The Stogie Guys

I’ve smoked a number of these over several months and found them to be amazingly consistent in both flavor, strength, and performance. The beautiful, light honey-brown Habano wrapper, grown in Brazil, is topped with a perfectly applied cap. The burn line is truly razor sharp, the draw near ideal.

The excellent construction and consistency are a testament to the care and attention to detail by both La Palina brand owner Bill Paley and factory owner Abe Flores in the Dominican Republic.

With medium strength and body, La Palina Classic features an Ecuadorian binder with filler from Nicaragua and the Dominican. It begins with a bready, yeasty tone that’s quickly augmented by a little pepper. That pepper ramps up as you smoke through the six-inch Toro, and some sweetness emerges as a presence as well about a third of the way down.

I get light chocolate on the finish, and the earthy aroma from the smoke is both noticeable and pleasant.

This is not so much a complex cigar that takes off in different directions, but one that begins with a harmonious blend and makes subtle riffs on the dominant themes.

At $7.75 per stick, this 50-ring gauge vitola fits comfortably with the Classic’s aim of being a more affordable line that maintains La Palina’s quality. My colleague Patrick S gave the Robusto high marks about a year ago. A few months later, in a Quick Smoke, he praised the Corona.

This cigar is one I would recommend to anyone, from newcomer to old-timer. For me, the La Palina Classic Toro earns four stogies out of five.

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

–George E

photo credit: Stogie Guys

I’ve had the privilege to blend three different cigars in the past few years, all thanks to my participation in Drew Estate’s Cigar Safari. In each case I chose a different wrapper. I chronicled the results of my Connecticut Ecuador and Brazilian Mata Fina blends here, and I anticipate writing about my latest, Cameroon-wrapped attempt shortly. (Spoiler alert: The Cameroon smoke is quite good, if I do say so myself.)

Each time I’ve blended a cigar, the process has been similar. I’m presented with a menu of pre-selected, pre-fermented, aged tobaccos. They are organized by filler, binder, and wrapper. Based on the vitola format of my choosing, I’m told how many filler leaves I’ll need. And while barber poles and double-binders are certainly on the market these days, I’m instructed to select just one wrapper and one binder.

Besides a few general rules of thumb (don’t overstuff with Ligero to avoid intensity and burn problems, pick a combination of sweet and spicy tobaccos, etc.), every time I’m stabbing in the dark. For me, the process is all trial and error. I’ll walk around the tobaccos, select some filler leaves, crudely stuff them in a binder, get some wrapper in there, and light the whole bunch on fire to get a sense of the general profile. Extinguish. Re-blend. Repeat.

Usually about 60 minutes is allotted for this exercise. I’d love to have a whole day to do this. Maybe a whole week. But even then it wouldn’t be nearly enough time. When the hour comes to an end, I jot my recipe down and hand it in. Several days later I receive about ten cigars. Thankfully, the folks at Drew Estate don’t make us roll the smokes ourselves; my creations would be unsmokably poor-constructed.

Even if my result doesn’t taste positively top-notch, smoking a cigar you’ve blended is thrilling. I keep my ego in check, though. Remember that Drew Estate had already done all the hard work before I made any decisions. They sourced and selected the tobacco. They cared for it, fermented it, and aged it. And they gave me paragraphs of info on each type of tobacco so even a novice like me can yield something decent.

Going through this exercise several times got me thinking: What exactly is meant by cigar blending? What does someone like Willy Herrera do when he’s hired at Drew Estate before the Herrera Estelí line is launched? What did José Blanco do when he was crafting CyB?

Despite the photos in advertisements and the pictures on boxes, surely the great cigar men are not wandering sun-drenched tobacco fields all day with fedoras and white, button-up shirts with breast pockets brimming with cigars. These strike me as mere photo-ops. What really happens when the rubber meets the road in blending?

I’d imagine the answer varies by company and by individual. But folks I’d consider cigar blenders seem to be engaged at various levels of the process—from seed to smoke, if you will. And their activities (meeting with suppliers, checking tobacco that’s fermenting, producing test blends in various sizes, providing instruction to the buncheros and rolleros, etc.) are differentiated from the business aspects of cigar making (payroll, strategic direction of the company, marketing, budgets, etc.).

Perhaps the best understanding of cigar blending was shared with me by Skip Martin when I visited his RoMa Craft operation in Estelí. At the back of his small factory, he had a table full of cigars that were made 100% with one type of tobacco. Martin says he’s constantly smoking these sticks—some of which are not completely enjoyable on their own, mind you—so he instantly knows what the various tobaccos taste like on their own. He stores these mental snapshots so, as he’s creating test blends and finding areas for improvement, he knows exactly which tobaccos to add and which to remove.

In this fashion, true cigar blenders know what the tobaccos they work with taste like—just like you and I know what peanut butter tastes like without having eaten peanut butter recently. This is what it takes to be a cigar blender. Everyone else, myself included, is simply engaging in trial and error. We lack the skills to add the level of targeted refinement that’s required to yield an excellent cigar.

This realization only adds to my enjoyment of a balanced, harmonious smoke. I hope it does so for you as well.

–Patrick A

photo credit: Stogie Guys

An enjoyment of farming, tax laws, and a devotion to the history of cigars are the unique combination that led Jeff Borysiewicz to launch his Florida Sun Grown tobacco endeavor. Up until last year, no long-filler cigar tobacco had been grown in Florida since 1977.

Borysiewicz is owner of the Orlando-area Corona Cigar stores and a partner in the Sindicato cigar company. He also is one of the most dedicated advocates for cigar freedom through his roles as co-founder and board chairman of Cigar Rights of America and the founder of the Puro PAC, a political action committee that supports cigar rights and pro-cigar candidates. Now he can add tobacco farmer to the list.

“I’ve always had a passion for farming,” he told me when we discussed his new project, noting that he was even a state tractor driving champion in his youth. More recently, Borysiewicz purchased land in Clermont (45 miles from Orlando).

Soon after, his tax attorney informed him that unless he grew something on the land, he’d have to pay residential tax rates on the land. So the idea for combining his enjoyment of farming and tobacco came into focus. In 2013, a test crop of 10,000 plants was cultivated, half Corojo seed and half Criollo.

The test proved successful enough that this year 45,000 seedlings were being planted, all of the Corojo variety, and new curing barns were built. The goal is eventually to produce sun-grown leaf that can be used as wrapper that will take on its own unique flavor profile.

While it’s a unique project, growing cigar tobacco in Florida isn’t unprecedented. A considerable amount of cigar tobacco used to be grown in Florida, second only to Connecticut within the U.S., especially in the panhandle region around Quincy.

After the Cuban embargo, such legendary tobacco men as Angel Oliva grew there, at the same time as they planted their first crops in Central America. Eventually, the cost of labor in Florida, and a move towards homogenized wrappers for the Tampa-based factories that had been their main customers, caused production of Florida tobacco to cease in the late 1970s.

I got to examine the tobacco while visiting Drew Estate in Nicaragua last month. While that tobacco isn’t quite ready to be made into cigars, Jonathan Drew and Nick Mellilo of Drew Estate say the results look promising. I can personally attest to its strong, unique aroma.

That first crop yielded roughly 45,000 filer leaves, which, as of last month, was still fermenting in Drew Estate’s DE2 pre-industry facility. The leaf is on the small size, but it could be used as a filler component in a blend (either for 45,000 cigars using one leaf each, or 90,000 cigars with a half leaf in each).

That crop was allowed to grow mostly wild (without priming), which produced only filler. But the hope is that wrapper-quality leaf will soon follow. Borysiewiz has been friends with Jonathan Drew since they both were getting into the cigar industry in the 1990s, so it was a natural pairing, especially now that Drew Estate has the capacity with its new facility.

What project exactly the “Florida Sun Grown” (a name Jeff Borysiewicz has trademarked) will be part of is yet to be seen. But even with the larger crop this year it will always be a limited, unique product.

In the meantime, the project gives Borysiewicz another talking point when telling politicians about the need to protect cigars from federal bureaucrats. Florida Sun Grown tobacco is another example of American jobs being created by the premium cigar industry. If the FDA makes projects like this not financially viable, however, those jobs will no longer exist.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

These days, many of you probably have one eye on the rising thermometer and the other on those Churchills and 60-ring gauge behemoths that have been resting in your humidor through the frigid winter months. What, after all, is more pleasant than a long, sunny afternoon relaxing with a fine, good-sized smoke?

But that doesn’t mean you should forget all about smaller cigars. The need for a quicker smoke can crop up any time. Be prepared. So here are three suggestions for cigars that offer smoking satisfaction in small packages. They’re a testament to the fact that smaller smokes don’t have to be lesser creations. Each of these lines is consistent, excellently constructed, widely available, and reasonably priced.

Partagas 1845 Corona Extra. A 4.5-inch beauty that showcases an oily, reddish Ecuadorian Habano wrapper that’s highlighted by a 46-ring gauge. The Dominican and Nicaraguan filler is aged in rum barrels. It’s power-packed and not quite as smooth as its larger brethren.

Arturo Fuente Hemingway Short Story: Everyone’s favorite diminutive perfecto. Whether you’re smoking the sweet and spicy Cameroon wrapper version or the more difficult-to-find maduro, the 4-inch Short Story is a guaranteed pleaser. If you have a little more time, try the Between the Lines or Best Seller vitolas.

Aging Room F55 Stretto: The 4.5-inch, 46-ring gauge stick’s big brother was Cigar Aficionado’s top non-Cuban of 2013. This one’s nearly as good, though it can become a bit harsh if not smoked very slowly. As you might expect from a vitola with a musical name, this is one harmonious blend, setting off the aged Indonesian Sumatra wrapper and Dominican filler.

So, select your favorites and keep a supply on hand. Don’t get caught up short. And let us know what some of your preferred short smokes are in the comments.

–George E

photo credit: Stogie Guys

Each Saturday and Sunday we’ll post a Quick Smoke: not quite a full review, just our brief verdict on a single cigar of “buy,” “hold,” or “sell.”

Felix Assouline’s Limited Reserve Something Special comes with a price tag of $4.50 that ensures it isn’t limited to special occasions. The box-pressed line features an oily, reddish-brown Habano Criollo wrapper, Indonesian binder, and a combination of Nicaraguan and Honduran filler tobacco. It’s a medium-bodied smoke with powdered cocoa, earth, and slight tea flavors. For the price, the flavors are enjoyable and balanced, although the sample I smoked had an unfortunately tight draw.

Verdict = Hold.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

Each Saturday and Sunday we’ll post a Quick Smoke: not quite a full review, just our brief verdict on a single cigar of “buy,” “hold,” or “sell.”

Five dollars doesn’t go as far as it used to. Someone needs to tell this to Abe Flores, head of Pinar del Rio Cigars, who has built a portfolio of tasty, consistent smokes that don’t break the bank. Light up a dark, Brazilian Arapiraca-wrapped 1878 Capa Madura Robusto (5 x 52) and you’ll have a hard time imagining how a cigar this good can cost little more than $5. This medium-bodied treat is packed with Criollo ’98 tobaccos from Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, and it boasts a balanced profile of creamy nut, cocoa, black pepper, and dry wood. What’s more, construction is perfect. And the easy draw—thanks to the entubado bunching technique—produces tons of flavorful smoke.

Verdict = Buy.

–Patrick A

photo credit: Stogie Guys