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.”

Friend of StogieGuys.com (and occasional guest contributor) Chris Verhoeven was fortunate enough to visit Rocky Patel’s factory in Danlí, Honduras, where he worked with the expert cigarmakers to create his own blend. For an amateur blender, I must say I’m quite impressed with the result. This toro has roasted nut flavors and mouth-watering dry chocolate notes. It’s remarkably well-balanced, medium-bodied, and lacking in any construction issues. Even though you’ll unfortunately never be able to purchase one, it gets my highest recommendation.

Verdict = Buy.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

[Editors’ Note: The following is a guest review authored by Chris Verhoeven, a friend of StogieGuys.com who is a cigar enthusiast extraordinaire.]

When I think of candela cigars, I usually think of sweet grass and caramel flavors with a dry bitterness. But that’s not what you get with the Illusione 88 Candela.

Apparently, when Dion Giolito was making his limited release Illusione Maduro cigars, he decided to make an even smaller batch of candelas to prove that it’s possible to make a good one. The Illusione Candela 88 and hl are the result. I was intrigued by the idea and picked up a 5-pack of the 88 (reputedly the better of the two) to see if he had succeeded. Being exceedingly rare, I went to my go-to rare cigar hookup at Uptown Cigar and purchased them for $8.50 per stick.

Visually, this is a stunning cigar. This robusto-sized smoke (5 x 52) features the standard white Illusione band which plays nicely off its deep olive wrapper. The veins, compared to the delicate wrapper, are rugged and give an otherwise smooth cigar some character. The head is finished in a beautifully executed triple cap.

The cigar bolts out of the gate with a strong spice—not a typical black pepper spice, but something new and difficult to explain. This quickly takes a backseat and becomes a tingle on the palette. The rest of the first third is dominated by a creamy taste with undertones of peanut.

As it progresses into the second third, the creamy profile remains but the distinct peanut flavor regresses into a less recognizable, but still enjoyable, general nuttiness. The tingling on the palette almost disappears at this point.

The final third brings hay flavors with a mild sweetness that seems familiar from the early parts of the 88 Candela, as if they had always been there, hiding in the background. Although the cigar has some of the dryness I’ve come to expect from other candelas, this dryness is in no way overpowering or unpleasant.

Despite its composition, the cigar has a respectable medium body and produces bountiful smoke, which holds my interest for the full hour it takes to smoke the stick. All the while the burn doesn’t waver much and the ash holds firm.

It seems Dion Giolito has proved it’s possible to make a whole-heartedly enjoyable candela cigar, and I hope he considers releasing more of them in the future. My only complaint comes in the form of the final third of the cigar, where the profile loses some of its complexity. Despite that fault, I’m confidently awarding the Illusione 88 Candela four stogies out of five and announcing that this cigar is well worth the effort to track it down.

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

–Chris Verhoeven

photo credit: Stogie Guys

[Editors’ Note: The following is a guest article authored by Chris Verhoeven, a friend of StogieGuys.com who is studying at Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam.]

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down and enjoying an Oliva Serie O Maduro with the owner/operater of Tin Tin’s Cigar Bar, David Ze, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. We talked about cigars and the all-to-present encroachment of anti-smoking laws, which certainly stretch beyond U.S. borders.

Tin Tin’s is currently the only cigar bar in The Netherlands, a feat made possible by Ze’s efforts to maintain opposition to the laws within the court system, as well as by being the sole employee of the bar. Recent developments, however, have changed the status quo for Dutch smokers and made life more difficult for those who wish to preserve the tradition.

I had a conversation with Ze between the hustle and bustle of his lively, leather couch-equipped establishment. Among other things, we talked about the challenges of being an entrepreneur in the crosshairs of government regulation.

Stogie Guys: Do you remember your first cigar?

David Ze: I remember it was about 16 years ago. I can’t recall what brand it was. One of the Dutch ones.

SG: Do you have a favorite cigar?

DZ: Not really, too many good smokes. Depends on the hour of the day, what you had for dinner…When it’s 11 in the morning you don’t start with a Romeo y Julieta Churchill. You just don’t do that (laughs).

SG: What made you decide to open a cigar bar?

DZ: As a consumer I thought it was something missing in Holland. When I was in the Caribbean and the U.S. it was normal to have a cigar bar. These laws…People in the Netherlands think that around the world you can’t smoke. But even in the U.S. there are places like this. A nice place to have something to smoke and a nice drink.

SG: As a bar owner, what do you find you like to recommend drinks to pair with a fine cigar?

DZ: In the European Union people are used to drinking cognac and whiskey, but I like to advise them on rum. It’s more unknown here.

SG: Tell us a little bit about the Dutch smoking laws and how you and your bar are impacted by them.

DZ: It’s very easy. If you have a premises with a liquor license you are touched by the laws. There were some court cases where places with one owner and no staff were left out of it. [But] there was a high court ruling recently that said businesses like me, you’re not allowed to smoke anymore. The thing is, we’re going to have elections with a new government and things can change again. So if a government civil servant comes in now and gives me a fine I can take my case to court and see what happens.

In our less structured conversation, it was apparent that the change in the laws was frustrating Ze. “If you’re a vegetarian, there’s no reason to go to the butcher,” he says. But, joking aside, Ze stated that the recent court case truly has made things more difficult by changing the previous “safe work environment” laws to more strict “health code” laws, under which he currently operates under the constant threat of fines.

Ze finds intrigue in the creative measures cigar bar owners take to help secure their livelihood. He is inspired by a bar on one of the French-owned islands that was able to have their establishment declared an embassy with “sovereign soil,” on which the French smoking laws have no authority. Ze aspires to such autonomy and vows to continue to fight for the freedom to enjoy cigars in The Netherlands.

–Chris Verhoeven

photo credit: Stogie Guys

[Editors’ Note: The following is a guest commentary from Chris Verhoeven, a friend of StogieGuys.com who is studying at Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam.]

Initially, the concept of “cigar appreciation through distraction” sounds like a contradiction in terms. How can one further enjoy a cigar by distracting oneself from the experience of smoking it? Let me explain.

I recently embarked on the journey that is getting a master’s degree and have found that I have more reading to do than ever before. This includes a good deal of things that I would not regularly consider enjoyable reading, too, and it started to eat away at my free time—a time usually devoted to cigar smoking.

I decided that I should simply combine the two. Pick out a cigar and head for my university’s smoking lounge to light up and power through some material. Since I assumed I would be consumed by the task of reading, though, I continually reached for my lesser sticks. Good sticks in their own right, but not ones I would otherwise pick for an all-out smoking experience. These include Don Lino’s Africa line, Padilla Hybrids, and the Tatuaje Angeles.

But something strange happened. I found that I started to enjoy these sticks, cigars that I smoked regularly back when I couldn’t afford the high-end stuff, more than ever before. I was falling in love with them again. This got me thinking.

Awhile back, StogieGuys.com published an article that evinced that the average cigar was only meant to be puffed once or twice per minute. What I found was that by distracting myself, I smoked at a slower, more relaxed pace and generally enjoyed the cigar more while picking up on its subtleties.

So, with this in mind, I suggest you give it a try. Pick out a book, trudge through some Sudoku puzzles, or do anything else that you enjoy. Much like fine liquor, these activities can actually complement the cigar and add to your enjoyment of the smoking experience.

That said, I’ll still probably continue to horde my Opus Xs, Anejos, and Padrón Anniversaries for special occasions or moments of blissful smoke emersion. But at least now I’m giving myself a chance to fall in love with some of fine, cheaper sticks that simply require me to slow down and give them a chance to shine.

–Chris Verhoeven

photo credit: Flickr

[Editors’ Note: The following is courtesy of Chris Verhoeven, a South Carolina-based friend of StogieGuys.com who went on a dream vacation.]

Last month, through my local B&M, I was lucky enough to tour the Rocky Patel Premium Cigar Company’s operations in Danlí, Honduras. And while anyone who went on this amazing adventure would agree that the pictures can’t fully convey how spectacular the trip was, today I’ll try to do just that with just those.

It all starts at the field of dreams. It’s amazing how tall these plants get and it’s humbling to walk out and see nothing but tobacco across the horizon. The company lets a few plants flower to harvest and test the quality of the seeds, but most lose their flowers early on so all the nutrients focus on the leaves instead.

Here in the tobacco curing barns, Nimish, the VP of operations and our gracious host, shows us how the tobacco leaves are sewn onto the sticks and hung to cure.

Although it is a multi-step process involving these piles as well as rooms I can only describe as saunas, I found the tobacco fermentation procedure to be the most interesting. The leaves are wetted and piled creating heat on the inside. The temperature must be watched carefully and the leaves must be rotated to prevent the tobacco from burning and losing its flavor.

While seco, viso, and ligero tobacco are known to come from distinct primings (when the leaves are harvested they pick two per week starting at the bottom, and each pick is called a “priming”), gray areas do exist. These women use sight and feel to sort the leaves appropriately. Females are employed exclusively in this process due to their softer hands and superior color vision.

Finally, after years of curing and aging, the tobacco reaches the rolling tables.

I was truly amazed at how many quality control checkpoints Rocky Patel cigars go through. This draw tester is one of those checks. Cigars must fall between 35 and 50 on the gauge…the one I rolled was a 20!

Spanish cedar is the wood of choice at the box factory to ensure the cigars are kept in the optimal environment.

This photo, taken with Uptown Cigars owner and trip sponsor Israel (far left) and Nestor Plasencia, captures one of the trip’s most memorable moments for me.

The whole trip is a blast, evidenced by this snapshot of me drinking by Rocky’s guest pool. I sincerely hope you get to experience this fun for yourself. Rocky does about 30 of these per year through tobacco shops that sell his products, so be sure to check out your local B&M for a chance to take the trip of a lifetime.

–Chris Verhoeven

photo credit: Stogie Guys

With summer fast approaching, the temperature isn’t the only thing going up. Cigar smokers level of fear for the nasty cigar beetle increases right along with it.

While most cigar makers have taken dramatic steps in recent years to control and eliminate the voracious pests, there’s no question that they remain a potential danger. For example, one of my Stogie Guy colleagues had beetle problems with some Cubans recently, and last year our friend Chris Verhoeven wrote about his sticks coming alive.

There’s so much information, and so much misinformation, about beetles that  it’s nearly impossible to sort it all out. Suffice it to say that their eggs, laid in tobacco, may begin to hatch when the environment is very warm and moist. Once free, the little pests just start burrowing, eating, and reproducing.

So, here are some tips for keeping your cigars out of harm’s way during the hot summer:

1) Make sure you have a good digital thermometer and hygrometer. Put in a fresh battery and check the readings frequently.

2) Depending on the nature of your home, simply moving the humidor to a cellar, basement, or cool spot can do the trick. Avoid putting the box too close to an air-conditioning duct to protect the wood and the cigars.

3) A simple remedy is a coolidor (if this isn‘t familiar, just Google it and you’ll find all you ever wanted to know). You can lower the temperature cheaply with freezer packs. Some experimentation will likely be necessary to figure out how many packs you need and how long they last. Also, even though they don’t melt, they may sweat, so keep them in a container or suspended tray to remove any possibility of cigars getting damp.

4) For a more permanent solution, you can try a thermoelectric wine cooler. It’s what I use year-round here in the Sunshine State.

–George E

photo credit: StogieFresh

Each Saturday and Sunday we’ll post a Quick Smoke: not quite a full review, just our brief take on a single cigar. The following is a Guest Quick Smoke, submitted by a StogieGuys.com reader. If you’d like to submit your own for publication, please contact us.

This long stick (6.1 x 42) is quite the trickster. I was tempted to give this a “sell” rating despite its $5 price tag—something I expected out of a cigar from 2000 when Cuba experienced quality control issues. The first half included notes of hay and nothingness. The second half, however, was well worth the wait with lush buttery tones and a period of intense floral flavors. The final quarter brought forward some typical Cuban spice and the very end features an intense salty taste. Although this vitola was discontinued in 2002, many dealers have backlogs from this period, on which they still charge standard prices because of the inherent construction risks. If you’re lucky enough to avoid plugs and uneven burns, the cigar is well worth the $5.

Verdict = Buy.

–Submitted by Chris Verhoeven of Hilton Head, SC

photo credit: Stogie Guys