Tag Archives: macanudo

by CigarCraig | April 24, 2013 · 8:33 pm

C-Gars Ltd., Club Macanudo, the New Palio Lighter, the La Palina Maduro Toro and a Cain F Cigar

Sunday my wife and I drove up to Manhattan to meet up with our good friend Mitchell and his wife, along with some of his other friends at Club Macanudo. We got into the city early, so we wandered around Central Park a bit, even rode the Merry Go Round, visited Tiffany’s and just enjoyed a nice spring day. For those who don’t know, Mitchell operates C.Gars Ltd., the mail order division of Turmeaus Tobacconists established 1817, along with Robert Graham, Global Whisky Shop, Agedcubans, Humidorsonline, Havana Samplers, LCDH Hamburg, Great Gifts Etc. Mitchell is also the international distributor outside of the US for Palio, as well as several other brands that he sells in the UK and the rest of the world. We settled into Club Macanudo to smoke some cigars and socialize. The club is a beautiful space with a bar, private lockers and a full restaurant, serving a Sunday brunch menu until 7 pm. Jenn and I shared a delicious french toast and fruit bowl after I finished my first cigar, a Hoyo de Monterrey Epicure No. 2, which Mitchell had handed me when we arrived. This was a delicious cigar, on the milder side for a Havana, but full of flavor and perfectly constructed. I don’t smoke many Havanas any more, as much as I enjoy that distinctive little flavor that only a fine Havana has, a twang, if you will. I think the cigars coming from Nicaragua, Dominican Republic and Honduras are more interesting and superior in many ways. This was an exemplary smoke though, very nice. Looking at the cigar menu there was a bit startling. New York cigar prices are already high, but the prices there were more than double NY retail prices. I was going to joke that their prices were higher than Mitchell’s, but I try to avoid insulting my host if I can manage it! I didn’t take detailed notes, but I recall seeing a cigar that is $6.00 here in PA being $25. As I said, shocking. Fortunately, I had cigars with me, but Mitchell shoved a Partagas Serie D No. 4 in my paw so I had to smoke that. He mentioned that it was young and possibly quite strong, but I’m a fan of the Cuban Partagas line and found this to me a nice smoke. On the fuller side of medium with a very nice flavor. Perhaps with five years of age this will be a stellar smoke, but it was pretty darned tasty now. It’s always a great time hanging out with Mitchell, his lovely wife and his group of friends, and it’s nice to get a day away with my wife!

As if these special cigars weren’t a treat enough, Mitchell gifted me the new Palio Lighte

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r in matte black, with “Seleccion Orchant 2013” inscribed on it. I’ve been lusting after this lighter since I spoke with Marc Aub of BOTL, LLC at the IPCPR show last August and he was showing it off (video here). This is a substantial lighter with a large fuel capacity, a fuel window and covers over the jet, as well as the filler hole. They’ve made it very easy to adjust the flame height with a little drop down turny thing on the adjustment screw (pardon the technical jargon). This is a brilliant lighter which I’m proud to have in my possession. It lights a cigar very nicely too. I’ll use it non-stop (except when I travel) and report on how it performs, but I have no doubt it will be flawless.

The first cigar I lit with the Palio lighter was a La Palina Maduro toro. I fell in love with the Robusto in this line last year when it was released, although I only smoked a few samples. Its everything I desire in a San Andreas wrapped cigar: smooth, chocolaty, and delicious. Of course it’s well made, although the draw could have been a little bit better. I enjoy the heck out of most of the La Palina cigars I’ve smoked, but this maduro is my favorite hands down (who among you who reads regularly is surprised?).

Tonight I grabbed a Cain F 5.75×50 that probably came from the IPCPR show last year. This turned out to be a poor choice for me, not because it wasn’t a great smoke, it was, but it was just too strong for me tonight. I’m tired and it kind of kicked me in the butt. It made it more difficult to sit down and write this post! I should have

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chosen something milder! Still a nice smoke, but strong. I think I like the tubed lancero best in this line.

News

I came across this in my inbox today and thought I’d pass it along since it struck me as a unique promotion that I’ve never seen before:

On Thursday, April 25th, cigar superstar Rocky Patel will be here at BestCigarPrices taking your calls!* Order any in-stock box of Rocky Patel cigars between 4-5pm ET for a chance to talk to Rocky LIVE while he personally hand-signs your box of cigars. CALL TOLL FREE 1-888-41-CIGAR.

Sunday’s post will be a rare guest post, since I will be travelling to Nicaragua for Cigar Safari. I’ll be touring the Drew Estate operation along with several of my blogging brethren (and some real journalists :-)). Expect another full report akin to my last report from March of 2011. Many thanks to the folks at Drew Estate for this opportunity! So stay tuned, I’ll try to get something posted while I’m there, internet access willing!

Until the next time,

CigarCraig

9 Comments

Filed under News, Review, Stores, Trip Report

Tagged as Best Cigar Prices, cain, Central Park, cigar, Cigar Safari, cigars, Club Macanudo, drew estate, hoyo de monterrey, La Palina, macanudo, NYC, palio, Partagas, rocky patel

by CigarCraig | February 20, 2013 · 7:10 pm

A Couple of Thurman Thomas Cigars, A Macanudo and CRA News

Since it’s a new legislative session in Washington D.C., there is a new bill in the house to exempt premium cigars from FDA regulation. It’s more important than ever to write to your representative and ask him or her to co-sponsor the bill.

“The premium cigar industry supports about 85,000 jobs – from manufacturers to small retailers – throughout the United States,” said Congressman Bill Posey. “Washington bureaucrats should turn their attention to promoting private sector job growth and protecting our rights, not chipping away at our freedoms through bureaucratic overreach.”

Cigar Rights of America makes it very easy to e-mail your representatives. Go to their site or the IPCPR site to send an e-mail. Just fill in the blanks. Do it. Now. I’ll wait. 🙂

A few weeks ago I received some samples from StogieBoys.com of their Thurman Thomas Hall of Fame lin

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e of cigars. I’m not a football fan, so at first I had Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in my head, and former senator Strom Thurmond, and even Thurman Munson’s name made an appearance I come to learn that Thurman Thomas was a Hall Of Fame Football player who likes cigars and for whom this cigar is named. I suppose it would have been more appropriate to feature these a couple weeks ago when the game with all the hyped up commercials was on, but I had just received them and I wanted to let them rest. Here’s one of the problems I face here in the blogosphere: a handful of bloggers receive the same samples so everyone is featuring the same cigars on their sites. I like to give new arrivals a couple weeks rest in the humidor so often I am a couple weeks late smoking the cigars that everyone else reviewed already. I’m sure you’ll have seen a handful of reviews of these, and the Arandoza and Cuenca cigars are recent examples that spring to mind (both excellent smokes, by the way). Anyway, I received Toro sized samples of the natural and maduro versions of this cigar. The cigars are very nice looking, the wrappers are both nice and clean, and they are rolled in the telltale style of General Cigar Co., they have the rounded head that all of the GCC products have. Of c

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ourse, I chose the maduro first and it lived up to my expectation. It was a nice, smooth, tasty basic maduro. Consistent in construction and flavor from start to finish. The natural version had a familiar flavor, I know I’ve smoked something very similar before. It was a reasonably mild smoke, but the flavor was very nice, leathery kind of flavor. It was pretty smooth, like it’s maduro sibling. These were both very nice cigars for the $3.95 price point. I wouldn’t say they were particularly surprising, but good, no-nonsense cigars that were satisfying and easy to smoke. Thanks to the folks at StogieBoys.com for their support and for sharing these smokes.

Last night I reached in the humidor and came out with a Macanudo 1968 Robusto. I figured I’d keep with the General Cigar Co. theme. This was different from the Thurman Thomas cigars by quite a bit. First, it’s actually stronger and spicier, which sounds strange for a Macanudo. I recall back to my first premium cigar experience back in the mid 1990s. A buddy and I picked up a couple of Macanudo Duke of Devons to smoke on o

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ur lunch break to see what the fuss was with the premium cigars. We had been enjoying our Gacia y Vegas and Backwoods at lunch time every Friday and were ready to take the next step. Of course, we didn’t have cutters, so we pierced the caps with knives or whatever we had, and lit these babies up. It’s actually a wonder I went any further with premium cigars after that, as I remember it being kind of a non-event. I really didn’t get the flavor I thought I would. I was a cigarette smoker at the time, so obviously that had something to do with my need for more flavor. I can honestly enjoy a regular old Macanudo nowdays, but it took a long time to get to this point. I’ll stand by my assertion that there’s not a damned thing wrong with a Macanudo Maduro, it’s a tasty smoke. I digress. The 1968 has some st

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rength and is a nice smoke that I’ve enjoyed on many occasions and under varied circumstances. It’s one of those cigars I pick up when I can’t decide what to smoke and I’m quite happy.

I just wanted to throw this out to anyone who is looking for embroidered or printed stuff, I’ve had amazing luck with Queensboro.com lately. I’ve gotten four polos embroidered for around $36 delivered. Try buying plain polos for that! The link is my referral link, I’ll get $25 credit if someone uses it. That’s my shameless plug of the day. You should use E-Bates too, it puts a couple extra bucks in your pocket every quarter.

That’s it for this installment, until the next time,

CigarCraig

3 Comments

Filed under IPCPR, News, Review

Tagged as cigar, Cigar Rights of America, cigars, CRA, general cigars, IPCPR, macanudo, StogieBoys, Thurman Thomas

by CigarCraig | October 7, 2012 · 11:29 am

Some New Cigar Offerings From General Cigar Co. – Foundry, Macanudo and CAO

For the end of the week I decided to base my cigar selections on a theme, and I had some lovely samples from General Cigar Company that have been taunting me from the humidors. I started off on Thursday evening with the new brand that debuted at the IPCPR show, the Foundry. The example I smoked was the 5″x60 Talbot. This is the brainchild of Michael Giannini, the Marketing Director/New Product Developer/Evil Genius at General Cigar. I’m not entirely sure what his current job title is, but he’s a heck of a guy with a brilliant imagination. His fascination with the “Steampunk” art movement inspired him to create this cigar which doesn’t use any tobacco from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua or Honduras. The cigar was an amazing smoke for me. It was mild, but loaded with interesting flavors that captured my attention for the entire length of the smoke. I realized that 60 ring gauge cigars hardly phase me anymore, which is odd from someone who would sooner pick up a 42 ring cigar (or a lancero). I’ve enjoyed quite a few cigars with a 60 ring gauge lately, and I think I liked this particular blend better in the larger format than the 6½x54 Lovelace that I had smoked before. There were so many unique and interesting flavors, and I’m not one for nuance, that I found it to be a refreshing change, very clean and bright. This is a winner in my book!

Friday evening I went with the New Macanudo Vintage 2006. This cigar has a flawless Connecticut shade wrapper from the 2006 crop, which was reported to be grown under ideal conditions. I really loved the Vintage 1997, which had a delicious maduro wrapper and was quite fairly priced at around $7 a stick all things considered.

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The 2007 is completely different, of course. The boxes and the shiny metal bands are similar, but the cigar is lighter, with the bit of grassiness you’d expect from the Connecticut wrapper. This cigar brought back memories of some Macanudo panatela seconds I had bought back in the ’90s, maybe it was the firm draw, or feeling the need to draw harder to get a satisfying mouthful of smoke, I don’t know, by that’s just what went through my head. I enjoyed the cigar, it was certainly well made and pleasant enough, but my palate enjoys the maduro in this blend the most. I love the Vintage ’97, and really enjoy the regular old Macanudo Maduro line quite a bit. This Vintage 2006 will likely be a terrific smoke after year or two in the humidor.

Saturday I decided to finish the Trifecta with a CAO Concert Roadie. This is the latest release in the CAO line, following up the OSA Sol from last year. Where the OSA Sol was bright, the Concert is a little heavier in body. The Habano Rosado wrapper is rich and beautiful, and the band is guitar pick shaped, flanked by guitars with the necks wrapping around the cigar. The boxes are

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in the st

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yle of a Marshall amp, and they even have humidors in the same style, only with working speakers and a jack for an MP3 player (and a volume knob that goes to 11). The line is a tribute to Nashville, where the CAO brand was headquartered originally. The cigar was extremely well made, surviving an unfortunate fumble by me resulting in a 3 foot drop to the pavement. The cigar suffered no ill effects, save for a wrapper split which never really caused a problem. I think the broadleaf binder added that little something special to the smoke. It

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was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon. Rick Rodriguez will be going “on tour” to promote this new release, so check out the schedule and try to get to an event. Rick is a cool guy, definitely fun to hang out with. I hope to catch up with him when he visits here in November.

Editorial

Yesterday (Saturday 10/6/2012) I made an appearance on Kiss My Ash Radio, Abe from Smoke Inn in Florida’s weekly radio show. It was my second appearance on the show, and I was honored to be asked back. The “Bloggers Corner” segment features a cigar review by the featured blogger. Regular readers will understand that this isn’t exactly in my wheelhouse, I’m not one to write flowery, loon-winded third-by-third cigar reviews. Yesterday I actually had prepared a better review, actually it was included in last Wednesday’s post. Unfortunately, I started to go on a tangent about how appearance is important to me when I’m smoking , but it kind of got derailed and really sounded like I just took a complete left turn. The point I was trying to make (doing a play on words on the “blind review” phrase) was that I like to look at a cigar while I’m smoking it, and smoking in the dark, as I’ve found myself doing lately, takes away from the experience. I just wanted to get that off my chest for anyone that may have heard it and thought I was a yammering idiot.

That’s it for today, I still have a couple of the new La Gloria Cubana Trunk Show samples to smoke, but they are pretty big cigar and I have to find the right time to devote to them. I also need to figure out which ones are which, since they didn’t have samples with the unique tobacco paper bands on them. So, until the next time,

CigarCraig

4 Comments

Filed under Editorial, IPCPR, Review

Tagged as CAO, cigar, cigars, Foundry, general cigars, macanudo

by CigarCraig | September 2, 2012 · 8:48 am

IPCPR 2012 – A La Sirena Merlion and Someone Wins Some Cigars!

Friday evening, the start of a holiday weekend, the (sigh) end of summer, all good reasons to spark up a good cigar. One of the cigars I’ve really been looking forward to smoking from the IPCPR show is the Merlion from La Sir

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ena and Miami Cigar and Co. The sample I smoked was the Toro size, measuring 5½” x 54, which is a nice size for a late summer evening. The cigars are made at the La Aurora factory with Ecuadoran Corojo wrapper, a Brazilian Sumatra binder and Dominican Corojo, Dominican Criollo, Nicaraguan ligero and Brazilian Mata Fina fillers. It’s a very nice cigar. I could certainly taste the influence of the La Aurora factory in the blend,

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there’s a signature flavor that I’m familiar with that stands out. It performed perfectly and was a nice, satisfying smoke. Another winner from Arielle Ditkowich and the folks at Miami Cigar and Co. Arie

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lle took a few moments to talk to me at the show, here’s the video.

Thank you, Arielle, for being one of my first few interviews at the show. Keep making tasty smokes!

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Contest

I know, nobody is interested in video of me talking to a lovely lady about cigars, you just want to know who won this weeks contest! I was pretty amazed by the response, especially considering I was pretty vague about what the prize was (and I’m sorry, there will not be a Taboada in the prize pack! I had one and that was it). What is in the package is a pair of Tortuga LE 2011 torpedoes from Victor Vitale, along with a selection of General Cigar Co. goodies, including some new releases and special cigars that are only available at special events. I also threw in a few favorites from my humidors. As usual, I’ve consulted with the Random Number Generator at Random.org which has produced the number 15, which corresponds to Christian Logay by my figuring. Congrats Christian! Please send me your contact info so I can get this in the mail to you! Again, thanks to everyone for reading along and making the last 3 years very special for me.

That’s it for now! Have a great Labor Day weekend.

CigarCraig

4 Comments

Filed under Contest, IPCPR, Review, Video

Tagged as Arielle, cigar, cigars, Concert, Contest, Foundry, general cigar, hoyo de monterrey, IPCPR, La Aurora, La Gloria Cubana, La Sirena, macanudo, Merlion, punch, Tortuga

by CigarCraig | April 18, 2012 · 7:12 pm

A Gran Habano, a Broadway Series and a Contest Winner!

Sunday was a beautiful day. I slept in a bit after working at my part time job until 3am, went out to breakfast with my lovely wife, then came home to have a nice cigar before settling in to watch the Flyers playoff game. I had a Gran Habano Gran Reserva torpedo floating around the humidor that one of my loyal rea

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ders had shared with

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me. Todd at Kutztown Tobacconist recommended this same cigar to me, so it looked like a good cigar for a nice afternoon. It turns out, I made a good choice. The cedar sleeve came off and underneath was a nice, clean wrapper leaf, very pretty. It was smooth, well balanced and flavorful. It went well with the bottle of Appalachian Brewery Ginger Beer, which I found to be a little sweeter than I’d prefer, but a nice, tasty g

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inger beer. I still prefer the bite of a nice Reeds Extra Ginger Brew, but this one is a nice change of pace. The Flyers game was fantastic…

Monday I selected a Broadway Series by La Aurora, which was a gift from my bro Barry Stein, formerly of acigarsmoker.com, currentl

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y of Miami Cigar and Co. First, let me say that I really like the La Aurora Company, and Miami Cigar And Co. All the folks involved with these companies are top-notch. I have smoked La Aurora cigars for years, the first box of cigars I ever purchased was La Aurora Bristol Especiales back around 1996. There’s something about the flavor profile of a lot of the cigars from La Aurora that just doesn’t float my boat. I don’t quite know what it is, the construction is always excellent, and they generally burn well. I’ve had this cigar before, which was made by La Aurora for the New York tobacconists to be able to sell at a reasonable price in their high-tax environment. I like it. Maybe I’m starting to “get” the flavor profile from La Aurora, there were several times when I got a flavor that caught my interest. Really nice smoke, if you can find these, try a few. I’ll keep trying the cigars from these companies for sure. Thanks again to Barry for the smoke!

Contest!

It’s Wednesday, and I promised to announce the winner of Sunday’s contest. I was surprised by the number of entries, thank you all for reading and leaving a note. So I’ve consulted the great Random.org’s random number generator and it tells me that comment number 5 is the winner. Doug Bryant: please e-mail me with your address so I can get these goodies out to you! Many thanks to the companies who, either directly or indirectly, made this contest possible! Camacho, Joya de Nicaragua/Drew Estate, StogieBoys.com, Gurkha, Oliva, The Griffins, Joya de Nicaragua, and General Cigar Co. As promised, a similar, but doubled, package will go to Cigars4Troops.