Thank you again to Craig Gilpin, the Breadman, for pinch-hitting for me last week. It’s been another rough week (parents can accumulate a LOT of crap over the years!), and cigars have been very therapeutic. I thought Craig did a great job, and the door is always open to him. I have posted about the Foundation Cigar Co’s Olmec Claro before, but not the Maduro for some reason, so I recently picked up a couple of each and figured it would be fun to smoke them back to back. I local shop was having a buy two, get one sale o the entire stock for some reason, so I bought some cigars I generally wouldn’t spend the extra scratch on. The Foundation Cigar Co. Olmec were some I picked up. These are in the $15 range, not terrible, but not inexpensive. I picked up the Grande size, the 6″ x 60, because the box press makes it look smaller (and I don’t mind a 6″x60 cigar). I smoked the Claro first. The Claro starts out with a citric twinge, which doesn’t 
last long, and turns bready with some cafe con Leche flavors. I liked it, good cigar, but the ash is flaky, I needed to dust off after this one! I then (later that day), turned to the Maduro. Both of these cigars have a San Andrés wrapper, difference is very obvious. The website lists binder from Esteli/Jalapa and undisclosed fillers. As I noted the last time I wrote about this cigar, it’s either a dual binder, or a typo on the website. If I liked the Claro, I really liked the Maduro, which should surprise nobody. The Maduro had loads of sweet chocolate with some spices thrown in. It’s a cigar I would love to have in my humidor. If you enjoy many of the cigars I enjoy, this is up your alley.
Next up was the Room 101 15th Anniversary. Room 101 started in 2009, the same year that I started this site. I’ve always wanted to sync up smoking one of their anniversary series, which comes out every year, just never found them around when I was thinking about it. These fell into my lap (TY STG). This is made with A.J. Fernandez, and it’s a Nicaraguan puro, and that’s about all I can find about the blend. This cigar has a lot going on. There’s some fruitiness, some spice, some wood, and cocoa. One of the best Room 101 cigars I’ve smoked. This cigar was almost a year late, but worth the wait, I can’t wait for the 16th! CigarCraig.com turns sixteen at the end of August, by the way!
My appreciation of the La Gloria Cubana brand goes back 30 years, and there have been some winners over the years, but a lot of misses for me along the way. So when I received some of the newest offering, the La Gloria Cubana Los Gloriosos, I was interested immediately. Along the lines of the Colección Reserva (back in 2017), this is blended by Ernesto Perez-Carrillo Jr., who launched the brand in the US in the’70s. La Gloria Cubana in Cuba goes back to the late 1800s. The cigar is a blend of Nicaraguan and Dominican tobaccos, the press information doesn’t give any more information than that. This is the best cigar with the La Gloria name in a long time, at least for me. I really liked the Colección Reserva, and the La Gloria Esteli, and this tops the list for me. There’s a really interesting spice I can’t put my finger on, but is distinctive. I will smoke more, maybe I’ll smoke a Colección Reserva too and see how they compare! I’ll always be a fan of the brand, there’s just some I avoid and some I enjoy!
Happy Mother’s Day to all. That’s all for today, until the next time,
CigarCraig
