NN01 | CigarCraig's Blog

I smoked some new, lesser known, cigars this week, the first of which were some of the new NN01 cigars from German Engineered Cigars. Five years ago I wrote about the Rauchvergnügen cigar, the company’s first cigar. This new cigar is made at Tabacalera William Ventura in the Dominican Republic, and the components are undisclosed. The cigar is presented in one vitola, a 7″ x 48 Churchill, with a milk chocolate colored wrapper. By the way, the NN stands for “not named”, which is a name, isn’t it? In the past, I’ve had mixed results with cigars from this factory, in both personal taste and construction. In true German engineering form, the two samples I smoked were perfectly constructed, and burned well. I take that back, the first sample needed slight corrections a few times, but it hadn’t been in the humidor too long. They are very pretty cigars. I found them to be solidly medium bodied and smooth, with a nice sweetness, and a very pleasant smoke. The whole “German Engineered” thing is gimmicky, but if the cigars are good, who am I to say?

Since we have some chickens, I thought it would be fun to buy some of the Drunk Chicken Cigars and give them a try. This company describes itself as female/minority/veteran owned, and the cigars are made in the USA. They sell direct to consumer on their website and offer five varieties, of which I bought two, the original Drunk Chicken Cigars DCO in a 5½” x 50 Robusto and the Fat Hen, a 4″ x 60 torpedo. I have no idea where these are made, and didn’t take the time to contact the owner and ask, although one source I talked to who did ask said that the response he got was vague. Both cigar were well made. The Maduro was very good, it has a Mexican wrapper, Ecadoran binder and Nicaraguan Ligero filler (what else? it can’t all be ligero, can it? I guess it can…). This was a good Mexican Maduro cigar with some reasonable strength, but not too much, with a unique meatiness. There was a little something that made it unique, which I appreciated, considering it could easily be seen as a gimmick cigar. I’m curious about it being made in the US and being $10, but all told I was impressed and pleased with my purchase.

The other cigar I bought from Drunk Chicken Cigars was the Fat Hen in the Torpedo Shorty vitola. This is a 4″ x 60 torpedo, which I selected over the 6″ x 60 Gordo just for a change of pace. These have a Nicaraguan Habano wrapper, Ecuadoran binder and fillers from Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. My only disappointment with this cigar was the short smoking time, but I guess that’s what I got them for, although I thought it would smoke longer than the 45 minutes that it lasted. As I said, it was well constructed and smoked well. It had a nice spice and woody flavors. I showed it to one of my chickens and she tried to peck the cap off for me. Chickens will chase each other around with a piece of silicon caulk, so they aren’t too smart. Good cigar, Maybe I should have gotten the Gordos. It’s always good to have some short smokes around.

Contest!

OK, time to choose a winner! I’ve been tossing some cigars in the prize bags this week, I threw in an Undercrown Toro, and a couple Tabak Lonsdales. I’m sure a few more will fall into the box before it goes out. I don’t have to use Random.org anymore, Google has a random number generator now, and it selected Mitchell Smith, who asked about the Flow cigar pictured in the prize pack. I typically don’t comment in contest posts because it messes with my system, so I’ll answer him here. The Flow is a new line from Danli Hondura Tobacco, and I’m going to be featuring it here soon with my thoughts. So far I’m a fan, as I’ve enjoyed all the cigars I’ve smoked from that company. I’m still trying to get information about the blend. Anyway, Mitchell, please send me your information so I can pack all this cool stuff up and send it your way! Thanks to everyone for reading along as always!