The Stogie Guys

In our ongoing effort to make StogieGuys.com as entertaining and informative as possible, each Friday we’ll post a mixed bag of quick cigar news and other snippets of interest. We call ‘em Friday Samplers. Enjoy.

1) If you’ll be in the Tampa area on November 15, swing by historic Ybor City to check out the 10th annual Cigar Heritage Festival. The event, which has grown tremendously through the years, has no admission fee (donations are accepted), sales by numerous cigar makers, as well as food, drink, and games.

2) The Heartland Institute has found another reason why Pennsylvania’s outright smoking ban on state-owned college campuses is misguided. According to Legislative Specialist John Nothdurft in the USA Today, “the ban will force hundreds of students, many of whom don’t have cars, to hike outside the relative safety of a college campus to partake in the legal act of smoking.”

3) Inside the Industry: Famous Smoke Shop’s “Cigar Monster” daily deals are now available via text message to your mobile phone. Oliva introduced the new Serie V Maduro, a pyramid with a Connecticut broadleaf wrapper and Nicaraguan binder and filler tobaccos. CAO will be providing its America cigars for the band Hinder’s Las Vegas record release party.

4) Around the Blogs: Cigar Jack fires up a Château Real Maduro. Her Humidor smokes a Los Blancos Criollo. Next Generation reviews a Perdomo En Vidrio. Keepers of the Flame lights up a Don Pepin Garcia Black Perla.

5) Deal of the Week: General Cigars is offering a three-pack of its new Macanudo 1968 for just $7.95. That’s about the normal price of just one cigar from the new blend. Take advantage of their offer at Macanudo1968.com.

–The Stogie Guys

photo credit: Flickr

According to Davidoff, the Aniversario Series is “characterized by surprising lightness, dominated by a rich, intense aroma. The tobacco harmonize perfectly in these ideally balanced cigars, exquisitely presented in unique and elegant packaging.”

Between that bit of advertising copy and Davidoff’s reputation, I had some serious expectations when sampling the Davidoff Aniversario No. 3. Did the cigar live up to those expectations? Read on.

The Davidoff Aniversario No. 3 is a six inch by 50 ring gauge toro that is packaged by the box (10 or 20), or in three-packs of tubes. This review is of the tubo, which I picked up in a duty free shop in London for £30 (about $60), but you can find these for around $15 a stick.

The Aniversario line features a caramel brown, U.S.-grown Connecticut wrapper. It is velvety to the touch, although there are some ridges that seem to be caused by large veins in the Dominican binder. Pre-light, I notice grass and honeycomb from the Dominican filler.

After lighting the toro up I found pepper, grass, and a touch of earth—though at times it was a bit dry. The finish is long with cedar and subtle pepper.

The construction is, as I’ve come to expect from Davidoff, superb. The ash held for an amazing two full inches with no problem at all. The draw was easy, almost airy.

Overall, while no particular flavor was very strong, altogether they melded into a medium-full cigar. In the final third the taste really came into its own, becoming exceptionally smooth and cedary as the dryness faded.

One particularly impressive thing I found about the Aniversario was its versatility when it came to drink pairings. The cigar went as well with a crisp sauvignon blanc as it did with a peaty single malt scotch.

Yet given the exceptionally high price and the initial dryness, I can’t be as enthusiastic about this offering as some of Davidoff’s other cigars, like the Grand Cru or Millennium Blend. It’s still a very enjoyable cigar, though, so the Davidoff Aniversario No. 3 earns four out of five stogies.

[To read more StogieGuys.com cigar reviews, please click here.]

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

[Editors’ Note: The following is a guest commentary from Jacob Grier, a friend of StogieGuys.com whose recent move to the West Coast has him face-to-face with environmental-driven smoking bans.]

My apartment hunt in downtown Portland yesterday brought unexpected frustration. As I strolled among modern high-rises with big balconies, surrounded by restaurants and coffee shops and independent specialty stores, I thought I’d found the perfect city for me. Yet time and again I was told that my kind are not welcome in these apartments: the residences are completely smoke-free, inside and out.

I’m not a frequent smoker but I do think that enjoying a good cigar and a glass of whiskey with a close friend is one of life’s great pleasures. With Oregon’s ban on smoking in bars and restaurants coming into effect soon, my home will be one of the few places that I’m allowed to light up here. Being forbidden from enjoying a cigar or pipe even on my own deck or balcony is close to a deal-breaker for me. Walking around the Pearl District yesterday, passing block after block of apartments where I would not be permitted to pursue my hobby, I felt for the first time what it’s like to be a minority facing discrimination. Admittedly, I suffer for a lifestyle choice rather than for an immutable characteristic of my being, so I won’t pretend it compares to racial or sexual discrimination. But still, it was a new experience for this middle class white guy.

I assumed that these anti-smoking policies were how apartment buildings cater to West Coast nanny state types who have fantastically misinformed beliefs about the dangers of secondhand smoke. However much that might irk me, it would be hypocritical of me to deny them the right to live in the kinds of communities they prefer. I respect their rights of property and freedom of association, even if they won’t extend the same courtesy to smokers and business owners.

Then at one of these properties I learned that there’s actually another force at work. LEED certification, the seal of approval from the U.S. Green Building Council, now imposes strict smoking restrictions on buildings that want to advertise their environmental bonafides.

LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. In eco-conscious cities like Portland, it’s a marketing advantage to have a building LEED certified. Builders submit their designs to the USGBC, are given a checklist of features the council looks for, and the number of items they can check off determines their LEED rating. Most of these items involve matters like energy efficiency, reusing materials, reducing water use, and other goals clearly related to environmental purposes. You might wonder what controlling residents’ smoking habits has to do with any of this. I certainly did.

It turns out that LEED certification considers six categories of evaluation, one of which is indoor environmental quality. If tobacco smoke is considered a pollutant, banning smoking is one way of addressing it. One could make a plausible case that LEED certified buildings shouldn’t allow smoking indoors, where habitual smokers could pump a lot of smoke into the ventilation systems. But in proximity to an exterior door? Or on a balcony? There’s absolutely no scientific justification for banning this. Walking by a smoker on the way into the lobby is not going to kill anyone. It’s annoying, perhaps, but it’s not a matter that needs to be addressed by green building codes.

To put all this into perspective, of the more than 70 items on the checklist, only 7 are necessary prerequisites. In the indoor environmental quality category, increased ventilation, low-emitting materials use, thermal comfort, and outdoor air delivery monitoring are all optional. In other categories things like materials reuse, building with certified wood, managing refrigerants, using renewable energy, reducing water use, and minimizing the heat island effect are optional. For a project that’s primarily concerned with environmental protection, prioritizing outdoor smoking bans over these other concerns is strange indeed.

As I said before, I don’t object to leasing companies forbidding smoking if that’s what their customers want them to do. I do object, though, to the USGBC forcing bans onto anyone who wants to advertise their green building practices. Most people don’t know the details of what goes into the LEED checklist; they just want to know that a building is energy efficient, clean, and doesn’t waste resources. Banning smoking outdoors has nothing to do with that and muddles legitimate environmental concerns with restrictions on people’s personal behavior. Worse, it casts doubt on the merit of the USGBC’s other standards. If the organization has so little respect for scientific validity when it comes to smoking, it makes one wonder about the entire checklist. Is it guided by respectable science or by political correctness? Not being an expert in design, I have no way of knowing.

–This originally appeared at JacobGrier.com on Oct. 14.

photo credit: Flickr

Eddie Ortega founded United Tobacco in 2003 with Erik Espinoza. Also known as EO Brands, the company has created some of our very favorite blends including the 601 Serie Red, 601 Serie Blue, 601 Serie Green, and Cubao. In this latest edition of our Cigar Insider series, Eddie tells Stogie Guys about his start in the industry, his partnership with legendary cigar-maker Don Pepin Garcia, his favorite cigars and drinks, and much more.

Stogie Guys: When did you first start smoking cigars? How did you get into the industry?

Eddie Ortega: I started smoking casually in my late 20s when was married to one of the daughters of Rolando Reyes Sr. Back then, I wasn’t an avid smoker and had little knowledge about the industry. During that time Rolando made Aliados, an awesome cigar, and I fell in love with it. I had a successful computer business in New Jersey but, in 1990, I sold it and moved down to Miami. While working as director of MIS for a company in Miami, my ex-father in law asked me to come work with him, so I did. By this time, it was Puros Indios partly due to legal problems with the Aliados name.

SG: These days you’re probably best known for your collaborations with Don “Pepin” Garcia, particularly the 601 line. Can you tell our readers a little about the cigars you made before those, and the history of EO Brands?

EO: Well, we’ve had kind of a rocky”start in the cigar industry. We initially started out as distributors, but our goal was to one day make and distribute only our own brands. We’ve been kind of fortunate and unfortunate with each new project we’ve launched with the exception of our current brands.

Don’t know if you’ve heard or know about our first brand, “Series X.” This brand was made for us by Oliva. We had great success.

For our next project, we decided to contact Rocky Patel. We had Rocky make two brands for us, REO and VIBE, for the first two years from introduction, we also had great success with these two brands. Unfortunately for us, the consistency of the cigars slowed down the sales at the retail level to such an extent that we decided to make it only in limited production and to a limited number of resellers.

SG: We’ve written about your new Cubao line fairly extensively on StogieGuys.com (and reviewed it very favorably), but can you tell me a little about the Mi Barrio cigar you just released?

EO: We wanted to do something unique with a Habano wrapper Pepin had picked up awhile ago. Gorgeous, but very limited in quantity. We also have a great friend who happens to be an artist, Edin Gutierrez, and not too long ago he had painted some scenes depicting some of the Cuban culture. Being that they compliment each other, we decided to introduce Mi Barrio as a limited edition release by combining this great Habano wrapper and the beautiful scenes depicted by Edin in his paintings.

SG:How is Pepin to work with? Any insight into how he continues to create hit after hit?

EO: Pepin and his family are great, not just as business associates, but also as personal friends. How does he do it? Easy: by being meticulous at what he does best. It’s actually very easy to make one good cigar. The trick is to make millions of cigars while maintaining perfect construction and consistency.

SG: I’ve read you’re partnering with Rocky Patel on a project. Care to reveal any details?

EO: I can’t. He is actually lending me the Aston Martin for the weekend, but asked me to please not tell Nimish or Nish.

SG: Two questions I like to ask everyone: First, what is your favorite beverage to pair with a cigar? Second, in your own humidor, do you generally store cigars with the cellophane on or off?

EO: Tawny Australian Ports, actually. I love ports period. Always, no cellophane.

SG: Do you smoke Cuban cigars with any regularity? What do you think about Cuban cigars being made these days?

EO: Nope, I don’t. Don’t think much of them or the current quality.

SG: Besides your own cigars, what are some of your favorites?

EO: Wow, many. Every time I’m in a store, I always try something new, but I do have certain favorites. I’ll just mention some of the ones I smoke the most. Rocky’s Vintage and Summer Release, Ashton Cabinet series, Alec Bradley Tempus, Pepin’s Cuban Classic line, Pete’s Cabaiguan, and many others.

Many thanks to Eddie Ortega for taking the time to talk to us. For more on EO Brands be sure to visit UnitedTobacco.com.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

It’s been six weeks since I reviewed a pre-release Medina 1959 Robusto, a creamy smoke with undertones of spice and plenty of mild complexity. And since this week marks the limited edition blend’s launch on Cuban Crafters’ website, I thought it appropriate to celebrate with an examination of another vitola.

For those of you who don’t remember, Medina 1959 was created to be the Miami-based boutique manufacturer’s crown jewel. To me that says a lot, especially since Cuban Crafters already makes plenty of excellent, under-priced sticks, including Cupido, J.L. Salazar, Don Kiki (Brown and White), La Carolina, and Cameroon.

The idea behind the premium line is to create a pre-Castro stogie (hence 1959) made by masters who have cigar experience in Cuba. The five vitolas, therefore, will be handmade in Miami by Cuban expatriates under the supervision of Manuel Medina, formerly of the H. Upmann and Davidoff factories in Cuba. “All the rollers are Cuban-born cigar makers that came over, some very recently,” says Alberto Noguera, Cuban Crafters’ national sales director. “There are a few that worked for Medina in the H. Upmann factory in Cuba.”

Like the Robusto, the beautiful 6.5 inch by 54 ring gauge Torpedo features a smooth, virtually vein-free Cuban-seed Sumatra wrapper and Cuban-seed habano long-filler. While there was some question about what Cuban Crafters means by “extremely aged tobacco” in my last review, this time I know more details: The wrapper is aged for five years, and the binder and filler for six.

After clipping through the neat, sharply pointed cap, prelight hints of sweet hay and field grass come into focus. The Torpedo starts milder and creamier than the Robusto, developing the same toast and cream profile but with a more diluted onion spice. Balanced by a dry oak flavor, a butterscotch sweetness joins in after the first third.

The rest of the cigar slides from mild- to medium-bodied for the remainder of the 100-minute experience. That enjoyable foray is complemented by superior physical properties that can match any stick on the market.

After smoking six Torpedos for this review, I can confidently say this vitola is just as soothing and delicately delicious as the Robusto. Fans of milder tobacco should not let the $9.20 per cigar MSRP impede them from at least trying the Cuban Crafters Medina 1959 Torpedo. I give it four and a half stogies out of five.

[To read more StogieGuys.com cigar reviews, please click here.]

–Patrick A

photo credit: Stogie Guys

Each Saturday and Sunday we’ll post a Quick Smoke: not quite a full review, just our brief take on a single cigar.

This huge 7 inch by 60 ring gauge stick features the same good looks as the Double Corona I reviewed well over a year ago. The taste is similar too, with full-flavored warm toffee and leather. The burn is occasionally erratic, but overall construction is not an issue. Ultimately, while not as good as the double corona—which I rated a perfect five stogies—this is still a fantastic cigar at $8, even if the girth is uncomfortably large.

Verdict = Buy.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

Each Saturday and Sunday we’ll post a Quick Smoke: not quite a full review, just our brief take on a single cigar.

“Hemingway cigars are extremely difficult to make, so our production is very small,” says Carlos Fuente Jr. Maybe that’s why I haven’t had too many six inch by 47 ring gauge Signature Naturals. But, on the rare occasions I do, I thoroughly enjoy the sweet, dry, and woody taste the Cameroon wrapper and Dominican binder and filler tobaccos offer. That satisfying flavor, coupled with excellent construction, makes this selection worth the $6.50-9 per stick price.

Verdict = Buy.

–Patrick A

photo credit: Stogie Guys