The Stogie Guys

In our ongoing effort to make StogieGuys.com as entertaining and reader-friendly as possible, each Friday we’ll post a sampler of quick cigar news and stogie-related snippets to tide you over for the weekend. We call ‘em Friday Samplers. Enjoy.

1) “Sanctimonious killjoys are sweet on banning pleasure.” Now that’s a great headline. Unfortunately, you need a subscription to the Ottawa Citizen (they have newspapers in Canada?!) to read the rest, but since it’s about cigar bans, we think we’d probably agree.

2) Mail order cigar buyers beware: The Senate is considering a bill to ban the U.S. Postal Service from delivering cigarettes. Next up… cigars?

3) Dominican officials incinerated 7,000 boxes of counterfeits this week. They destroyed more than 100,000 false cigars including Cohiba, Montecristo, Romeo y Julieta, Davidoff, Partagas, Punch, Gloria Cubana, Macanudo and others.

4) And speaking of fake stogies… Congrats to Walt from StogieReview who gave the answer we were looking for in yesterday’s contest. He pointed out that the Cohiba only had one row of white squares while the genuine article should have two or three rows.

-The Stogie Guys

In our ongoing effort to make StogieGuys.com as entertaining and reader-friendly as possible, each Friday we’ll post a sampler of quick cigar news and stogie-related snippets to tide you over for the weekend. We call ‘em Friday Samplers. Enjoy.

1) Fuente only makes the Don Carlos line every 30 years, so when these special edition cigars hit the stores in October, don’t be shy about grabbing yours. Also, be on the lookout for Perdomo’s Lot 23 release featuring tobacco from the choicest, most furtile land at a very resonable four to five dollars a stick.

2) In Tuesday’s post, we discussed Fidel Castro’s failing health and its implications on Cuban economics and politics. In 1994, Cigar Aficionado conducted a rare and interesting interview with the dictator about cigars, the trade embargo, and Cuba’s future.

3) We tell you all the time about how smoking bans are just plain wrong, but here’s one reason we neglected: They take money away from charities. And perhaps more importantly, smoking bans are now targeting that classic American institution, the strip club.

4) Jeff at Cigar Envy put together a five part series on the best “Made in America” cigars. Check it out and remember: “Uncle Sam wants YOU to smoke a cigar!”

5) Ever wonder what goes into making a cigar? Here’s a three minute version, set to a latin beat.

-The Stogie Guys

In our ongoing effort to make StogieGuys.com as entertaining and reader-friendly as possible, each Friday we’ll post a sampler of quick cigar news and stogie-related snippets to tide you over for the weekend. We call ‘em Friday Samplers. Enjoy.

1) Over the past few months, we’ve been getting emails inquiring about the long-awaited release of the Ashton Estate Sun Grown, or ESG. Well, the wait is over. We have received word that a 7 inches by 49 ring gauge parejo called the Ashton ESG 20 Year Salute is hitting retailers near you today. With a suggested retail price of $18, this line is the first in a series of ESGs that will be released over the course of the next five years – culminating in Ashton’s 25th anniversary in 2010.

2) We don’t really like politicians, but any candidate who makes this entrance gets some serious respect from the Stogie Guys:

[Kinky Friedman] digs into his vest pocket, which is stuffed with Cuban cigars—fat Montecristo No. 2’s, the same kind Fidel used to smoke. “It’s gonna be a long day, so I came prepared,” Friedman declares and lights up, oblivious to the barrage of no smoking signs plastered on the nearby fuel tanks.

3) Thanks to it’s well-aged 1977 Cameroon wrapper, you may recall the release of Partagas 150 ten years ago. I don’t – I was 13. But I will remember this: In August, Partagas is releasing its 160 line. Made from the same batch of wrappers (now 29 years old), the cigars will sell for $18 to $30 each.

4) Finally, you can chalk one up for the good guys! It may be Fitchburg, Wisconsin (you haven’t heard of it either?), but it’s still good to see that common sense prevailed. The city council overwhelmingly sent a proposed smoking ban up in smoke.

-The Stogie Guys

In our ongoing effort to make StogieGuys.com as entertaining and reader-friendly as possible, each Friday we’ll post a sampler of quick cigar news and stogie-related snippets to tide you over for the weekend. We call ‘em Friday Samplers. Enjoy.

1) We’re not so sure about spending $195 on a shirt, but if you want to drop that kind of bank on a button-down why not get one made to carry your stogies? Thomas Pink is introducing a shirt with a split front pocket for a cigar: “The smaller section features an immaculate box pleat that can expand to hold cigars in a variety of lengths and girths. However, when empty, the cigar pocket sits perfectly flat to the chest. The secondary pocket can also be used for lighters or cutters.”

2) Habanos S.A., the international marketing and distribution arm for Cuban stogies in Havana, recently announced Cohibas will be available next year in a maduro wrapper. Strangely enough, the company stresses that Cohiba maduro wrappers will be produced through a natural fermentation process – and that most other maduro wrappers are developed artificially (which is false). Someone should tell Habanos they don’t need to lie to get Stogie Guys interested in new Cohiba products.

3) Following a hospitality industry trend set by Westin and Disney, all Marriott hotels in the U.S. and Canada will be smoke-free by September. The new policy covers all Marriott brands, including the Ritz-Carlton, Fairfield Inn, Courtyard, and Residence Inn.

4) Once again we found a special unadvertised deal that we feel obliged to pass on to our readers. This time for a mere $15 (that’s $180 less than the cigar shirt) you get eight premium cigars AND a 20-cigar humidor. Here’s the link.

-The Stogie Guys

Note to our readers: In our ongoing effort to make StogieGuys.com as entertaining and reader-friendly as possible, we’ve decided every Friday to post a sampler of quick cigar news and/or any other stogie-related snippets we find interesting. These briefs should tide you over during those long weekends. We call ‘em Friday Samplers. Enjoy.

1) Cigar Envy recently posted a video of Pierre Salinger, JFK’s late press secretary, recalling how the president asked Salinger to find him 1,000 Cuban cigars the day before he signed the embargo banning Cuban goods.

2) A private collector in England this week paid £365 ($673) for a cigar butt that had been smoked by Sir Winston Churchill in 1950.

3) So you’ve become a Stogie Guy but now you want to make the jump to connoisseur? This tasting wheel (from the now inactive Cigar Jack site) will help you identify the many complex flavors that can be found in premium handmade stogies.

4) We’ve been meaning to review a cigar with a candela wrapper (a green wrapper, also called AMS or American Market Selection) but our friends at Stogie Review beat us to the punch. For more on candela wrappers, check out this January 3 article from Cigar Aficionado.

5) Finally, we’ve introduced a new item to our fantastic Stogie Guys store designed specially for the ladies. It’s definetly sweet.

-The Stogie Guys