The 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.”

Viaje limited releases usually sell out quickly, so when these went on sale in May I snapped up a five-pack for just under $9 per cigar. Even though I’ve mostly had positive experiences with Viaje, the box of 35 was too many cigars to buy without trying any first. This Nicaraguan puro (6 x 48) features a pigtail cap and an oily, reddish-brown wrapper. The profile has lots of leather and wood, but also a more subtle cafe-au-lait sweetness. It starts out full-bodied but settles into a nice medium-full smoke after the first third. With tasty flavors and excellent construction, it’s a cigar I’m glad I bought.

Verdict = Buy.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

No, the title of this article isn’t a reference to some Freudian concept. After all, Freud also said that “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” Instead, I want to explore the way ring gauge size (in other words, a cigar’s thickness) impacts a cigar’s flavors.

The size of a cigar affects many things for sure, and not just the time it takes a cigar to burn. There are two main reasons why, as a general rule of thumb, smaller sized cigars (of the same blend) are more flavorful than their larger counterparts, even though many people seem to believe that a larger cigar will produce more and stronger flavors.

Wrapper/Filler Ratio

The most obvious difference between a smaller ring gauge cigar and a larger one is the amount of filler. Even though the smaller cigar will also use slightly less wrapper, as a little math shows, when the cigar gets fatter, the amount of filler gets (literally) exponentially larger.

Take a 60 ring gauge cigar versus a 40 ring gauge smoke. Using some basic middle school geometry, you can see that while about 50% more wrapper is required to go around the 60 ring gauge cigar, it will also use roughly 125% more filler. (I’ve posted the full table of wrapper and filler for common ring gauges in the comments of this article.)

Because wrapper tobacco is generally the most flavorful (and always the most expensive) component, the smaller cigar will impart more wrapper flavor.

Higher Burn Temperature

The second, possibly more important, and certainly more often overlooked reason that smaller ring gauge cigars are fuller flavored is that they tend to burn hotter and more quickly. If you think about a cigar as a straw through which air is pulled, this makes plenty of sense.

Cigar smokers generally take similarly sized draws no matter the thickness of the cigar. This means that air is drawn through the foot of a smaller cigar at a faster rate than through a larger cigar, creating more air flow, more oxygen, and a higher combustion temperature.

Drew Estate President, and encyclopedia of cigar knowledge, Steve Saka estimates the difference in temperature can be 10 degrees or possibly more between a smaller (40 or 42 ring gauge) cigar and a larger one. That’s a significant difference that effects the flavor and creates a stronger and fuller smoke.

–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.”

Quorum is a bundle smoke made by J.C. Newman in Nicaragua that sells for under $2 and for as little as $1 when bought by the bundle. According the J.C. Newman’s website, Quorum is “the world’s most popular handmade cigar sold in bundles.” It features an Ecuadorian Habano wrapper around Nicaraguan binder and mixed Nicaraguan filler. The Habano wrapper imparts a clean, woody flavor that I’ve come to recognize and enjoy from that Ecuadorian wrapper. Overall, it’s not particularly complex but it does feature unoffensive wood and earth flavors, with an occasional burst of sourness. Construction was good on the one Quorum I smoked, just don’t expect the ash to hold very long. While I’m not really a bundle cigar smoker and it’s far from my favorite cigar, I can see what makes this cigar so popular. It’s solidly-made, medium-bodied, and, best of all, very cheap.

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.”

I’ve written before about Ernesto Perez-Carrillo’s knack for making cigars that hit just the right notes for me, but looking back I realized that there’s just one of his cigars that we never got around to writing up, the 2011 Short Run. From what I can tell, the cigar is very similar to the 2010 Short Run, with the exception of the wrapper: the 2011 uses an Ecuadorian Habano wrapper instead of the Ecuadorian Sumatra leaf that was featured in the first Short Run. The result is similar to the 2010 Short Run, only with a few twists. While it’s still cedary and toasty, it lacks some of the creaminess or balance that I enjoyed in the 2010, and there’s a very faint sourness that doesn’t quite hit my palate right. Still, with excellent construction and a reasonable price tag of around $6 each, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this cigar, even though I prefer the 2010 and 2012 Short Runs.

Verdict = Buy.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

Buying cigars with serious age can be difficult. Fortunately for me, I live near the McLean Cigars PG Boutique, home base of Paul Garmirian Cigars, a company that takes seriously their commitment never to rush cigars to market.

And while all of their cigars are aged for years before they are sold, at their shop they have an even more special collection of cigars that have been aged for well over a decade, including many from the first years of PG Cigars, which was founded in 1991.

On my last trip to McLean, I selected a four-pack of Petit Bouquet-sized PG’s from the original PG release in 1991. The four -pack slide box ran me $44, or $11 each, a lot for a short cigar (4.5 x 38) were it not for the over two decades of age on these Connecticut-wrapped Dominicans.

To get some details on the cigar, I emailed Kevork Garmirian of PG and also asked him for more details about PG’s aging process and philosophy “So many wonderful things can happen to cigars as they rest,” he told me. “It’s good to know when a particular filler or wrapper was grown, but what’s even more interesting is the balance with other tobaccos, their age, and how long it has been since the cigar was rolled.”

“We get a lot of compliments on our PGs and I think that has a lot to do with our ‘staggered’ ordering and aging process,” he continued. “We order cigars about 3 years in advance. With the exception of our Limited Edition that we’ll release in a few months, the cigars that I receive in 2012 will age in our U.S. warehouse for a 2015 release.”

Despite over 20 years of age (Kevork tells me the tobacco is from the late 80s) the little Petit Bouquet shows some rich flavors. Cedar is dominant, but there’s also hints of honey, hay, oak, cereal, and clove-like spice. It’s perfectly balanced and mild- to medium-bodied.

One word of advice: Be careful removing the cellophane, as years of oils have nearly fused the cigar to the protective plastic wrapper on some of the samples I smoked. So long as I successfully removed the cigar from its wrapper, I found construction to be flawless.

Ultimately, the Petit Bouquet isn’t my favorite PG cigar (my preferred profile is more full-bodied, like the 15th Anniversary), or even my favorite aged PG (the larger Belicoso Fino, also from 1991, has more depth) but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an enjoyable smoke and a great experience. I’d even say that for providing almost a full hour of enjoyment, the cigar is a good value at $11. Depth of flavor, value, flawless construction, and a unique experience earn this 21-year-old Paul Garmirian Petit Bouquet a rating of four stogies out of five.

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

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

I didn’t know what to think when Camacho announced a partnership with jewelery maker Matt Booth in 2009. Camacho would be making cigars to be sold under Booth’s Room 101 brand, named after the torture room in George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Four years later, I’ve enjoyed quite a few of the Camacho-made Room 101 cigars, particularly the Conjura and Namakubi. I found this latest Room 101 San Andrés the way I find many cigars, by simply walking into my local cigar shop and asking, “What’s new?” The answer on this particular day was the Room 101 San Andrés, which was released last month.

By my count, San Andrés is the fifth Room 101 blend, created by Room 101-creator Matt Booth and Camacho Cigars. It’s the third regular release joining the original Room 101 and the Connecticut-wrapped Namakubi, while the OSOK (One Shot One Kill) and the Conjura are limited releases. The result is a more affordable cigar that comes in five sizes selling in the wallet-friendly $5-7 range.

For this review I lit up three of the corona-sized 213s (5.5 x 44) which cost me just under $6 each. The cigar features a San Andrés wrapper grown by the Turrent family in Mexico. The largely vein-free, milk-chocolate wrapper surrounds a Honduran Corojo binder and Corojo and Criollo filler from Honduras and the Dominican Republic.

It’s a serious departure from Room 101’s previous releases, but very pleasant with chewy peanut butter, cocoa, and a slightly spicy cedar core. As the cigar evolves, coffee becomes apparent and more spice comes forward towards the second half of this hour-long smoke.

With perfect construction and a reasonable price tag, the 213 is a very enjoyable medium- to full-bodied cigar. That combination earns this Room 101 San Andrés vitola an impressive rating of four stogies out of five.

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

–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.”

I can’t say I’d read much about the PIO Cigar Company when I lit up this sharply-pressed $8 offering. The wrapper is dark brown with multiple jet-black splotches, which takes away from an otherwise very attractive cigar. An easy draw reveals cedary wood and roasted nut flavors. The wrapper also imparts a slight spice on the lips. The cigar’s medium- to full-bodied flavors don’t vary much from start to finish, yet the construction is excellent and the flavor is enjoyable. Best of all, the Resurrection Robusto makes me want to try more offerings from PIO.

Verdict = Buy.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys