubilee, cigar, cigars, Dunbarton, Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust, el titan de bronze, Gold Star, NACSA, Nicaragua, Tenth Jubilee, United Cigars

April 30, 2026 · 6:48 pm

Freshbox Humidors and a Giveaway!

If I ever had any skills making videos, I lost them somewhere! Check out this video and then go check out freshboxcigars.com. A transcription is included below the video for those who would rather read.

Hey, Craig from CigarCraig.com with a rather exciting new product I’ve been presented with. Years ago, back when I first started smoking — 30 years ago — I kept my cigars in coolers, Tupperware, whatever I could find that would hold a seal. Then I came across these guys, Cigar Bros, who were making humidors out of styrofoam. Very cooler‑like, but they’ve stepped it up.

Now they’ve got the Fresh Box, which looks like a nice lacquered humidor, but when you open it up, it’s light, seals very well, and holds humidity nicely. This one is running a little high at 76. I don’t even have a Boveda in here because it comes with one.

They sell these for $99, and it comes with a lighter, a cutter, and 12 cigars of your choosing. They have a whole lot of different choices. This particular one has some My Father, Blackened, Aging Room, and some Flatheads — little three‑packs. The three‑packs each have a Boveda in them, so I lied earlier when I said there wasn’t one; there are actually four. The boxes also have slots for airflow.

So you can buy this with 12 cigars for $100, have a nice humidor, and be ready to go. You’re ready to smoke. It’s pretty cool. I’ve been very impressed. They have a whole lot of different colors — they have a black one, a red one — and they come in these nice bags. This one is right out of the box and has the Boveda in there. It includes some Montecristos, Quesadas, Romeos, and La Auroras. They’re pretty cool. I’m very impressed with them.

So check out freshboxcigars.com and cigarbros.com, and give them a look if you need a humidor, a second humidor, or even three humidors and don’t have a lot of space. They stack up really nicely. They’re pretty cool.

Giveaway!

I’m going to give away two of these FreshBox Starter Kits. The rules are the same as always: leave a comment on this post to enter, not on Facebook, X, Threads, Linkedin or anywhere else! Any comment will do, but something of substance is more fun. I’ll announce the winners in my Sunday, May 10 post. Of course, the winners will need to contact me with their address and some proof that you’re over 21. Good Luck!

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

CigarCraig