Happy New Year, Winner Announcement and a Cigar or Two

It seems that 2022 is in the books, and it’s 2023 now.  Still no flying cars, but we do carry the entirety of human knowledge in our pockets, at the expense of education and common sense! I am blessed with a beautiful family and enough cigars to get me through for a while, so I’m not complaining. I’ve had worse years than 2022.  I managed to fly 4 times, a record for me. Twice to trade shows in Las Vegas, once to Tampa and a personal vacation to Puerto Rico.  We also went to a Barnsmoker, a Red Meatlovers Club dinner on a friggin battleship, and a few shop events, although not as many of the latter as I’d like.  It was a good year. Hopefully ’23 is equally good!  I know I’ve slowed down a little on original content, I’m just not smoking the volume of new cigars that I used to. I’m finding as I get older I tend to want to smoke what I like!  Weird, huh?  I have no plans to give up though, after 13 years I’m invested.  I do have a prize to give away, so let’s get on to that!

I let this giveaway go on a week and a half, longer than usual, but it’s been a busy week or two!  You may recall the prize was a hefty pile of stuff from various venders, and undisclosed cigars from my humidor.  I’ll have fun packing up a bunch of my favorites to share with the winner.  I referred to Google’s random number generator and the number it spit our was 2, which corresponds to the second comment at 9:28pm on 12/21, which was by Tim McCabe.  Tim, please email me your info!  Tim is a long time reader, and I have to appreciate the patience and fortitude of the many folks who’ve been reading my nonsense over the years!  Thanks to everyone, I may be able to scrounge up some more goodies in the near future. 

Naturally, I smoked some good cigars over the last few days. Most notable was another of the Alec Bradley Fine and Rare series, this one dated 2017. The one I smoked last week I’m told was from the tenth anniversary set, and I assume this one is from the same.  My Secret Santa, Mitch, was very generous and shared these with me.  Aside, he managed to send a bunch of cigars I’d never smoked before!  No small feat.  Another aside, and Kevin Shahan witnessed this, while in Tampa I met a gentleman, we’ll call him Aaron, who was shocked when he attempted to gift me a cigar he was sure I’d not had before, a pre-release Nica Rustica with actual Rustica leaf in the blend, and I had smoked that back in 2013 in Nicaragua.  I digress.  The ALec Bradley Fine and Rare 2017 (BR12-13) is a 6″ x 52 torpedo, or maybe 109, shaped cigar.  It has mostly Honduran components, with some Nicaraguan in the filler.  It started off with a little bit of a bite, some acidity, perhaps, but that quickly became what I call spicey. It was, overall, a very good cigar, with some nice, medium flavors, and I think there was a cinnamon or baking spice flavor that came and went.  Thank you, Mitch, for the opportunity to try these! 

Yesterday we met friends at what might be the only White Castle in PA for lunch, and I would have stopped in to New Tobacco Village, in Whitehall, PA, but, you know…White Castle…When I got home after an hour drive and got things squared away, I sat down to watch hockey with what might be my favorite cigar of 2022, the Diamond Crown Black Diamond. It gives the Muestra de Saka The Bewitched a run, if I had smoked more of those it would have been my number one for the year.  As it stands, I’m going with the Black Diamond, so good!  I ended 2022 with a Partagas Serie D No. 6 which I had picked up at the Rome Duty Free several years ago, just a little guy, but tasty. So let’s just say that the New Diamond Crown Black Diamond Emerald is my favorite cigar of 2022! Thanks to J.C.Newman for making this year memorable for me! 

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

CigarCraig