CigarCraig's Blog

I’m back after a few days of smoking some favorites out of the humidors. I found a few old Joya de Nicaragua Antaño Dark Corojo El Martillos with the old bands, the first one I lit up just wasn’t drawing right, which irritated me. Usually I work my way through, but I wasn’t willing to aggravate myself on that particular day, so I set down the cigar after fighting with it for a third of the cigar, ran an errand, and came home and lit another one, and enjoyed the crap out of it. This has been a cigar I’ve been a fan of for a decade. I can remember smoking one of these when I first toured the Joy de Nicaragua factory in 2011, and with the heat and humidity there that day, I had to put it down or become overwhelmed.  It’s a powerful smoke. I love it. I still have a few of these with the old band, and a few with the new. I had a Numero Uno last week which was exceptional also. Love the Joya cigars (I can do without the Red and Black oddly enough). A four year old La Gloria Cubana Serie RF, a Famous Smoke Shop Exclusive, was also smokes this week, and was also very good. It was strange when I looked back through “memories” and saw I smoked the same cigar four years prior almost to the day. It’s funny how often that happens! 

My wife has been sewing masks lately and sent some to a hospital, and made me a couple out of the cigar fabric that I have. She made a couple extras, and is having a raffle on Facebook to raise money for NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. The raffle “tickets” are $1 each, and I’ll sweeten the deal by adding a few cigars to the winner. Click here (or on the picture) to make a donation and be entered. All the details are on the post. It’s only running until Saturday, so don’t delay. 

Of course, I try to introduce something new in my Sunday posts, r at least new to me. This time it’s from Providencia Cigars. Ray at Providencia sent me some of their new cigars, so look forward to more featured in the coming  days. One smells particularly boozy, not sure about that one…but anyway, this one caught my eye right off, and I had to smoke it. The cigar is called the Providencia Shenanigans, and it’s a barber pole style cigar. First off, it was a toro, 6″ x 50 or 52, I failed to measure it. Secondly, it’s a barber pole comprised of Candela and San Andrés Maduro, a striking contrast. The binder is Indonesian, and the fillers are Honduran with Nicaraguan Ligero. Naturally, this cigar seems to target a March 17 smoking date. I can’t help but draw comparisons to other cigars, not gonna lie. Since there’s no way I was going to wait almost a year to smoke it, I fired it up last night. Often barber pole cigars can have odd burns, not this one, it was perfect. Draw was perfect, combustion was perfect, all of the tobaccos burned at the same rate with a flat ember, no coning, no tunneling, absolute perfection. This is how every cigar should perform in a perfect world. The flavors were equally pleasing and entertaining. The interplay between the earthiness and espresso of the San Andrés and the refreshing chlorophyll of the candela was unique, and the spice from the ligero gave it some oomph. Overall, I very much enjoyed this cigar, it was really very good and entertained my for a good hour and a half. It was well worth missing the beginning of “The Ten Commandments”, which is only slightly longer than one of Coop’s podcasts! :-)_~.

That’s all for today. Don’t forget to keep up the social distancing, call your local tobacconist if you need cigars and try to keep them in business! Until the next time, 

CigarCraig