The Stogie Guys

Last week CVS (NYSE: CVS) made big news when it announced they would no longer be selling tobacco products in their drug stores. The decision itself doesn’t have direct implications on premium handmade cigars, but it does raise some issues that should be of interest to all smokers.

First off, let’s recognize that this is a very significant decision for a corporation to make. The company sells $1.5 billion worth of tobacco every year (presumably with a healthy profit margin), which probably is why the stock dropped the day of the announcement. Any time a company eliminates over 1% of their total revenue (more when you look at total estimated revenue losses) with nothing to replace it, it’s a big deal.

This isn’t the first time a business has made a decision to go anti-tobacco, but I can’t think of another decision that cuts into the bottom line so obviously. Local bars and restaurants go smoke-free all the time before laws dictate they have to, so have national hotel chains and Starbucks, which now forbids smoking even in outdoor areas.

But none of those decisions so obviously impact the bottom line. Sure, I go to Caribou Coffee now instead of Starbucks when I want to sit outside and smoke a cigar with some coffee, but it’s not nearly as apparent to shareholders that my revenue is lost in the way that cigarette sales at CVS are now gone because, as the CVS CEO puts it, “We came to the decision that cigarettes and providing health care just don’t go together in the same setting.”

First off, let’s recognize that businesses are free to make their own decisions, though a public company does have to answer to shareholders. There’s nothing inherently wrong about CVS deciding not to provide cigarettes in the same way that a government prohibition in allowing smoking smoking does infringe on the rights of a business owner to choose to provide a customer something he or she wants (in this case a place to smoke).

But let’s not glance over the hypocrisy either. CVS still sells plenty of products that contribute to the overall bad health of our society (even before you dig into the overuse of over-the-counter and prescription drugs). Potato chips, candy bars, and soda, not to mention beer and wine, all will presumably keep being sold at CVS.

Take a look at the obesity, diabetes, etc. that this country faces, and it’s clear that CVS has singled out one product among many unhealthy things. People are already noticing this hypocrisy, even if they don’t realize that it’s likely because anti-smoker discrimination is far more acceptable than other types of judgmental discrimination.

Still, perversely, if CVS’s move catches on, it could end up helping the independent cigar shops that often carry, though hardly emphasize, cigarettes. Until CVS’s competitors like other drug stores, grocery stores, and 7-11-style convenience stores take the same approach, it will just hurt CVS’s bottom line to the benefit of those who don’t go along. If it ever does catch on more widely, specialty tobacconists will be there to sell cigarettes to smokers, along with the premium tobacco products they currently focus on selling.

And that’s the beauty of the free market. Paternalistic types can bully businesses around, but as long as some businesses are free to cater to adults who choose to enjoy tobacco products, they only open up more opportunities for those who celebrate, or at least don’t moralize about, the freedom to choose to smoke.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Flickr

Many people who enjoy wine have made the trip to Napa Valley, France, Spain, Italy, Argentina, or another wine-producing locale to walk the vineyards, speak to the winemakers, and learn more about the process of transforming carefully grown grapes into wine.

My knowledge of wine is far more limited than my knowledge of cigars. Yet my understanding of wine seems to grow exponentially with each visit I pay to a vineyard. While those visits are rare, each one leaves a lasting impression on me. I pick up new nuggets of information. I see the passion of winemakers sewn into their meticulous processes. I observe how others taste wine. And, above all, I gain a greater appreciation for the grape.

Cigars, like wine, are hard to gain a thorough appreciation for unless you have the opportunity to see them made. Loving cigars is a contact sport. You need to walk tobacco fields. Witness the many careful steps required to properly ferment the leaves. See the cigars being rolled. And speak with the great cigar men who oversee blending, bunching, aging, and boxing.

Such firsthand access to cigars doesn’t come easy. Obviously you can’t get it at an event like Cigar Aficionado’s Big Smoke. While no doubt fun, events like these are typically spent wondering through crowds to exchange coupons for cigars—and trying to balancing a lit cigar with a drink and a plate of food (there’s always a severe shortage of tables). It’s hard to have a brief conversation with a sought-after cigar maker, let alone see any of their processes. One Big Smoke I attended in Las Vegas featured a mile-long line just to shake Rocky Patel’s hand.

Still, there do exist opportunities to visit tobacco fields and cigar factories, and to get an invaluable behind-the-scenes look at cigar production. The foremost example is an experience I can’t recommend highly enough: Drew Estate’s Cigar Safari in Nicaragua. I find myself thinking about my Cigar Safari adventure a lot. It was so eye-opening, and it was a real pleasure to bounce all my questions off knowledgeable men like Jonathan Drew, Steve Saka, José Blanco, and Mario Perez. Other options for factory tours include the ProCigar Festival in the Dominican Republic, Humo Jaguar in Honduras, the Nicaragua Tobacco Festival, or the Habano Cigars Festival in Cuba. I’ve also heard instances of cigar shops sponsoring informative trips, so keep your ears open at your local tobacconist.

Reading about cigars, visiting your local shop, speaking with other enthusiasts, attending events in the U.S., and, of course, smoking cigars are all great ways to learn about the leaf. But I would encourage you at some point to visit a live cigar factory, tobacco field, or tobacco processing facility. The experience will increase your appreciation of cigars twofold. And you’ll have an amazing time.

–Patrick A

photo credit: Stogie Guys

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day, a good time to reflect on discrimination and tolerance. Since MLK died in 1968, the country has made great strides to eliminate racial discrimination against minorities.

Even today there continue to be many social movements that rally behind the slogans of ending discrimination and promoting tolerance. And yet, there’s at least one exception to this trend: the anti-smoking movement.

A week ago, I listed some cigar resolutions I had for 2014. Today I’m giving you my wish list for what I hope cigar makers will do for cigar smokers this year.

Get Creative

In understand cigar making and marketing goes in trends, but what I want the most is originality. Don’t just give your own twist on an existing formula, try something new that challenges the status quo. Last year we saw lots of San Andreas wrappers (we’ll probably see a lot more this year) and before that lots of Ecuadorian wrapper. While I like many of those cigars, I’m more interested in cigars that don’t just follow the trends. (Here’s a thought: What do the RoMa Craft, CroMagnon, and CAO La Traviata have in common? Besides being breakout hits, both use a Cameroon binder, something you don’t see very often. That’s not a plea for more cigars with Cameroon binders, but a reminder that cigar consumers will reward a good, unique cigar.)

Give Us Value

One of the most impressive cigars I smoked in 2013 was the Illusione Rothchildes. You’ll probably see a review of it in the coming months. What’s impressive about it is the value it provides for barely more than $4. It’s proof that you can produce an impressive cigar for well under $5, and that for the right price cigar smokers are willing to overlook an ugly wrapper if the flavor is good and sufficiently unique. If it were up to me, I’d have my favorite ten cigar makers all compete to create their best cigar that could be sold for under $5 at retail. But I’m afraid they are more interested in creating cigars that will sell for $10 each since there’s more profit in that.

More Info Please

A perennial plea from us is for cigar makers to disclose more information about the blends they release and for cigar brand websites to be kept up to date. Even though it can be frustrating, I get that sometimes people want to be vague about their ingredients to create some mystery, or because they don’t want their blend copied (even though I think that’s probably an overblown concern). But even more frustrating is cigar websites that don’t even have cigar lines listed that have been out for six months or more. Considering how easy it is for even a non-tech-savvy person to update a website, there’s really no excuse.

Fight for Our Rights

Every cigar event ought to include literature about Cigar Rights of America and a list of a few easy things every individual can do to protect cigar rights. Large cigar companies spend lots of money supporting the legislative programs of CRA, IPCPR, and CAA. It would cost almost nothing to have their reps insist that if you want your free event sample cigar, you also take a little literature about how to protect your freedom to enjoy that cigar. Given that one of the more likely regulations we might see from the FDA is a restriction on free samples and events, it’s not only relatively inexpensive, but highly relevant.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

New Year’s resolutions are a annual tradition. And even though they are a few days late (nine, to be exact), here are my cigar-related resolutions for 2014:

Smoke More Socially – I smoke plenty of cigars, but not enough in the company of fellow smokers. Part of the reason is I smoke a lot of cigars for reviews, and plenty others while writing other content for this site. But even when I just smoke a cigar to relax, too often it’s just me and a couple fingers of bourbon. (Don’t feel bad for me, I have plenty of friends; just not many who enjoy cigars.) So this year I’m hoping to sit around the table more with my cigar-smoking buddies.

Don’t Neglect the Big Cigar Makers – While I reviewed plenty of cigars this year, a very small proportion of them were from the larger cigar makers like Altadis, General Cigar, Fuente, and Davidoff. Those companies make a disproportionately large percentage of handmade cigars. Yet I reviewed very few of their cigars last year. They make some excellent cigars, so while I won’t be ignoring the smaller, boutique makers, I plan on making a point to review more of the largest cigar companies new releases.

Update Old Reviews – StogieGuys.com has been around for nearly eight years now. And while cigar makers may refuse to admit it, the truth is a cigar can change over such a long period of time, and I don’t mean because of aging. A cigar we reviewed five years ago may be a very different cigar today, even if it shares the same name, size, etc. So while there’s no shortage of new cigars to review, this year I’d like to revisit some of the cigars I reviewed in the first few years of the site.

Share My Favorite Affordable Spirits  – I wrote about twenty-some bourbons over the past year and a handful of other fine spirits. That includes a lot of my favorites, but perhaps it skews towards the limited edition, hard-to-find variety. One of things I find so amazing about bourbon is the high quality of easily found, non-expensive bourbons. So this year I want to focus on the $20-40 bourbon range, and share my favorites with you.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

I had multiple people send me this article from the National Review. In it, conservative write Jonah Goldberg describes his fondness for cigars and the democratic nature of cigars and cigar smokers:

I can often be found on the twelfth-floor balcony of the American Enterprise Institute, also with stogie in hand. A friend and former colleague and I gave this balcony a nickname, “The Remnant,” in homage to Albert Jay Nock’s notion of an irreducible sliver of right-thinking humanity separate and apart from the “Neolithic” masses.

Nock’s was a thoroughly elitist conception, which is ironic, since smoking cigars may be the most democratic thing I do. At the cigar shop, the clientele is mixed in nearly every way, though you wouldn’t say it “looks like America.” A large proportion of the African-American regulars are D.C. cops. In terms of professions, the crowd leans a bit too heavily toward lawyers (as does the nation’s capital). But there’s no shortage of contractors, manual laborers, college students, and retirees.

Politically, there are all types. As far as I can tell, the most ideologically conservative regular (me included) is a federal employee. The gender mix is thoroughly lopsided, of course. Women do occasionally come into the shop, but when they do, all eyes go up as if a unicorn had sauntered into a library. Dennis Prager, another gentleman of the leaf, has written that cigar shops may be the last place in America where men can congregate and talk as men.

It’s worth a full read, even though I’m sure there are aspects – especially the political parts – that some readers will disagree with. (Personally, I’m not sure I’d agree his opinion on who is “the capital’s best tobacconist” but that’s really besides the point.)

The quoted passage above characterizes one of the best parts of cigar smoking. It’s not simply the enjoyment of the cigar, there’s much more to being a cigar smoker than that.

Quite simply, cigar smokers are a community. Even if you smoke alone, you’re flying a flag that says other cigar smokers are welcome to stop by for a chat.

Cigar smokers regularly approach other cigar smokers they’ve never met before to strike up a conversation. That doesn’t happen anywhere else these days. I may be a NY Giants fan, but I wouldn’t walk up to someone wearing a Giants jersey and strike up a conversation, unless he was also smoking E.P. Carrillo.

And that brotherhood of cigar smokers is one of the reasons we enjoy cigars so much.

–Patrick S

photo credit: National Review

Like most of you, I imagine, I’ve found myself in a reflective mood at this time of year. The cigar topic that has drawn much of my attention is reviews. Specially, what might make them more worthwhile for you, our readers.

Here at StogieGuys.com, we smoke cigars because we love them. And we write about them because we enjoy sharing our experiences—good, bad, or indifferent. While each of us has different tastes and preferences, as well as styles, there are a few basics we adhere to when composing full reviews.

For example, you’ll generally find information about the price, size, tobacco, and aspects of performance and strength. Sometimes it isn’t possible to do it all, though, when, say, we have a pre-release stick for which the price isn’t yet set, or when the maker doesn’t identify the tobacco used in the blend.

What I am wondering is whether there are other things you believe are important in helping you decide whether to try a certain cigar for the first time or pass it by. Or elements you’d like to see addressed at greater length. I also wonder if our attempts to describe a cigar’s flavor or aroma are helpful, or if they’re only marginally useful given the subjectivity of taste and the difficulty of describing flavor.

I began to think about some of these things as I was working on a review of a Surrogates cigar. It produces a lot of smoke, and I realized that characteristic is, for me, very important. I simply don’t find a cigar with thin, light smoke nearly as enjoyable, regardless of the flavors. On the other hand, as a frequent outdoor smoker, I care little about a cigar’s room aroma.

So, if you’re in a reflective mood as well, consider giving some thought to cigar reviews and let us know what you like to see in them. I can’t guarantee we’ll always be able to deliver (I, for example, rarely drink alcohol, so I’m not really good at recommending pairings, so I’d suggest you rely on our resident spirits expert, Patrick S, for them).

But I can promise you we’ll certainly give serious thought to your replies.

–George E

photo credit: Stogie Guys