The Stogie Guys

The third annual release in this limited line from Aging Room features the now-familiar nipple foot, pigtail cap, and same dimensions (5.75 x 47) used in the previous M21 and M20.

The M19 also shares a full-strength profile with its siblings. But this year’s blend—introduced this summer—is a bit different, though all use well-aged tobaccos. To me, the M19 may be the smoothest Fortissimo yet.

With a nearly vein-free, tight Habano wrapper around Dominican binder and filler, the M19 is a lovely cigar. The box press is well done. This cigar performs as fine as it looks, with a near-perfect draw and slow burn from start to finish.

Aging Room rolled 20,000 M19s, the same number as it did for last year’s edition. So while it won’t be on every tobacconist shelf, there should be enough to go around, at least for a little while.

I’ve been working my way through a five-pack ($69.50) and each one has been a pleasure to smoke.

From the start, it grabs your attention with thick, powerful smoke and a pepper blast. The pepper drops off a bit about a third of the way down, and a rich tobacco sweetness builds over it.

There’s a bit of wood and leather along the way as well. By the final third, the pepper is back and bringing the M19 to a strong close.

If, like me, you’re already an Aging Room fan, I think you’ll find the M19 a natural for your palate. If you haven’t tried an Aging Room and want to check in with one at the top of the strength chart, light it up and enjoy.

I give the M19 four and a half stogies out of five.

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

–George E

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

Each Saturday and Sunday we’ll post a Quick Smoke: not quite a full review, just our brief take on a single cigar.

When I got the OK from my doctor to rejoin the land of the living, I had already decided this lovely 6.5-inch lancero would be my first smoke. Minnesota-based Crux sent me three samples when I was on the medically induced wagon, and the dark, oily Habano Jalapa wrapper was enticing. The cigar did not disappoint. The blend, with a Nicaraguan binder and Honduran filler, made an immediate impact with spice and cedar. The spice moved up and down in intensity throughout, and other flavors, from coffee to nuts, intermingled as well. Draw was a little tight in spots, but not really detrimental; construction and burn, always a concern with thin cigars (38 ring gauge), was excellent. A cigar you’ll want to smoke.

Verdict = Buy.

–George E

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

“Hopefully I can hang on to a few The Jekyll’s to do a side-by-side comparison next year.” That’s what I wrote back in November 2014 in my review of last year’s Monster Series cigar from Tatuaje. I can actually remember typing the word “hopefully” while knowing it was highly unlikely I’d have the willpower to keep my hands off my box of The Jekyll, a cigar I rated four and a half stogies out of five.

As it turns out, my 10-count box is long gone, and with it my ability to do a suitable side-by-side comparison of this year’s follow-up, The Hyde. Fortunately, my colleague informs me he still has a few The Jekyll’s in stock, and he was also able to recently purchase a box of The Hyde; so I expect a Face-Off from him shortly. After all, comparing the two cigars is only natural. They’re based on similar blends, and both are a nod to the 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Thanks to the well-publicized rarity of Monster Series cigars, the success of Tatuaje’s marketing, and the sterling reputation Pete Johnson’s company has amassed over the years, I probably don’t need to remind you that, since 2008, Tatuaje has released an annual Monster Series smoke around Halloween. Each celebrates one of Johnson’s favorite characters from the horror genre, including The Frank, The Drac, The Face, The Wolfman, The Mummy, and The JV13 (Jason).

As is tradition, Johnson produced 666 “dress boxes” of 13 The Hyde cigars, with 13 “unlucky” retailers getting the bulk of the boxes to sell. He also released 4,500 plain 10-count boxes, equating to a total run of just under 54,000 individual sticks.

Like The Jekyll, The Hyde measures 7 inches long with a ring gauge of 49 and has a tapered, rounded cap. Whereas The Jekyll featured a lighter Ecuadorian Sancti Spíritus wrapper around Nicaraguan binder and filler tobaccos, The Hyde sports a darker Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper over Nicaraguan binder and filler tobaccos. The Hyde is also distinguished by its green band with write font; The Jekyll had a white band with green font.

The Chuchill-sized smoke is notably oily with a few prominent veins and some imperfect seams. The uneven coloring makes it particularly rustic in appearance, though I find the cap style is quite appealing. At the foot, the pre-light notes are incredibly sweet and chocolatey with a hint of damp earth.

The flavor reminds me of the Frango chocolate mint candies that used to be found at Marshall Field’s in Chicago. Creamy, sweet, chocolaty, minty, and mouth-watering. Background notes include graham cracker, light cedar spice, tea, caramel, herbs, and almond. Smoking too quickly tends to bring out some bitterness, but a paced approach will yield a medium-bodied profile that’s sweet, creamy, and enjoyable.

Throughout, the draw is a little stiffer than I would like, which also limits the smoke production. The burn line—while not necessarily perfect—is well-behaved, and the ash holds well off the foot.

To date, my favorite Monster Series smokes have been The Mummy, The Franc, and last year’s The Jekyll, which is spicier and more bready than The Hyde. That said, The Hyde stacks up quite well to its predecessors. And you have to give a lot of credit to the uniqueness of the flavor (which is what you want from a $13 cigar that will be tough to track down). That’s ultimately what makes this creamy, minty, chocolaty candy bar of a cigar worthy of four stogies out of five.

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

–Patrick A

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