Category Archives: Review

by | May 12, 2019 · 2:03 pm

Micallef Grande Bold Mata Fina and Villiger La Meridiana Cigars

Happy Mother’s Day to all you mothers out there (take that any way you want!). There was some interesting news this week from Cornelius & Anthony regarding both restructuring their staff and not attending IPCPR. I happen to enjoy a good professional relationship with the company, and several of their cigars are among my favorite cigars. That being said, this news cau

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ses me concern for the future of the brand. I don’t want to speak out of turn, because it would be speculation on my part, but I’m glad I have a stockpile of favorites, and will continue to support the brand as Stephen Bailey notes that he has no intention of shutting it down.

 

I continued pretty much smoking what I w

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anted to smoke this week, but I did smoke a few new cigars to talk about today. First was the Micallef Grande Bold Mata Fina that I picked up at an event I attended a few weeks back at CigarCigars in Phoenixville, PA. I hadn’t smoked any cigars from Micallef before that event, and I’m not too much further along than that now, this is only about the third one I’ve smoked. This was the 5″ x 56 robusto, wrapped in a Brazilian Mata Fina wrapper over Nicaraguan binder and filler.  I found this to be a very unique and interesting tasting cigar. There was a savory meatyness as opposed to being a sweeter maduro. The first draw was almost like when you take a drink out of a class thinking it’s coke and it turns out to be tea, I was expecting sweet and got something different! IT certainly wasn’t unpleasant, once I got used to the idea that I was getting an entré and not desert!  The burn and draw were perfect, and the cigar provided me with a very satisfying experience. I bought a handful of cigars that night and I don’t remember the price but they all seemed to be reasonable. I still have a couple left to sample.

 

Villiger Cigars, like Cornelius & Anthony Cigars, is also skipping the IPCPR show this year, which is probably much bigger news. While Villiger is pretty small in the premium cigar world, they are huge in the mass market segment, especially outside of the US. They have struggled to increase their footprint in premiums, and have put out some really good cigars in the last few years. The latest is another partnership with Joya de Nicaragua, which makes their La Vencedora line and is called La Meridiana, wh

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ich has been available in Europe for 20 years. They say they believe that now is the right time to bring this cigar to the US, but I’m confused by this, because this seems to me to be quintessentially American in flavor profile. I’m actually surprised that this has been so well re

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ceived in Europe.  The samples I received were the 6″ x 54 box pressed Toro, which is not a size I believe is available in Europe. Still, checked all my boxes as far as favorite flavors. It’s all Nicaraguan, obviously something that Joya de Nicaragua excels with, so it’s loaded with cocoa and coffee notes, which we all know I enjoy. It had a sweetness I enjoyed, THIS was a desert cigar, and I liked it a lot. Even though these had only had a few days in the humidor since arriving, the cigar burned perfectly. I was very happy with the experience.

 

Well, that’s enough from me for today, until the next time,

 

CigarCraig

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by | May 5, 2019 · 10:51 am

Some Espinosa Cigars and the New Diesel Whiskey Row Sherry Cask

Wednesday evening I stopped in to Old Havana Cigars south of West Chester, PA and caught up with Jack Toraño of Espinosa Cigars and Mark Weisenburger, the area broker for the brand. I had the day off and hoped to catch them earlier in the day, but I got caught up cutting the grass and finishing up putting the roof on the new chicken enclosure I’d been building, so I didn’t get out as early as I would have liked. It worked out, I got to hang out with Jack and smoke the new Laranga Reserva Escuro toro. The original Laranga Reserva was so-named because of the orange hue to the wrapper and Laranga is Portuguese for Orange. The Escuro has a Brazilian Mata Fina wrapper that is very dark, an

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d one must assume that Escuro is Portuguese for Oscuro (or really dark). I bought a couple of these and lit one up and it was much to my liking. It had deep, rich flavors of espresso, exactly what I like in a cigar. After the busy day I had, which was personally rewarding, having finally solved a problem in construction of my chicken run which had bothered me for some time, as inconsequential as that sounds, it was an extremely satisfying cigar. Quite lovely, and certainly enhanced by the company! I learned many things from Jack, lots of secrets and things I didn’t know! ;-)  I also picked up an Espinosa Habano No.8, which is a Gordo, that I smoked the following evening on a walk, which I enjoyed, it’s an excellent cigar, especially for the price. I have been enjoying a lot of La Zona cigars, but not enough Espinosa cigars. I have to start picking more up as I see them. Now I know a few places that carry them!

 

Here’s a little rant unrelated to cigars, but related to blogging in general. I receive a few e-mails a week from folks who are “regular readers” and would like to submit a guest post.  Usually they are in an area my readers may be interested in, like finance, fashion, sometimes it’s vape or hookah (at least that’s close).  This paragraph is really just for those “regular readers”. Don’t lie about being a regular reader. If you were a regular reader you’d know that I don’t have a lot of guest posts or sponsored posts, my content is original except in a few very isolated instances. Regular readers also will know that there are very few posts about vape, hookah, finance or fashion (especially fashion). If you are an aspiring writer and are shopping around articles for whatever reason, be honest, don’t think I’m a fool and buy in to your BS about being a big fan of my site and wanting to be a part of it. It’s irritating, it makes you look like an idiot and I delete your email. When I get your second email saying “I k

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now you’re busy, just wanted to make sure you saw my first e-mail”, I sent the reply telling you I don’t have any use for you. Since all you guest post writers are “regular readers”, this should save you all a lot of time, to my real regular readers, sorry to have wasted yours!

 

Last week I posted a few times about Diesel cigars and mentioned that I was looking forward to the new Whiskey Row Sherry Cask. Low and behold, what should appear in my mailbox but some samples of said cigar. To recap, Diesel Whiskey Row: not a fan. Diesel Hair of the Dog: big fan.  Anything aged in booze barrels with any expectation of flavors from the cask: no frame of reference. Just reading the description of the Whiskey Row Sherry Cask had me intrigued. I could care less about the liquor angle, this is well established, the fact that it’s made by A.J. Fernandez just tells me that the quality is going to me spot on. It’s wrapped in Connecticut Broadleaf, it has a Brazilian Arapiraca binder and Nicaraguan fillers. The press release say that the tobaccos are cultivated on three continents, which I’m trying to figure out. I only count North and South America. I need a ruling on this one. Here’s a perfect example of tasting with one’s eyes. Looking at the cigar’s presentation: the dark brown wrapper with the band with a purple accent, reminds me of semi-sweet chocolate with raspberry. We had cooked a turkey and made all the trimmings as if it were Thanksgiving and had that for lunch, so this was desert, and dammit if it didn’t remind me of semisweet chocolate with raspberry cake, and boy was it delicious! This was the polar opposite of the Whiskey Row for me, and I know people who think that cigar is a great cigar, and, even though they work for another cigar company, still smoke them (without bands, even at their own events! not naming any names…). If aging the Arapiraca binder in the sherry cask is the trick, or it’s the combination of the Broadleaf and Arapiraca, or (probably) the overall blend of the cigar, for my palate, this was a real treat and I hope that it wasn’t just the first one that wow’d me. I’ll be picking up Toro and Gigante sizes to sample when these hit the stores next month. This is the best tasting cigar from General since the Macanudo Inspirado Red to my palate.

 

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

 

CigarCraig

 

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by | April 28, 2019 · 8:44 am

Diesel Hair of the Dog and Unholy Cocktail Cigars

Another working weekend, so another short post.  Over the last couple of days I smoked the most recent Diesel cigar on the market and the first Diesel cigar that came out nearly 10 years ago.  I figured it would be fun to see how the two compared.  The Diesel Hair of the Dog is a 6” x 52 toro made of all Nicaraguan Habano fillers with an Ecuador Habano wrapper and Ecuador Sumatra Binder. Like all Diesel cigars, this is made by A.J. Fernandez in Nicaragua.  This one was made to compliment the Diesel Whiskey Row, which, as I have mentioned before, was not a cigar that suited my palate.  The Hair of the dog, however, I found to be quite enjoyable.  There was a sweetness that I found quite enjoyable, with a cedary wood flavor. while it wasn’t the cho

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colatey sweet cigar I usually am drawn to , it was an enjoyable change. The burn and draw were excellent. It was a medium-bodied smoke and nice and smooth. Of course, the size was just right for me.

 

Last night I pulled a Diesel Unholy Cocktail out of a box which my son bought in 2011 which has been in my humidor ever since.  He knows it’s there, but I have to exact a storage fee every once in a while!  As a side note, he recently bought a Xikar XO cutter in the Redwood which is a beautiful tool. I tried it out a couple of weeks ago and failed to mention it. He assisted me at the 2016 IPCPR show where we saw the XO for the first time and we were both lusting after it, and he managed to find a deal on one. I cut a few cigars with it and it cuts cigars like a hot knife through butter. The action is smooth and it’s comfortable in the hand. It’s light weight, but a little bulky in the pocket, but other than that, it’s a superior cutter. Anyway, the Diesel Unholy Cocktail is a 5” x 56 Belicoso with Nicaraguan fillers wrapped in Pennsylvania Broadleaf. It’s a no-nonsense powerhouse.  It’s got some strength, even after several years on the humid

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or, and reasonably one-dimensional, but I like the one dimension it has.  The PA Broadleaf has the spicy cocoa that I love.  It’s a stark contrast to the Hair of the Dog, which has some subtlety

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and complexity.

 

Two cigars from the same line with totally different flavor profiles. As I posted earlier this week, the Whisky Row Sherry Cask that’s coming out sound

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s intriguing, I’m looking forward to it’s release.  That’s

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all for today, until the next time,

 

CigarCraig

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by | April 24, 2019 · 9:43 am

Camacho American Barrel Aged and Corojo Maduro Cigars

I went into the Camacho stash fir the first couple of cigars this week, and the first one that caught my eye was an American Barrel Aged Perfecto Gorda. This was in a Sampler from the IPCPR a few years ago, so I’m not entirely sure it’s a regular production size, hang on, let me go look. OK, It’s available, and it’s a terrific size. It’s a hair under 6” x 52, and lit easily and opened up to a perfect burn and draw. This is an all US Broadleaf blend, PA Broadleaf wrapper with broadleaf fillers, aged in bourbon barrels and made in Davidoff’s Dominican factory.  I found myself mesmerized by the sweet, medium-bodied flavor of this cigar. I’ve smoked this blend before, but I don’t recall enjoying it as much as I did in this shape. Perhaps it was the several years of additional age? As my regular readers know, if there’s any bourbo

n flavor from the barrel aging, it’s lost on me. If I ever even had bourbon it’s been over 30 years, and it wasn’t good, I’ll tell you that.

 

Last night was another late start, and I was tempted to go

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with the Nicaraguan Barrel Aged, but a Toro was more cigar than I wanted. I happened across a lonely leftover from a Camacho event I attended back in maybe 2011. It was a Camacho Corojo Maduro in the Monarca (robusto) size. Camacho Monarca is actually one of the first documented cigar reviews I did back in 1997 in Steve Saka’s Monthly Officious Taste Test, which can be found through some searching through CigarNexus.com via archive.org. It wasn’t even close to this cigar, except in name, but interesting to me at least.  The Corojo Maduro came out of an amber cellophane sleeve, and was not the powerhouse it once was. It was still quite rich in flavor, with some punch, but had mellowed. Oddly, I always regretted not just sticking with the natural Corojo as opposed to the Maduro in this line, as I think the darker wrapper somehow overshadowed the great flavor of the original Corojo line. I’ll likely never see another one of these old Corojo Maduros anyway, and it was an enjoyable smoke. Maybe the Nicaraguan Barrel Aged will be on the mine today.

 

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

 

CigarCraig

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by | April 21, 2019 · 8:04 am

Sobremesa Brulee and an Elegante En Cedro ReRun

Busy day ahead, so I’m going to give a quick rundown on a new and exciting cigar I smoked this week and re-run a piece I wrote for Prime Living Magazine back in 2016 which doesn’t appear to be on their website any longer. I haven’t been asked to write a Cigar Notes column for them for quite a while, and I think that’s because they haven’t published an issue in quite a while! It’s a shame, that was a fun gig, and I’m proud to have contributed articles to 21 issues of that magazine. How many other bloggers can say that? Anyway, A couple of weeks back when I  hung out with Steve Saka at Famous Smoke Shop I got a sample of his new creation, the Sobremesa Brulee. This is his entry into the Connecticut shade market. Steve goes into great detail in the CigarCraig Podcast episode, so please give that a listen, but his intention was to make a Connecticut shade cigar that was like the cigars he remembered from the 80s and 90s. I smoked the Brulee this week and I was thoroughly impressed (shocker!). It just might have been my father’s Connecticut! It has an Ecuador Connecticut wrapper, so in that way it differs from the Connecticut shade cigars of 30 years ago, but it was smooth with a nutty/grassy flavor, but still had the richness one expects a cigar with the Sobremesa name to have. This is going to be a hit, I nubbed it, despite Steve’s concerns about the nubability, and, yes, it did start to turn a little beyond the band as he said, but it was a flavorful and satisfying cigar that I will add to my selection when it becomes available.

 

This is the  text of my submis

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sion for the Nov/Dec 2016 Issue of Prime Living Magazine’s Cigar Notes feature:

 

“Puros Sin Compromiso, cigars without compromise, is the philosophy be

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hind Steve Saka’s family company, New Hampshire based Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust” 

 

I first met Steve Saka, the master blender and catador de puros (cigar taster) of Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust, in 1997 in front of Cleopatra’s Barge in Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Steve had yet to work in the cigar industry at that point, but was the predecessor of we now know as a cigar blogger by co-founding an online magazine and in

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formation source, CigarNexus, along with a prolific amount of postings on a Usenet cigar group. He later contributed articles to Cigar Magazine, took an executive position with retailer JR Cigars, and eventually became the president of Drew Estate Cigar company, where he was responsible for the introduction of the Liga Privada line of cigars. After his retirement from Drew Estate in 2013, he launched Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust, and released Sobremesa in 2015 to critical acclaim. If you ever have the chance to sit and talk tobacco with Steve, set aside several hours, he is a wealth of information on all things tobacco. Sobremesa is an idiom used among the Latin culture to describe the leisurely time spent tableside after you have finished dining, but before you rise.

The Sobremesa line is manufactured at the Joya de Nicaragua factory in Esteli, Nicaragua, in eleven sizes, the newest of which is the Sobremesa Elegan

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te en Cedro, a cedar wrapped Churchill sized cigar. The original blend was tweaked to make for a little stronger cigar, but it retains the elegance and sophistication found in the original shapes. The cedar sleeve lends a little more woody flavor, with some pepper spices and a thick, creamy smoke. Allow a good two hours to fully savor this outstanding cigar, and reflect upon the time and expertise required to create a cigar of this calibre. The Sobremesa Elegante en Cedro is an exceptional cigar which is easily on a par with the best cigars in the world.

 

Sobremesa Elegante en Cedros
7.00 x 50 Parejo
Wrapper: Ecuador Habano
Binder: Mexico
Filler: Nicaragua and USA

 

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

 

CigarCraig

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