Tag Archives: CAO

by CigarCraig | April 8, 2018 · 8:18 am

CAO Event at Tobacco Field Cigars in Delaware and the CAO Zócalo

Friday I took a drive south to New Castle, Delaware to visit the new Tobacco Fields Cigars location where they were hosting Ricky Rodriguez and Rami Dakko of CAO Cigars. I was familiar with their store closer

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to home, in the Concord area, north of Wilmington, and just over the Pennsylvania border. I remember the area fondly as the site of the Brandywine Raceway, where I used to go watch the harness racing, and near where I used to go buy beer when I was underage. That’s not at all important to the story. I stopped in to the old store because I didn’t read the announcement and didn’t know about the new store. Apparently the new location opened in December of 2015, so I’m woefully out of touch! Twenty-five minutes later I arrived at the new store and went in to buy some CAO cigars. Ricky was in the lounge talking about cigars and tobacco. Due to the indoor smoking laws in Delaware, the lounge is membership based, and I assume that my purchase granted me a temporary membership, as I was welcomed by both the

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owners. The store is well appointed, with loads of cigars, as well as other tobacco products, and the lounge, although small, is augmented by a large, enclosed outside patio. Fortunately, the weather was cooperative. I smoked a CAO Colombia, in the Magdalena torpedo size, a 6¼” x 54 size. This cigar has a Jamastran (Honduran) wrapper, Cameroon binder and Brazilian and Colombian fillers. It’s super smooth and has a very pleasant flavor. It’s on the milder side, and is a very nice cigar, one of my favorites in their “World” range of cigars. I bought a few of these, a couple Consigliere in the toro size and a Brazilia and America. They had all three of the Amazon lines, including the Amazon Basin, but since I have some Fuma Em Corda and Anacondas, and am not really that fond of the Amazon Basin, I opted not to pick any up. There was a good crowd present, and I enjoyed catching up with Ricky and Rami, great folks if you ever have a chance to meet them, and the shop is great if you find yourself in the New Castle Delaware area.

CAO had two announcements this week, which other sites covered, one being the Pan-Am Tour, an online journey down the Pan American Highway highlighting the various growing regions where tobacco used in the CAO line is grown. There is a game on the CAO website where you can win prizes and follow along. From the press release:

In true CAO fashion, Rick’s virtual journey has an in-store component. His Pan American Tour will be mirrored by an interstate highway tour of sorts, as Rick will be visiting cigar shops across the U.S. for a deeper dive on the tobaccos that make up CAO’s unique blends. Events will take place between April and December, 2018 and at each event, cigar lovers can win CAO branded items like lighters, tee shirts and duffle bags, and have the opportunity to smoke special Pan Am Tour-exclusive cigars blended by Rick and the CAO team.

As I was driving to the event I received the press release about the newest offering from CAO, the limited edition CAO Zócalo San Andrés. This cigar kicks off the Pan Am tour and represents the first CAO cigar to use the San Andrés Morron wrapper, with a Cameroon binder and Nicaraguan fillers, offered in only the 6″ x 60 size. They have an attractive $8.49 MSRP and are due in stores before May 5, (Cinco de Mayo). I happen to know someone, so I had the opportunity to smoke the CAO Zócalo San Andrés last night, and I was thoroughly impressed. I am personally a fan of both Broadleaf and San Andrés, especially when it’s over a Cameroon binder, that combination makes me happy. The cigar was impressive. It had a perfect burn and draw, as all good cigars should, and the ash was a solid white, which took some effort to knock off in 1″ chunks. It started with a pepper spice and coffee, with an earthiness and some sweetness from the Cameroon. I got that same sweet sensation in the Colombia, which also has the Cameroon binder. Halfway through I was surprised by a new flavor, an interesting almost burnt caramel flavor. Earlier in the day I smoked another Macanudo Inspirado Red, which I thought was my favorite new cigar, and I smoked a CAO Fuma Em Corda this week that I really like, but this gives them a run for their money, and I can’t wait for these to hit the shelves, I’ll be putting a handful in my humidor. I was very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time to score a sample of this great new cigar, thanks to Rick and Rami! It’s a big cigar, and maybe 6″ x 60s aren’t your bag, but give them a try. Yummy, a fiesta in your mouth!

That’s all I have for now, Until the next time,

CigarCraig

2 Comments

Filed under Events, News, Review, Stores

Tagged as CAO, cigar, cigar store, cigars, general cigars

by CigarCraig | October 4, 2017 · 9:40 pm

A Couple Cigars, Cigar Podcasts and the Contest Winner!

I’ve been feeling a little in a rut lately, so I decided to smoke some cigars I hadn’t smoked in a long time, so I started with a Gurkha 125th Anniversary XO, I thought I liked this cigar more, it wasn’t bad, it was just a little more leathery than I remembered. So the next night I went with a sure thing, A Tatuaje TAA 2015. This box pressed, 5 5/8″ x 54 cigar with a covered foot hit the spot. Sadly, this was the last one in my humidor, but boy was it tasty. Not exactly breaking out of my rut, as I’ve been craving broadleaf and this one hit the spot just right. Smooth, rich and delicious. I think I bought a couple of these a little over two years ago, great cigar. Tonight grabbed a CAO Amazon Anaconda, a cigar I developed a deep appreciation for after bringing some home from the IPCPR show. A couple of weeks ago when I saw Jack Toraño he stuck this cigar in my pocket, so it was conveniently located on top of the humidor. This is the third in the Amazon series, following the Amazon Basin and Fuma em Corda. I wasn’t wow’d by the Amazon Basin like most people seemed to have been, but I only tried the second release. I really like the Fuma em Corda, and I really really like the Anaconda (except for the name, I’m not a snake fan), This cigar is made in Honduras with a Brazilian Bahiano Haba

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no wrapper, Nicaraguan binder and Colombian, Dominican, Brazilian Braganca, and Fume em Corda fillers. The only thing I really don’t care for was the piece of tobacco that serves as the band terminates under the cap and feels funny in the mouth. Otherwise it’s a great cigar! Burns a long time and tastes great! Seems I’m still in that rut.

I’m a bit of a podcast junkie, and just want to list several shows I listen to regularly and enjoy. I’ll be honest, this is driven by just listening to Cigar Coop‘s Prime Time show with co-host Aaron Loomis from Developing palates, where they said some nice things about me. I also listen to the Developing Palates recaps via podcast, KMA Talk Radio, The Cigar Authority, The Ashholes, DE4Live, Cigar Jukebox, Cigar Chat and Sharing Your Pairings, Smooth Draws Radio, Stogie Geeks, as well as Half Ashed and The Cold Draw Podcasts when they show up. It all started with Blowin’ Smoke, which was one of the first, and was hosted by an old friend Rob Heming. There are a few others that only show up every now and then. Sometimes it’s a challenge staying up to date.

Contest!

Last week we had a contest sponsored by Cigar Prop and the Tobacco Locker Cigar Bar featuring four great cigars and a pair of Cigar Prop XCs. It’s time to pick a winner, and I was hoping to have Kevin of Cigar Prop pick one, but he deferred. My reasoning was that myself and Kevin interjected some comments and that makes it harder to count the comments…and I would have liked to see more “likes” on the sponsor’s Facebook pages. So I worked it out, and the winner is mike mccain. Send your address so we can get your prize to you, and I’m going to send a few cigars from my humidor too, just because I feel like it. Thanks to Kevin for putting this together and Tobacco Locker for participating.

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

CigarCraig

9 Comments

Filed under Contest, Editorial, Review

Tagged as CAO, cigar, Cigar Prop, cigars, Gurkha, podcasts, tatuaje

by CigarCraig | July 23, 2017 · 11:06 am

New CAO, La Gloria Cubana and Partagas from General Cigar Co.

Every year at the IPCPR show I make sure to make an appointment to tour the General Cigar Co. booth. I have a lot of great friends there and am a fan of many of their cigars. They had a lot of new cigars, and I’ll talk about three of them today, the others will have to wait until I smoke some more samples or, in a couple cases, find the cigars in my local shops. I’ve included some relevant photos below, I should have rolled video, but I was having audio issues and didn’t want to waste valuable time. The first cigar I was eager to try after I got home was the third cigar in the CAO Amazon Trilogy, the poorly named Anaconda. I tried the Amazon Basin few months back and was frankly underwhelmed, then the Fume em Corda came along and I really liked it. Now the Anaconda, a 6″x52 toro with a twisted cord of tobacco in place of a band is the third and last member of the family. The cigar has a beautiful dark Brazilian Bahiano Habano wrapper, Nicaraguan binder and Colombian, Dominican, Brazilian Braganca, and Fume em Corda fillers made in Honduras. I found it to have loads of flavors that I like, the dark, heavy flavors, and for having only spent a week in my humidor it burdened perfectly. I liked it so much I had to smoke a second one in as many days, which I very rare do. I suspect I need to try to find another Amazon Basin to give it a second chance, although that may not be easy, I understand they went fast, and I regret not sampling it in its first run. I always enjoy spending time with Ricky Rodriguez.

One of the surprising news from the La Gloria Cubana area of the booth was the introduction of the Coleccion Reserva which is a collaborative effort with Ernesto Carrillo and is actually manufactured in his Tabacalera La Alianza S.A. factory in the Dominican Republic. It has an Ecuador Sumatra wrapper with Nicaraguan binder and filler, which came as a surprise to me. The cigar had a drying effect on my palate that led me to believe there was some Dominican leaf in the blend. Shows what I know. The presentation is beautiful, classic La Gloria hardening back to the days Ernesto owned the brand and made them in Miami. I’ll be giving these some more humidor time and trying them again, I didn’t dislike the cigar, I just think i dug in to the samples a little prematurely. Always a fan of the Lady…always enjoy seeing my buddy Yuri at the show. I first “met” Yuri Guillen when they launched the Serie N and had a webcast that I was lucky enough to take part in back around 2010. I met him in person in 2011 when I visited the factory. He’s a great guy and has done a great job with the La Gloria Cubana brand.

Partagas reworked their already very good 1845 line putting them in slick black boxes and redoing the blends. They also seem to be putting all three blends in both the brick and mortar and catalog channels, a change from when we saw the Extra Oscuro and Extra Fuerte split between the two (and I can’t remember which went to which…). I selected a Partagas 1845 Extra Oscuro Rothschild for my afternoon cigar yesterday. Oddly, the Rothschild size is more of a Corona Gorda, 5.63″ x 46, which is a really col size. This smoked wonderfully, with heavy dark chocolate and espresso flavors from the Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper. Honestly, I’d have to try the old and new side by side to see if I could tell the difference, but the “new” was pretty darned great and will age spectacularly I think. I’m looking forward to trying out the Extra Fuerte and Clasicos as I always enjoyed the 1845 line in the past. The presentation is excellent and will be hard to miss on the store shelf. The General Cigars booth was all about the new releases, and largely the Macanudo Inspirado (more on that later), but the classic “back catalog” is still available. The Partagas “yellow box” and Black, tons of La Gloria marques and CAOs vast array of cigars obviously aren’t going anywhere. I was very excited by several of these new releases. More on Macanudo Toraño, Hoyo, Punch and Cohiba later.

That’s all for today, time to get it together, I’m replacing my garage door today, and it’s a job that kinda has to be finished in one sitting, ya know. If you’re in the area and want to stop buy and lend a hand, I’ll provide cigars! 🙂 Until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Tagged as CAO, cigar, cigars, general cigars, IPCPR, La Gloria Cubana, Partagas

by CigarCraig | April 26, 2017 · 8:27 pm

Punch, CAO, La Gloria, Macanudo Goodies Contest Winner

I smoked a handful of great cigars since we spoke last, but I just enjoyed most of them without giving them much th

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ought. I did pick up a handy new gadget that I heard about on KMA Talk Radio last week, called the Poke and Smoke. it’s a handy tool on a key ring that has two little prongs you can impale your cigar with and smoke it without burning your fingers. It was an impulse buy, and resembles the little handles one pokes into the ends of your corn on the cob to hold it with, and I’ve used it twice now and it works fine. I did notice that it stinks the next day, so I suppose I’ll have to keep tabs on that. Anyway, I bought a couple and the winner of the contest may find one in with the goodies from General Cigar Co. courtesy of your’s truly. Before we get to the winner, here’s a little news from General Cigar Co. about their new Cohiba release:

COHIBA BLUE

The world’s finest tobaccos create the most enduring experiences. Cohiba Blue is indeed the cigar for all who desire to live the good life.

Cohiba has always been synonymous with luxury smoking experiences. The brand’s latest collection, Cohiba Blue, takes this to an entirely different level by introducing the notion of inclusive luxury.

Andres Maturen, brand manager of Cohiba said, “With Cohiba Blue, we present collection that speaks to the ethos of the Cohiba brand. Made with a curated selection of tobaccos, handcrafted by renowned artisans, and created for all those who seek the indulgence of a fine cigar, Cohiba Blue symbolizes a life well lived.”

The Cohiba blending team created a velvety, medium-bodied cigar with a rich, complex taste and enticing aroma. To achieve the desired flavor, they began with a silky, rosado-hued Honduran Olancho San Agustin (OSA) wrapper and took a unique approach by selecting Honduran OSA for the binder as well. The layered wrapper-binder deepens the smoking experience and imparts subtle, earthy notes. The blend consists of Honduran Jamastran, Nicaraguan Ometepe and Dominican Piloto Cubano to provide hints of cocoa and caramel, with a light touch of sweetness. The unique, three-country blend represents the world’s most revered tobacco growing regions and delivers a sophisticated, memorable smoke.

The cigars are protected hand-painted bright blue wooden boxes, each containing 20 flawlessly handcrafted cigars.

Churchill (7.5 X 50); SRP per cigar is $10.99

Robusto (5.5 X 50); SRP per cigar is $9.99

Rothschild (4.5 X 50); SRP per cigar $8.99

Toro (6 X 54); SRP per cigar is $10.49

More on the Cohiba Blue in the coming weeks, but you want to know who won the goodies! The random number generator spit out the number 23, which corresponds with Olie. It turns out Olie is a very long time reader, and a guy I met face to face at a herf in Reno back in 2009, and had “known” for years before that on the old alt.smokers.cigars Usenet group! Congrats Ted, er…Olie, please send your address so I can get this stuff out your way!

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

CigarCraig

4 Comments

Filed under Contest, News

Tagged as CAO, cigar, cigars, cohiba, Contest, General Cigar Co., La Gloria Cubana, macanudo, Poke and Smoke, punch

by CigarCraig | April 19, 2017 · 9:14 pm

Toraño, CAO, Punch and Hoyo Cigars and a Contest!

I kind of got stuck in the General Cigar tray of the humidor this week and revisited a few cigars that I may not have really liked the first time around (or subsequent times as it turns out). I started out with the Toraño Exodus on Sunday, not even thinking that it might have been the only cigar in my humidor that was seasonally appropriate. Someone brought this to my attention and I quipped that I had passed it over several times over the past few months since I didn’t really like it the first time I smoked it last summer. Age has benefited this cigar, that was an IPCPR show sample in the 5″ x 54 robusto size. This latest version of the Exodus, the first since General Cigar bought the brand, has a Honduran San Augustin wrapper, Connecticut Broadleaf binder and Dominican, Honduran and Mexican fillers. I didn’t care for this the fist time I smoked it, but this one six months later was pretty darned tasty, it still started off a little sour, but it was greatly improved.

I followed that later in the day with a CAO Consigliere Associate, the robusto in the line that is basically the return of the Sopranos line, without the licensing fees that went along with the original. This is a 5″ x 52 robusto, and the first time I smoked this was in Las Vegas the night before the trade show opened when I ran into Rick Rodriguez and Ed McKenna of CAO at the Circle Bar in the Venetian Hotel. I had not previous experience with the Sopranos line, and I was told that this used the same blend as the original, Brazilian wrapper, Honduran binder and Colombian, Dominican, Nicaraguan fillers. I like sweetness in a cigar, and this cigar doesn’t have much sweetness, but it’s a god smoke if you like cigars on the savory end of the spectrum, which will come up again. Monday I went with one of my favorites from CAO, the Flathead in the v660 Carb size, the one that placed high in Cigar Aficionado’s list a couple of years ago, I really like the Flathead line, although the 770 is a bit unwieldy. I still liked the Consigliere, it was a nice cigar.

Last night I went back to the Punch Signature Pita. I’ve liked a lot of Punch cigars, I should like this one too, but it’s another one that doesn’t hit my palate right, I’m afraid. It’s a classic 6″ x 50 toro, with a Ecuador Corojo wrapper, Connecticut Habano binder and Dominican and Nicaraguan fillers, what’s not to like? I’ve smoked this in this size and the Robusto size, neither of which tripped my trigger unfortunately. It was lacking any sweetness and was very leathery to me. Certainly there are people who like this profile, it doesn’t thrill me. I can’t tell you how many Punch Rothchilds I smoked in the 90s!

Tonight I picked out a year old Hoyo Robusto, the first couple I smoked last year I had draw problems with, I’ve also enjoyed a great many Hoyo de Monterrey cigars over the years, and the newest Hoyo La Amistad General Cigar made with AJ Fernandez last year is a really good smoke. This Hoyo has a Habano shade grown wrapper from Esteli, an Ecuador Sumatra binder, and Esteli, Ometepe and Pennsylvania fillers. I enjoyed this cigar a lot more now that it draws right, although it’s another cigar on the savory side, but it smoked well and I enjoyed it. I think I would still lean toward the La Amistad when making a choice, but the Hoyo exceeded expectations.

Contest!

Since I smoked a bunch of General Cigar products this week, and I have some goodies still hanging around, it’s a great time for me to have another giveaway! This is the last of the goodies I received a few months ago, we have a cool CAO Flathead Steel Horse metal sign, a Punch bobblehead, a Macanudo Colibri cutter (similar to the CAO cutter I used all week which worked great!) and a pair of La Gloria Cubana Cigar Scissors. As sometimes happens around here, I get sloppy when I’m packing the box and cigars fall in, previous winners can attest to this. Usual rules apply, leave a comment on this blog post to enter, I’ll select a winner next Wednesday, April , 26, 2017.