Monday I attended Goose’s Montecristo Greater Philadelphia Golf Outing at the Brookside Country Club in Pottstown, PA. I’m not a golfer, but, geeze, I haven’t even been to a cigar shop in five months, let alone a cigar event (except for stoppin into Best Cigar Pub for lunch, I guess that counts). SO I tagged along with a foursome who was content to take my shots for me in the scramble format. I provided moral support, as well as some cigars along the way, and everyone seemed happy with the arrangement. In the end, I wasn’t a liability to the group, so it all worked out. The day started with lunch of Chicken sandwiches. I joined Tom the Altadis rep, who was there to support the Montecristo part of the event, for lunch, along with Ryan of Island Lifestyle Cigars/Frontier Cigars/Tommy Bahama Accessories. The 60 attendees of the Golf event received a Large Humidor bag containing a Montecristo Colibri cutter, a triple jet Montecristo Vertigo lighter (jumbo size! too big for the pocket, smaller than a table lighter, somewhere in between, a really nice lighter!), a Montecristo cap and two cigars. The cigars were pretty special, one being a Montecristo Pilotico Pepe Mendez No. 2, and a Montecristo Cincuenta No. 2, which is a very limited cigar, which was only sold in humidors of 100 cigars which retailed for $10,000 (if you took out the value of the humidor, each cigar would be $100, however, the humidors were made by Elie Bleu, which can easily account for $2500 of that price tag. It’s still a pricey cigar!).
I opted to start the day off with a Henry Clay Warhawk. I had picked this cigar up at a visit to Goose’s some time ago, and it is an Altadis product, so I figured it was OK. I am pretty picky when it comes to Connecticut shade wrapped cigars, and this is one I like quite a bit. I suppose it’s because it has some depth and body to go along with the creaminess. I hit the links with Ryan of Island Lifestyle Cigars, Matt, a former Reading Royals Hockey player and owner of a CBD company, and Charlie, who owns a local Awards company. As I said, I was along for the ride, fortunately the three of them were cool with me being dead weight. One of the advantages, it would turn out, was that if one of them wasn’t particularly pleased with a shot, they could take my shot and try to improve upon thiers. It was a best ball, scramble format, so I got to contribute in some small way by retrieving balls here and there, and I did provide some commentary and levity where I could. At one point I did provide a round of cigars which went over well, I figured I’d contribute in my own way! I think we ended up somewhere around 5 or 6 under par for the round, Charlie was a big hitter, and everyone seemed to make their individual contributions throughout the 18 holes. I smoked one of Ryan’s Island Lifestyle Connecticut Robustos along the way. I said I was picky about Connecticut cigars, and this one is damned good. It’s made by the Olivas in Nicaragua and was really nice, and it smoked for a much longer time than I figured a robusto would smoke too. I lit it it on the “back 9” (we started on 10, ended on 9 which was right next to the clubhouse!). A good time was had by all. There’s a vide I did on Facebook live on my persona page of the first hole (link here).
Dinner followed when all 15 foursomes got done, which was a Caesar salad followed by a nice prime rib with potatoes and green beans almondine. Prizes were awarded to the top two finishers, who were something silly like 10 or 12 under par, and if they were keeping score like we were, I suppose that’s entirely possible! We were there to have a good time, and mission accomplished, I’d say! Even though I didn’t touch a club, I enjoyed the day a great deal. The company was great, it was a beautiful day, and we smoked some great cigars. I finished the day with a Montecristo Espada Guard, as I figured I should smoke at least one Montecristo at a Montecristo sponsored event! I brought what I had along with my, and by that point in the day, my palate wasn’t in a position to appreciate either of the cigars included in the goodie bag. Goose definitely puts on a great event, the Brookside folks were accommodating and did a great job feeding everyone, and their staff was outstanding from where I sat. I’ve been to plenty of cigar events where the servers wore masks, but they usually are because they are trying to filter the smoke and smell, and hide their derision. This obviously wasn’t the case here, the servers were cheerful and happy to be there. I hope to attend the next one. I should know better than to drink red Gatorade though, anything red is a migraine trigger, along with the storm that came yesterday, it did me in!
That’s all for today, until the next time,
CigarCraig
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