The Stogie Guys

Sosa’s original line, particularly the Wavell size, was a cigar I used to smoke more regularly. Produced by the Fuentes, it offers excellent mild- to medium-bodied flavors at an affordable price. Remembering my fondness for that cigar, I was looking forward to trying some of the newer Sosa cigars.

Last summer, Antillian Cigar Corp. (owner of the Sosa brand), announced three new lines. Underground, billed as the “hippest of the new brands,” is an all Nicaraguan cigar rolled in Little Havana, Miami. The Sosa Family Selection is a more traditional cigar that’s made in Honduras and available in natural and maduro wrappers.

The third cigar (and the subject of this review) is the Sosa 60, an all 60-ring gauge line that comes in four lengths: four, five, six, and seven inches. Rolled in Honduras at Rolando Reyes’ factory, the Sosa 20 utilizes a light brown Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper around Dominican and Nicaraguan binder and filler tobaccos. I smoked a handful of the 4 by 60 “460 S” size for this review.

Woodiness dominates this medium-bodied cigar. There’s also a bit of cream, some toasty notes, and hints of honey and nutmeg spice. The finish is long and cedary.

The 460 shows excellent construction. The draw is easy while the cigar burns evenly and produces a sturdy light gray ash.

I must confess that this cigar surprised me. Thick smokes aren’t usually my thing, but this cigar worked well in the large format (though I’d still be interested to see how it fares in a thinner size).

Available for $5.50, the stubby little smoke is medium-bodied and surprisingly complex. Combine that enjoyable profile with excellent construction and the Sosa 60 460 S earns four stogies out of five.

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

-Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

If you only pick up cigars from your local shop then you probably haven’t heard of the Surrogates Skull Breaker and Bone Crusher cigars. These cigars are only available from New Havana Cigars (NHC), an online-only shop based in Columbus, Ohio.

Unlike most online retailers, NHC’s selection is limited to a handful of more boutique cigarmakers like Tatuaje, Illusione, Viaje, E.P. Carrillo, and 7-20-4, including many hard to find limited releases. NHC has featured a number of exclusive smokes—including the NHC Selección Limitada (a box-pressed size of the Tatuaje Brown Label) and the My Uzi Weighs a Ton Bait Fish (a corona size of the Drew Estate MUWAT)—but Surrogates is the first truly new brand created by NHC.

Last August, NHC owner Dan Welsh described his thinking about the line this way: “I wanted to create a brand for NHC that would bring new customers and service our loyal customers. Looking at our business over the last four years, it was obvious that our clients demanded something special. One thing that was missing was constant availability… Surrogates was created to solve the problem of choosing whether to save or smoke that special vitola. The answer, is both.”

Beyond saying the cigar is created “utilizing a new source” (implying it isn’t made at any of the factories where the cigars he stocks are produced) Welsh reveals few details about the blend, except that the wrapper is broadleaf and it is “made in Central America.” In its current listing on the site a few more details are revealed, as the description says the cigar’s origin is Nicaragua, as is the wrapper and filler.

Shrouded in a bit of intended mystery, one is left to smoke the cigar and evaluate it on its own terms. Available in two sizes, Skull Breaker is a belicoso that measures 5.25 inches with a ring gauge of 52 and Bone Crusher (the subject of this review) is a parejo that measures 5.25 inches with a ring gauge of 54. The Bone Crusher samples I smoked are clearly well-made. The dark, nearly vein-free wrapper is framed by dual matte black bands. The cigar produces a perfectly even burn and sturdy ash that holds for well over an inch.

Bone Crusher yields heavy smoke with a density that coats the palate. Its extremely full-bodied flavors are dominated by espresso, earth, and leather. There’s a bit of pepper at the start but also some lingering bitterness, especially towards the end. All in all, Bone Crusher seems an appropriate name for this cigar. It’s powerful, flavorful, and one of the most full-bodied cigars available anywhere. But all that power comes with a price, as there’s no subtlety or finesse, and little in the way of balance.

Still, it is a cigar that can be enjoyed under the right circumstances: a full-stomach and a strong drink help. And while it’s a bit too powerful to be a favorite of mine, it’s a cigar I might turn to when I want a true flavor bomb. At $7.50 each and $120 for a box of 20, it’s worth a try if you’re a fan of strong cigars. So even though it lacks finesse, the NHC Surrogates Bone Crusher earns a favorable rating of three and a half stogies out of five.

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

-Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

Ask a cigar smoker why a cigar tastes the way it does and you’ll surely hear about the tobacco used and the proportions in which they are blended. Maybe they’ll mention the time of day the cigar is smoked or what drink, if any, they accompany the cigar with. But largely forgotten is one of the most important variables: time.

Tobacco is organic matter, which means that chemically it will change with time. During a cigar’s life, the tobacco changes, and that impacts the flavor. Today I’m breaking down aging into three basic categories:

Factory Aging

Some change, like curing and fermenting in tobacco barns or at the cigar factory, takes place relatively quickly. Other critical aging time, like time spent aging tobacco before it is rolled, or the time the rolled cigars are spent in an aging room before being boxed and shipped, can take place over weeks, months, or years. If you’ve ever smoked a cigar fresh off a rolling table you’ll remember how different that cigar would taste from the finished product, even though the difference may only be 15 of 60 days before the cigars go in the box. Obviously, unless you make your own cigars, you have no control over the factory aging process.

Short-Term Aging

Most critically (and often over-looked) is short-term aging or resting. Most people do this without even realizing it. The most obvious way is letting the cigars settle from shipping, often for a week or two, particularly when it’s extremely hot or cold out, and if your cigars may have been sitting a hot delivery truck for a few days.

Another common form of short-term aging is to let cigars get past what is often called the “sick period,” where the cigar emits ammonia and can be downright unpleasant to smoke. Cubans are known to get “sick” far more than non-Cubans, so often a six-month or more resting period is needed.

Long-Term Aging

The most discussed type of aging is long-term aging, where cigars can be aged for years or even decades. A few non-Cuban cigar makers put dates on their boxes, and all Cuban cigars have box dates, making it easier to precisely age your cigars.

Cuban cigars are notorious for benefiting from (some would say needing) time to age, often a year or more. And while most of the focus with long-term aging is on Cuban cigars, non-Cubans will also change, sometimes for the better, with months or years. Just remember that aging a bad cigar will only leave you with an old bad cigar.

Prime candidates for cigars to age are ones with full flavors that need some smoothing around the edges. Like fine wine, cigars tend to smooth out and add complexity and balance over time, trading fuller body for subtleties, though eventually cigars (like wine) lose too much flavor. So be sure to try your cigars every so often to make sure that time is making them better, not worse.

-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.”

The legendary Romeo y Julieta Churchill was joined by the robusto-sized Short Churchill in 2006. In 2010, this third Churchill variation was added, measuring in at 5.5 inches long with a ring gauge of 55. Technically a “montesco” size, this Cuban puro is surprisingly well-constructed, with a golden wrapper, firm feel, and triple-cap. It’s a very flavorful, medium- to full-bodied smoke with flavors of roasted nut, coffee, and cedary wood. With deep flavor, balance, and excellent construction, it’s the best Cuban cigar I’ve smoked in awhile (including the vaunted Cohiba Behike).

Verdict = Buy.

-Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

Short-filler, mixed-filler, “Cuban sandwich.” There are many names for cigars that don’t use 100% long-filler tobacco (tobacco that runs the entire length of the cigar), but the selling point for such cigars, no matter the name, is always the same: more bang for your buck.

In theory at least, it makes plenty of sense. Cigar factories are always trimming tobacco leaves down to the sizes they need for their premium offerings. If instead of being tossed, those trimmings are used in mixed-filler cigars, the price of the raw materials goes down even though the quality of tobacco is the same as a cigar many times the price.

But I’ve always been skeptical. Are cigar makers really going to make a $3 cigar taste the same as their $8 line? Plus, doesn’t the short-filler (and the looser draw and quicker combustion that goes with it) mean that it isn’t even possible to create the same flavors? With that in mind, I thought it was it was time to try a mixed-filler cigar again. After all, there was a time, back when I was just out of college and my budget was extra tight, when they were regulars in my cigar rotation.

For the task, I chose Don Pepin Garcia’s Tabacos Baez Serie SF, made at the My Father Cigars factory in Nicaragua. The green secondary band says “Serie SF” for short-filler, although technically it’s mixed filler with 70% long-filler and 30% short-filler.

The Nicaraguan puro features a Habano wrapper that, while hardly flawless, seems of high grade. The cigar isn’t particularly soft, although once I began smoking it I found a loose, airy draw and an unpredictable ash, both features characteristic of mixed-filler cigars. As for flavor, it’s medium-bodied and dominated by cedar flavors that, while hardly unpleasant, certainly aren’t all that interesting. There’s a hint of pepper at the start, and coffee and nut notes as the cigar progresses.

So is it going to dazzle an experienced smoker? I doubt it. But priced around $2.50 each, it’s at least as good as I’d expect and maybe even better. Sure, the bits of loose tobacco that end up in your mouth are annoying, but using a punch cutter instead of a guillotine helps.

Though it’s been awhile since I most recently had them, I think two of Pepin’s other mixed-filler cigars, the Ashton Benchmade and Tatuaje Series P, are just a bit better, and certainly this smoke doesn’t compare to most of Pepin’s long-filler premium cigars. Still, if you’re on the golf course or mowing your lawn, the Serie SF wouldn’t be a bad choice. That earns the Tabacos Baez Serie SF Robusto a rating of two and a half stogies out of five.

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

-Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

The Super Bowl has plenty of cigar tie-ins. In fact, for a brief few days in the run-up to the big game, Indianapolis might have been the center of the American cigar scene.

Ron Jaworski hosted his third annual cigar party to support his charity. A celebrity poker event hosted by Devin Hester and LeSean McCoy at the Indianapolis Zoo featured Punch cigars. Anther charity fundraiser offered guests El Tiante cigars. And revelers at the Rolling Stone party were treated to a pairing featuring Bacardi rum and cigars (La Gloria Cubana or CAO La Traviata).

But really there’s only one cigar every fan and player wants to smoke at the Super Bowl: a victory cigar. As a New Yorker and a Giants fan I was  lucky enough to get to light up a victory cigar after this year’s game. (I’m also a Mets, Knicks, and Rangers fan, so celebrating championships is a rare thing indeed.)

For my celebratory smoke I fired up the last of my Cohiba Behikes and poured a glass of fine bourbon. The cigar tasted great, even though in the past I’d always found the Behike 54 to be a little underwhelming, especially for the $50 pricetag.

But then that’s the point. A cigar tastes better when you’ve got something to celebrate, and the bigger the celebration the better. Birthdays, weddings, and championships are all prime time for a fine cigar. And while those events may be few and far between (especially for Mets fans), there’s a lesson in there that’s applicable to everyday life. The most under-looked aspect of whether a cigar will be enjoyable or not is the mindset of the smoker.

So find something (even if it’s small) to celebrate every time you light up a cigar, and you’ll find the cigars taste better.

-Patrick S

photo credit: Winston Churchill Gallery

In 2010, Rocky Patel bought a 50% share in EO Brands, maker of such lines as EO 601, Cubao, Murcielago, and Mi Barrio (all made at Don Pepin Garcia’s My Father Cigars factory in Nicaragua). Yesterday, Eddie Ortega, co-founder of EO Brands along with Erik Espinosa, announced he was leaving the company and starting his own outfit called Ortega Cigars.

“I’ve wanted to do this for quite some time and now is the right time,” Ortega told Cigar Aficionado. “Eric [Espinosa] is like my brother, but I wanted to be independent.” His new company will be headquartered in Sunrise, Florida, just north of Miami. A buyout of his share in EO Brands is being finalized.

Ortega’s new website has already announced three cigar lines. The first, due in March, is the Series D, which will feature a San Andreas maduro wrapper around Nicaraguan binder and filler tobaccos. Ortega also announced two other lines, Brotherhood and Aftershock, but details were hard to come by. To get some information on the other lines, I touched base with Eddie to see what he is planning.

As for Brotherhood, Ortega tells me he doesn’t have the blend yet, but plans to soon. “I just wanted to start promoting the project because it is for a great cause. I want to somehow help out our military heroes and their families. Fifty percent of all profits will be donated to some of the organizations that help our military men and their families,” Ortega told me. He also said that Aftershock is also still in development.

Ortega plans to keep his company small. He says he already has 100 accounts lined up and wants to limit his exposure to around 300 stores. “I don’t want to open a zillion accounts…just good retailers that support the product. That would be cool with me.”

If that happens, he told me he might not even attend the annual IPCPR Trade Show where new cigar companies usually go to promote their brand and open new accounts. At the moment he is handling his own distribution, but he is “in talks with a couple of distributors, but only to distribute to certain areas in the country.”

The Series D is being made at the My Father Cigars factory in Nicaragua, which is run by the Pepin family, his longtime collaborators at EO Cigars. As for future lines, he said he was “planning to make some brands with other factories.”

Ortega described the Series D as an “awesome blend…We are using some fillers from Jalapa and Estelí that are crazy good and help create a profile that is full-bodied with lots of spice, flavor, and aroma. I know the consumer will love this one!”

-Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys