The Stogie Guys

First introduced in 2012, Angel’s Envy Cask Strength is a limited annual release bourbon from the Louisville Distilling Company. Like the regular release bourbon from Angel’s Envy, the annual Cask Strength release is a Kentucky bourbon that spends additional time aging in port barrels.

This year has been an exciting one for Angel’s Envy and Louisville Distilling, which saw the company get purchased by Bacardi. (Needless to say, now Angel’s Envy won’t have any trouble finding rum casks to use for the cask-finished Angel’s Envy Rye.)

This year’s Cask Strength release consists of 7,500 bottles (a slight increase from last year) which will be released in about a dozen states this month where it will carry a suggested price of around $170. While the exact age isn’t disclosed, press materials state the bourbon was aged “up to seven years” in new charred white oak bourbon barrels before beginning the port barrel finishing process.

The 2015 edition is the strongest Cask Strength release to date, weighing in at a hearty 127.9-proof (63.95% alcohol by volume). It is deep golden in color and the nose features caramel and plum notes, along with some heat to remind you of the proof.

On the palate, the bourbon shows a delicious combination of red fruits, vanilla, pound cake, and oak. A splash of water reveals even more flavors, including clove, butterscotch, and hints of mint. The finish has more caramel and berries that linger on the roof of your mouth.

While I never got to try the highly-regarded 2012 and 2013 Cask Strength Angel’s Envy expressions, I can say I think the 2015 surpasses last year’s edition. A splash of water opens it up nicely and really allows the subtleties to shine past the considerable alcohol strength.

With or without a splash of water, this is a bold bourbon that needs a full-bodied cigar pairing. Here are a few suggestions that should hit the mark: Liga Privada Dirty Rat, La Flor Dominicana Limitado V, Arturo Fuente Opus X, and Tatuaje Havana VI Verocu.

–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 underlooked half of the Liga Privada core blends, T-52 features a Connecticut-grown Habano wrapper that is stalk-cut and cured (meaning instead of just curing the leaves, each tobacco stalk is cured whole). The blend features notes of wood, leather, black coffee, and earth. Construction is excellent. There’s a slightly sour quality that comes and goes. Maybe my tastes have changed, or maybe the T-52 has changed, or maybe this was just an anomaly, but, while pleasant, this cigar didn’t live up to its $15 price tag.

Verdict = Hold.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

Introduced in 2007, the original El Centurion blend was a highly limited release billed as Don José “Pepin” Garcia’s personal blend. It remains one of my favorite Pepin-made cigars: subtle, complex, and well-balanced. (No surprise it earned a rare five out of five rating.)

Building on that legacy and name, My Father Cigars reintroduced the El Centurion brand in 2013 with an entirely new blend. That cigar featured a sun-grown Nicaraguan wrapper around Nicaraguan binder and filler tobaccos.

This year, My Father Cigars introduced a second regular release El Centurion blend, dubbed the H-2K-CT, after the wrapper. H-2K-CT features a unique Cuban-seed Habano 2000 wrapper grown in Connecticut around Nicaraguan binder and filler tobaccos.

The line comes in two box-pressed sizes: Corona (5.5 x 48) and Toro (6 x 52). For this review I smoked three Coronas. This vitola sells for around $7 each. The H-2K-CT wrapper, which is reportedly exclusive to My Father Cigars, is rustic and toothy but also oily.

Once lit, there is some syrup sweetness initially, although it fades as flavors of roasted nuts, leather, and oak dominate this medium-bodied smoke. Towards the final third, some cedar spice emerges along with black coffee notes.

I remember when the Habano 2000 first burst on the scene over a decade ago (the Habano 2000-wrapped Maria Mancini was the first box of cigars I ever bought); the wrapper was well-received for its flavors but suffered from chronic burn issues. Time has solved some of those problems, and this Connecticut-grown variety suffers from none of those issues as the samples I smoked were well-constructed from start to finish.

The H-2K-CT brings a lot to the table. It’s balanced and restrained with a nice combination of both sweetness and spice. Add in excellent construction and a fair price and this is the best El Centurion since the original limited release, which still stands out to me as a particularly special cigar. That earns the My Father El Centurion H-2K-CT Corona a rating of four stogies out of five.

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

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

Two weeks ago, e-cigarette trade group Tobacco Vapor Electronic Cigarette Association (TVECA) said it was in possession of a copy of the the deeming rule sent from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for final review before publication and implementation. Initially, the group leaked a copy of the table of contents and promised to leak the full document soon after.

Although the documents were never fully authenticated, every indication points to the document being legitimate. The FDA even took the unusual step of issuing a statement acknowledging the leak and stating they had an understanding that no more of the document would be made public.

While TVECA was focused on e-cigarette regulation aspects of the draft, included in the leaked table of contents was a line—”Regulation of Cigars and Selection of Option 1″—that caught the attention of cigar industry groups. The line was a strong indication that the FDA had transmitted to the OMB a deeming rule that included Option 1 for the regulation of cigars with no exemption for premium cigars.

Unlike Option 2, which exempted certain cigars that meet a definition of premium—including that they are handmade and have a retail price of at least $10—Option 1 would subject all cigars introduced after February 15, 2007 to an FDA approval process. It is a nightmare scenario that industry lobbying has been focused against since the FDA started the process of regulating cigars.

The OMB will now decide whether to proceed with the FDA draft of the rule or request more changes. Speculation is that it was the OMB that asked for Option 2 in the earlier stages of the process, so just because the FDA has moved forward with Option 1, that doesn’t guarantee Option 2 won’t be in the finalized rule.

The leak has raised other questions about the FDA process. Anti-tobacco politicians have already called for a probe of the leak, but the reality is the leak raises more fundamental questions about the FDA process.

Assuming they are authentic, the documents TVECA received could only have come from within FDA or OMB, meaning someone in the rulemaking process violated their confidentiality requirements. Contrary to the insinuations by those calling for a probe, it is the leaker who may have violated regulations, not the trade association that was within its rights to share the documents with the public or media. (Curiously, TVECA seems to have agreed not to disclose the full documents now, and has alluded to using what they have as leverage towards changes to the final document.)

If TVECA received the leaked documents others may have as well, and given that people within FDA and OMB tend to be pro-regulation, it is seems likely that anti-tobacco groups or politicians may have received leaked documents too. This might explain why anti-tobacco senators were so quick to call for OMB to accept FDA’s final version of the rule without changes or deliberations.

Either way, what is clear from the leak is at least one person with access to internal FDA documents is willingly disseminating those documents to people outside the agency. It makes you wonder how the agencies can be trusted with regulations that could determine the future of an industry that provides jobs for tens of thousands around the world, when they cannot even be trusted not to leak their own internal documents.

–Patrick S

photo credits: 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.”

When it comes to woody flavors in cigars, the flavors tend to break down into two types of wood: cedar (think Chateu Fuente) tends to be lighter and spicier, while oak tends to be heavier and richer. The San Cristobal (original line) is a blend dominated by the latter. Oak, bread, and black coffee notes make for a robust, medium- to full-bodied cigar that also demonstrates good balance. It’s a smoke that goes equally well with a coffee in the morning or a single malt after dinner.

Verdict = Buy.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

The Tatuaje TAA 2015 (5.6 x 54) is a cigar with an impressive pedigree. The box-pressed smoke is a re-release of the Tatuaje TAA 2011, the first Tatuaje made exclusively for members of the Tobacconists Association of America (TAA). (The 2015 Tatuaje TAA is one of    fifteen cigar offerings for 2015 made exclusively for TAA members.)

That original Tatuaje TAA release itself was based on one of my all-time favorite Tatuaje cigars, the Barclay Rex 100th Anniversary, which was the first in Tatuaje’s Exclusive Series. (The blend for Barclay Rex, in turn, was based on the Pork Tenderloin cigar, which was made for Gloucester Street Cigars in Boston.)

All of those cigars feature a Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper around Nicaraguan binder and filler. The wrapper is particularly enticing. It’s deep dark brown in color with a sprinkling of shiny crystals that show under the light.

Once lit, there is a burst of wood spice from the closed foot. Soon, the cigar settles into a medium- to full-bodied combination of oak, earth, bread, and char. There’s also some slight red pepper spice along with chewy dried fruit and leather notes.

It’s a complex smoke with lots going on, a roller coaster that starts off spicy before settling in to a more rounded combination of bread and cream.

Construction was good on two of the samples I smoked. Two others, though, suffered from a slightly tight draw that required multiple relights; nothing catastrophic, but it was a slight inconvenience.

Ultimately, while the 2015 Tatuaje TAA might not be quite as outstanding as the Barclay Rex it was based on, it is still an excellent smoke. With plenty of complexity, richness, and balance, the Tatuaje Tobacconists Association of America 2015 earns a 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 take on a single cigar.

Yesterday being Halloween and all, I decided to light up a Halloween-themed cigar: the Pudgy Monsters sampler version of Tatuaje’s Mummy (5.75 x 47). (As an aside, I should point out that although the holiday-themed limited edition cigars were novel and fun when they started, they’ve definitely gotten a little out of control.) The Nicaraguan puro features an attractive sun-grown criollo leaf which extends to a closed foot. The cigar has lots of woodsy notes, cocoa, and just a bit of cinnamon spice, resulting in a medium to full body. A slightly uneven burn self corrected relatively quickly and otherwise construction and combustion was flawless. Between the size and the flavors, this remains one of my favorite cigars from the Pudgy Monsters collection.

Verdict = Buy.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys