A Para Japon, a Rodrigo Toro and LGC Serie N Cigar Contest Winner Announced!

Today is Mother’s Day, so take care of the mothers in your life today instead of reading this nonsense you goons! I’ll be selecting something nice to smoke in honor of my mother, my children’s mother, my daughter the new mother, and moms everywhere.  So do something nice for all the mothers in your life!

This week I smoked one of the Para Japón cigars from La Aurora which I won in a contest on CasasFumando.com.  This is one of the blogs in my regular rotation that I recommend, Tony and Daniel produce some very nice reviews on a regular basis.  Although I don’t drink, they always seem to pair their cigars with interesting looking beers and beverages. If you don’t visit regularly check them out.  Thanks to them as well as the folks at Miami Cigar and Company and La Aurora Cig

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ars for the opportunity to smoke this cigar which I may not have otherwise had the chance to smoke.  The proceeds of the sale of these cigars will go directly to relief efforts in Japan after the devastating earthquake and tsunami that str

uck that nation on M

arch 11.  I remember seeing the devastation on TV while we were in Nicaragua. The cigar is a 5″ x 50 Robusto that has been aging at La Aurora for several years, they had made these and had them aging.  When a group of bloggers were visiting the La Aurora factory and suggested this project, they decided to use these cigars and came up with bands and packaging in a very short time.  Kudos to all involved in getting a cigar to market so quickly for a noble cause.  On to the cigar, it has a fairly dry Nicaraguan wrapper and woody flavor.  The burn was excellent and I enjoyed it to a finger burning nub.  A very nice cigar.

I decided to continue on a Dominican theme and selected a Rodrigo Toro for my evening walk last night.  Fellow Pennsylvanian George Rodriguez generously sent me a sampler of these and I had previously smoked the Robusto and Lancero, the latter being my favorite of the two.  The toro is 6″ x 50 and the example I smoked was badly cracked at the foot. The crack wasn’t too detrimental but it did effect the burn a bit as the wrapper separated fr

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om the binder a little and it required a few touch ups. The wrapper was what I would call “rustic”, not the prettiest cigar. The Lancero remains my favorite so far, with the torpedo remaining.  The flavors were nice enough and it wasn’t bad, it just didn’t work as well for me as the Lancero did.  Still a nice cigar, I’ll be interested in seeing where these fall retail price-wise.

I promised to announce a winner of another five-pack of yummy La Gloria Cubana Serie N JSBs and I am a man of my word.  I’d like to thank Team La Gloria, as well as Victoria from General Cigar Co. for providing a box of these fine cigars to give away.  After this there will be one more fiver for next month’s contest, after which I’ll have to start scrounging for some more contest prizes.  I still have a few items in the contest box though, so never fear!  Anyway, the winner of a five-pack of Serie N cigars is Allen, selected randomly using the random number generator at Random.org.  Congrats Allen, please e-mail me your address so that I can send these out to you!

That’s it for now, Happy Mother’s Day all,until the next time,

CigarCraig

 

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La Aurora Puro Vintage 2003 and Emilio AF1 BMF

Today I am bringing you a contrast of sorts. Two very different cigars, both excellent. The first was a gift from Chris Lenzo, the Miami Cigar & Company sales rep whom I met on Saturday when I was celebrating the birth of my grand-daughter with Guillermo Leon at the Wooden Indian in Havertown, PA. The second was a sample provided by Gary Griffith of Delaware Cigars for review. Both were enormous in size and pleasure!

The La Aurora Puro Vintage 2003 is a very special cigar. My understanding is that the

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re were only 12,000 of these produced in 2008 from 5 year old tobacco that was entirely from the 2003 crop. It’s a big beautiful figurado shaped cigar, measuring a whopping 7.2″ x 52, but it felt bigger! The wrapper was stunning and it was well made, a tribute to the few rollers that can make this shape cigar. It held the ash for my entire 1 mile walk, it looked like I was just getting started when I got back to my front porch, where I spent the next hour and a half luxuriating in the delicate nuances of this cigar. What a special treat that I dedicated to my daughter the new mom. It is definitely a rare and expensive cigar that I won’t likely have the chance to smoke again anytime soon! A special treat, thank you Chris!

Last night, after Alan Price had inquired on Sunday, I decided to sit down with an Emilio AF1 BMF for the evening. This is another enormous cigar, 6″ x 58, with a dry, dark Mexican maduro wrapper (one of my favorites!). I was thinking about the front-mark BMF, trying to work out it’s significance. I ruled out “By My Father” since it’s a published fact that this is made by A.J. Fernandez in Esteli, not Pepin Garc

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ia. I haven’t looked up the price on these, so “Blow My Fortune” is a possibility. I settled on “Big Mother F***er” since that seemed to fit the best, because it is a gigantic cigar. This cigar is bold out of the gate. It’s very much in line with my cigar preference, it’s full bodied, it’s full flavored, and has the dark roast, dark cocoa flavors I look for in a maduro cigar. This is another cigar that occupied nearly 2 hours of my time. It burned dead even and had a perfect draw, neither too firm nor too loose. I can’t wait to smoke the other sample, which is a standard 6″ x 50, toro I believe. Gary has something with the Emilio and the Grimalkin, (which maybe could be called a BMF too?) which, while very different cigars are both

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excellent. I may have to grab a few the next time I visit the Wooden Indian as they are listed as a retailer.

Just prior to writing this post I received an e-mail from Tommy Berry, Jr.,  who has been busy purchasing a house and passing his ham radio license test.  He admits to slacking off and not sending “Take a Cigar for a Walk” updates.  I hope when things settle down he ca

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n get back to walking and sending in some reviews!

Don’t forget to leave a comment on my last post for a chance to win a five pack of La Gloria Cubana Serie N cigars, and also see the bottom of this entry for information on a discount code generously provided by StogieBoys.com!

Until the next time,

Cigar Craig

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An Exceptionally Good Saturday: A Celebration Cigar with Guillermo Leon and a contest!

Yesterday was a fantastic day.  It kind of began Friday evening with a call from our daughter that her water had broke (it’s VERY important to know at this point that she was pregnant at the time, but not due for a couple weeks).  We received a text message at 3:30 yesterday morning that she has delivered a 6 pound, 13 oz baby girl, much to our delight.  Naturally, there’s no getting back to sleep after receiving such news!  We were at the birth center before 7 to meet our first grandchild.  We spent a couple hours admiring the child and left them alone to get their new parent training.  They were in a “birth center” that was very small, not really conducive to visitors, and very busy.  Under normal circumstances they would be sent home twelve hours after delivery!  Crazy stuff.  So we went about our business running usual Saturday errands. “Pop” and “Tynnie” are very proud grandparents!

After lunch I took a ride down to The Wooden Indian in Havertown, PA (coincidentally wher

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e my daughter and son-in-law live).  They were having a La Aurora event with a longest ash contest (in which I didn’t participate), hosted by Guillermo Leon, as well as Chris Lenzo of Miami Cigar & Co.  Another point relevant to this story: Our daughter’s name is Aurora, and the first box of premium cigars I purchased were LA Aurora Bristol Especiales back in 1996.  So with the intention of smoking a celebratory cigar, and meeting Señor Leon, I picked up a La Aurora 107 Lancero and a Guillermo Leon Signature Corona Gorda and got to work celebrating.  I expected a large crowd.  Previous events I’ve attended at the store have been packed. I wish the event had drawn a bigger crowd, but it was much more comfortable and I was fortunate to have the opportunity to hang out with Guillermo and really get to chat with him.  Such a gentleman, very easy to talk to and really embraces the “new media”.  Of course, I had to smoke the Signature Corona Gorda that he handed me, and it was a dynamite cigar.  Very smooth and flavorful. He told me that it has two binders, one of which is Cameroon which definitely comes through midway through the cigar.  Very complex and interesting, and ideal cigar to celebrate the day.  Havertown is about 45 minutes from Downingtown, and the ride home was wonderful.

When I got home I watched the last period of game one of the NHL Eastern  Conference Semifinals in which the Flyers lost badly.  Besides that it was a great day.  My wife and I then went shopping for baby girl stuff and went back to the hospital to visit baby and parents, who had been checked in as a precaution and are going home today.

I’m often asked what this blog is about, and I tell them it’s about what I’m doing when I smoke a cigar, and why I like the cigar I’m smoking.  I am not a good technical reviewer, there are plenty of them, (CasasFumando.com and Stogiereview.com come to mind immediately.  BTW, many thanks to Tony at CasasFumando, I recently won a pair of Para Japón cigars by La Aurora from him!) see the sites in the  left hand sidebar for some of my favorites,  so I don’t feel the need to compete.  I simply relate the things I’m doing, some my be exciting, some may be mundane, but it’s my way of enjoying cigars!

In my estimation, the recent turn of events calls for a contest!  I have another 5 pack of La Gloria Cubana Serie N J

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SB cigars, generously provided by the fine folks at General Cigar Leave a comment with your guess of my new grand daughter’s name to enter. Just leave a comment.  In the moments after publishing this article, my daughter and her husband settled on the name Willow, so guessing it would be very easy.  I’ll select a winner randomly.  Contest rules can be found on the Winner and Rules page.  Keep in mind that I don’t know the baby’s name at the time of writing!  She was a couple weeks early and the kids hadn’t decided yet!!  Honestly I’ll accept any comment as an entry, just trying to make it a little interesting, guessing baby names isn’t exactly a guy thing, is it? I’ll pick a winner next weekend sometime (it’s Mother’s Day, don’t forget!)

Anyway, I’m trying to decide between the enormous La Aurora Puro Vintage 2003 or the 107 Lancero for today’s walk, or there’s a really old Perferido someplace, or even a Bristol Especiales that’s probably 10 years old….

Until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Some Cigars I Smoked at Cigar Safari, a Punch and a Grimalkin

I realized recently that while I was recounting my experiences in Nicaragua on Cigar Safari, I didn’t really talk too much about the cigars I smoked.  One of the reasons was that I was tying in a contest to guess the number and I didn’t want to make it too easy to figure out, and the other was that there were so many other things going on that I really didn’t think too much about it!  One of the things that I noticed was that I enjoyed all of the cigars I had, and all of them performed perfectly.  From the first Liga Privada No.9 on the bus at leaving the airport, to the Tabak Especial Negra on the bus back to Managua, every cigar burned great and drew perfectly.  I didn’t say I was surprised, I don’t think I’ve ever had a poorly constructed cigar from Drew Estate, or recently from Joya de Nicaragua.  I smoked several of the Joya de Nicaragua Cabinettas, including a yet to be released Lancero, and I even had an Acid Kuba Maduro, and I didn’t hate it! I didn’t snap a picture of every cigar I had, but here’s a sampling:

 

On the “Take a Cigar for a Walk” front, Monday night I smoked another Punch Rare Corojo 10th Anniversary, courtesy of General Cigar.  This is the third one of these I’ve smoked and I enjoyed it quite a bit.  I taste hints of what I remember the Rare Corojo tasting like, which was very savory and full of flavor.  There was a time in my cigar smoking life that I would always leave new arrivals sit in my humidor for a year or so before smoking.  In this day and age, cigars seem to be coming to market ready to smoke, and I feel obligated to smoke samples sent to me in a timely manner.  It’s a bit of a Catch 22 for me.  I would love to see how these age, and, after smoking three of the five samples, I may allow the final two to sit in the humidor for a while more and revisit them in six months or so.

Along those same lines, I recently received some samples from Gary Griffith of Delaware Cigars and Emilio Cigars.  One of the cigars he sent was the Grimalkin Toro. This 6″ x 50 cigar was described as being made in a factory in Esteli which they cannot reveal due to contractual obligations.  I had my suspicions, which I think were confirmed after smoking one of the samples.  I’m not going to reveal where I think this is made because that wouldn’t be right.  I really enjoyed the first sample, it had a bit of spice to start out with and was pretty lush and tasty.  The construction was top notch

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and I enjoyed it to the band, which sports a cool pair of feline eyes on a green background.  It was definitely a visually appealing cigar and felt good in the hand.  I put it down at the band, it got a little funky, another aspect that would be remedied by some additional humidor time.  He also sent a couple of his Emilio ciga

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rs that I am looking forward to smoking. Again, a very nice cigar.  I’d love to try this in a corona or lancero.  Delaware Cigars has several locations in Delaware (duh), which is probably a half hour drive, I really need to make my way to one of the stores one of these days.  They also host a cigar festival at Delaware Park, a great racetrack, in September, I might have to see about making it to the event.

That’s about it for today, I still need to hear from Wayne Nye with his mailing address so I can send out the StogieBoys.com Stogie Registers.  I prefer to make one trip to the post office, so my apologies to MoBarbq and jimbobber for the delay in shipping.

Until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Weekend Cigars: Rodrigo and Cigar Safari Blend, and Stogie Boys Contest Winners!

I was going to concoct a story about finding a dried up cigar last Friday, and putting it in the humidor and seeing if I could resurrect it, but that seemed too time consuming and maybe a little blasphemous, a long way to go for an ironic holiday joke. Anyway, I managed a couple of new cigars this week, I wanted to share the experience.

A few weeks ago I got into a conversation with a fellow Pennsylvanian, George Rodriguez of Rodrigo Cigars.Â&nbs

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p; I couldn’t talk him out of sending me samples for review, and a package showed up ear

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ly last week.  I am torn between wanting to allow new arrivals to rest for a while in the humidor and giving timely feedback on the cigars.  I was faced with

a beautiful Saturday afternoon and time for a robusto, so I grabbed the smallest of the bunch and fired it up.  I received and Robusto, a Toro and a Belicoso as well as a Lancero, which isn’t listed in their literature.  The cigars are made in Tamboril, Dominican Republic with Dominican filler and binder and a Ecuador Habano wrapper.  The cigar burned reasonably well with a perfect draw.  The flavor didn’t really wow me on this one, it was pleasant enough, certainly not offensive in anyway, but nothing that made me take notice.  I’ll give the other three a little more time in the humidor, maybe it was just the Robusto that wasn’t for me. I can’t help but think I rushed smoking this one.  I’m looking forward to smoking the Lancero especially.  Thank you George for giving me the opportunity to try your cigars, I appreciate your generosity.  Look for Rodrigo Cigars and give them a try.

 

We had a family gathering on Easter Sunday and I decided it was time to try out one of the cigars that I

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blended while in Nicaragua on the Drew Estate Cigar Safari.  As I mentioned in my post “Cigar Safari Trip Report: Days 3 and 4“, Corey and I selected our blends on paper, without the benefit of actually touching and smelling the tobacco.  I went with a Mexican Oscuro wrapper, mostly because they didn’t offer Connecticut broadleaf and  I really like the Mexican wrapper on the Chateau Real Maduro.  While I never cared for Indonesian tobacco, I used it for the binder, basically because the description said it was sweet and

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aromatic.  I used Seco leaves from both Esteli and Dominican Republic, only a half a leaf of Esteli ligero and filled it out with Brazilian Mata Fina.&Ac

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irc;  I chose the

same vitola as the Liga Privada Unicos Dirty Rat, because I love that size, 5″ x 44.  The cigars ended up being absolutely gorgeous with an oily dark wrapper.  I really loved the cigar!  It had a very full flavor, a lot of sweetness and coffee and cocoa, but was smooth as silk without a  hint of nicotine. I smoked it down to a finger

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burning half an inch. If I had been able to find a toothpick at my in-laws house I would have finished it.  These were rolled by the torcedors that make the Liga Privadas, so it was no surprise that the construction was flawless and it burned razor straight all the way down.  It burned for nearly an hour and forty minutes!

 

I promised to select some contest winners today, and I’m going to pick three!  As has become my custom, I’ve pasted the names of all of those who left comments into a spreadsheet and used Random.org‘s random number generator to make the selections.  Would  Wayne Nye, MoBarbq and jimbobber please e-mail me your contact information so I can send you your Stogie Boys Stogie Register, courtesy of StogieBoys.com!  Thanks to Paul at Stogie Boys and to everyone for  participating.  See the bottom of this post for the 10% discount code generously offered for my readers!

 

That’s it for now, hope you all had a great Easter or Passover, I know I made a pig of myself today!

Until the next time,

CigarCraig

 

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