This may not be as wordy as usual, for some reason I cant seem to think of a lot to say about the three cigars I smoked for this week’s blog post. Let’s just jump right in to the first one. General Cigar Co. is very generous with 
samples, something I appreciate very much. I’ve had a good relationship with them since 2010, although there’s only a few people left there that I know anymore. they share a lot of Cohibas with me, many of which I wouldn’t buy because they are priced over my personal spending limit. You will rarely see me spending more than $15 on a cigar. Frugal to some, cheap to others, but I’ve come a long way from the days I was hard pressed to spend $8. The newest Cohiba is the Rubicon, made at the HATSA factory in Honduras and all three vitolas are under $10. This cigar has an Ecuador Habano wrapper, U.S. Broadleaf binder, and Dominican, Honduran and Nicaraguan fillers. Sounds like it should be good, right? It’s better than the Cohiba Blue, and not a bad cigar. It started with a citric acid bite, which calmed down pretty quickly, and turned out to be a pretty nice smoke. No real flavors jumped out at me, it was just a pretty good cigar. I feel like Cohiba should stick to the luxury space, and leave the budget offerings to the myriad of other lines in the portfolio. I love the Riviera, although I’m picking the $15 lancero over the $20 robusto just based on price, and several of the other cigars in the line are good. Take the Spectre out of the equation because it’s so expensive, but really very good. I’m not sure why the Rubicon was needed. Do they still make the Blue? They shouldn’t.
Friday was Halloween, and for the last 30 years I’ve been smoking a cigar while handing out candy (the first few years I smoked a cigar while taking my kids out). I always put the cigar in the ashtray when I see kids coming. Nick did a nice piece on this topic on a Cigar Pulpit episode last week. I did the cliché thing and smoked a Tatuaje Mummy Redux 5 this year. Back when Pete Johnson started tis series, $13 was a pricey cigar, now it’s practically reasonable. I wonder if the quality is going to go down in the future, or if rising prices are going to make him end this tradition? This cigar is 7½” x 47, so a little longer than a Churchill. I like the size, especially when I have two hours to kill! This cigar lasted closer to two and a half hours! The Mummy Redux has a Nicaraguan Criollo and Nicaraguan binder and fillers. I am typically not a Criollo fan, which explains why my first impression was something along the lines of “what am I tasting here?”. There was some very subtle sugar cane sweetness, and good, light tobacco flavors. I really quite enjoyed the cigar, and if I see more I might pick a couple up. It was a little confusing to me though, as it wasn’t really like any other Tatuaje cigar I’ve had, it was on the verge of mild. Full disclosure, I really haven’t smoked too many of the Monster Series, and I don’t smoke as many Tatuaje cigars as I’d like.
Like the Tatuaje, the JFR 20th Anniversary Super Toro is a cigar I picked up on one of my recent forays to the Wooden Indian. I had been wanting to try this one. I’m about 50/50 on cigars I like from Aganorsa, and the JFR line is usually one I like. I can’t believe these have been around for twenty years. I think I remember when they came out, pushing the Just For Retailers thing, which I tink means for the brick and mortar retailers, but really anyone selling cigars is a retailer, right? Am I not supposed to smoke this because I’m not a retailer? Am I being too picky? Asking too many questions? The JFR like is generally a budget friendly line, with a lot of larger ring cigars. The 20th Anniversary has a pigtail cap, a closed foot, and is box pressed, they stopped short of putting a figurado in the range. I picked the Super Toro because I like toros and a super one has to be pretty great. I also wasn’t prepared for a 70 ring cigar, of which they offer two in this line. It’s box pressed, might not be horrible. This has a San Andrés wrapper over Aganorsa grown Nicaraguan binder and filler tobaccos. Other than the burn meandering a little, it was quite enjoyable. It had some interting baking spices, while I was expecting more of an earthy, chocolaty profile. I put this down to go inside to watch the first period of the Flyers game, and finished up between periods. I liked it, might go back and try one of the obnoxiously large sizes for kicks.
I managed to be more verbose than I thought! That’s all I have to today, until the next time,
CigarCraig
Well now I’m curious… If you think back to the day when your limit was $8, and pick a handful of cigars from that era, then look at their prices today — with inflation, taxes, etc — are they $15 anyway?
(I’m wondering if your spending limit didn’t really go up, in terms of cigars, just raised with the Cost Of Living As A Cigar Smoker. 🙂 )
The $8 cigars of 25 years ago are probably the $15 cigars of today. For me, visiting factories in the DR and Nicaragua definitely affected how I value cigars, when you see the process, you wonder how all cigars are so inexpensive.