The Stogie Guys

No new cigar is as highly anticipated as Sobremesa (at least among the more serious cigar smokers). And it goes without saying that all of the well-deserved buzz can be attributed to Steve Saka. Sobremesa marks Saka’s triumphant return to the industry after a two-year non-compete with Drew Estate—where he played a critical role in growing the company into a Nicaraguan juggernaut.

Sobremesa was announced in July to almost instant excitement as the first line from Saka’s new independent cigar operation, Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust. And while Saka has always displayed humility and, at times, apprehension over how Sobremesa would be received—I’ve heard him use the phrase “unnerving”—his modesty has done little to subdue the overwhelming enthusiasm. But now, finally, after all the discussion on social media, Sobremesa is hitting retailer shelves.

Chances are Sobremesa will find its way to a tobacconist near you. Retailers were clamoring to place orders with Saka at the IPCPR Trade Show this summer in New Orleans. As a result, as Saka recently told me, “We currently have 108 active accounts, and 126 on an active waiting list. We have inquires by another 19 accounts pending.” That’s a heck of a lot of interest for the debut cigar from a new cigar company, especially when you consider Saka didn’t give away any samples at the convention because he felt the cigars weren’t quite ready.

Sobremesa—an idiom from the Latin world that refers to the leisurely time spent tableside after a meal—features an Ecuadorian Habano Rosado wrapper, a Mexican binder, and a filler blend of Pennsylvania Broadleaf Ligero with four different Nicaraguan tobaccos (Gk Condega C-SG Seco, Pueblo Nuevo Criollo Viso, La Joya Estelí C-98 Viso, and ASP Estelí Hybrid Ligero). It is handmade at Joya de Nicaragua. Production is currently capped at 1,000 boxes per month, despite Saka being “grossly oversold,” to maintain quality.

Cervantes Fino (6.25 x 46, $11.45) is one of 6 vitolas, all of which are sold in 25-count boxes. It sports a regal word-less band of gold and mocha, along with a foot band that reads “Sobremesa.” The dark wrapper on the lonsdale is silky and oily, and the pre-light notes remind me of milk chocolate. A punch cut is all that’s needed to reveal an easy cold draw.

To my taste, the profile can best be described as full-bodied, complex, and balanced with loads of rich flavor and a delicate peppery zing. I pick up hints of cocoa, dark cherry, café au lait, baking spices, and creamy caramel. The texture is thick and syrupy. The finish includes a blanket of light pepper across the palate with abundant sweetness. Construction is superb, including a straight burn, intense smoke production, and a solid white ash that hangs on tight.

What stands out about the blend is how approachable it is given the full body. Sobremesa has tons and tons of flavor, yet it’s really easy to smoke and conservative with the spice. Consequently, the Cervantes Fino in particular is the kind of cigar that makes you want to fire up another right away. That’s one of the best compliments I can pay a cigar.

Steve Saka will be the first to tell you nothing ever goes completely to plan in the world of cigars, particularly all the back-end logistics associated with setting out on your own for the first time. But you sure wouldn’t know it to smoke the Sobremesa Cervantes Fino. This is a memorable, expertly blended achievement that’s completely worthy of the price tag. For me, no rating is more appropriate than five stogies out of five.

[To read more StogieGuys.com cigar reviews, please click here. A list of other five stogie-rated cigars can be found here.]

–Patrick A

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.”

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

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.”

In September, six exclusive cigar sizes were announced for the new Drew Estate Lounge at Corona Cigar Co.’s location in Sand Lake, Florida. The sizes are all presented in a toro format (6 x 50), with half featuring a soft-press and half a box-press. The blends include Undercrown, Liga Privada No. 9, Herrera Estelí, Natural, Tabak Especial Dulce, and Tabak Especial Negra. The Liga Privada No. 9 Box Press sports perfect construction, massive smoke production, and flavors reminiscent of dry wood, black pepper spice, espresso, and sweet cocoa. It’s a bit flat compared to the smokes in the regular Liga No. 9 lineup, missing some of the punch and substituting a bready texture for the familiar oily, rich density that, to me at least, is a hallmark of the brand. That said, the Box Press is absolutely a good cigar in its own right if you can light it up without expecting the normal Liga No. 9 experience.

Verdict = Buy.

–Patrick A

photo credit: Stogie Guys

One of the common themes on forums, blogs, and podcasts these days is dissatisfaction with the seemingly endless number of limited and special edition cigars. “I’m through chasing them,” is a typical complaint.

Tiring it may be, but don’t expect the trend to go away anytime soon (barring, of course, some U.S. Food and Drug Administration intervention). Ongoing changes in the cigar industry—from sales to buying habits—are likely to lead to more small releases.

I’m no industry insider, and I have no special knowledge. My conclusions are drawn from conversations with a few manufacturers and retailers, as well as keeping up with and observing the industry for quite a few years.

Consider:

— The premium cigar industry is not growing much, if at all, in terms of sales. Imports for 2014 were essentially the same as for the previous year. At least some manufacturers don’t anticipate 2015 to be much different.

— Much of the growth comes from new smokers, who are apt to be younger and not nearly as tied to a brand as are many older smokers. Retailers of yesteryear can tell you of the many, many customers who’d stop by once a week or month and pick up a box or two of the same cigar like clockwork. These days, customers are much more likely to be looking for what’s new and their repeat box purchases occur far less frequently, if at all.

— Events are driving a higher and higher chunk of sales. Whether a single store/brand affair or massive productions like Big Smoke or Smoke Inn’s Great Smoke, customers expect to be entertained and enticed, as well as given a bargain. Without something new to offer, vendors can find themselves at a disadvantage.

— The growing cigar production industry, especially in Nicaragua, has created bigger factories and more trained workers, both resulting in increased capacity. Those who want to create their own brand can find tobacco and facilities to do it.

Of course, none of this means every company’s success is dependent on novelty or constantly introducing new cigars. Dominant brands such as Padrón and Arturo Fuente continue to be industry leaders and seem virtually unaffected by trends or fads.

But for smaller, newer brands it becomes tougher to break out of the pack and that leads to efforts to distinguish yourself, whether that’s a massive ring gauge, a shop exclusive, a limited run, outrageous packaging, or something else.

I can’t say what lies ahead. But I wouldn’t look for the rate of releases to slow down anytime soon.

–George E

photo credit: Flickr

In this edition of Random Thoughts from the Humidor, I ponder what is meant by “flavored” cigars, keeping the palate fresh with milder smokes, and using cigars as currency for wagers.

Food for Thought on Flavoring

On Saturday I published a Quick Smoke of the Drew Estate MUWAT Kentucky Fire Cured (KFC) in the Just a Friend size. As I understand it, KFC is crafted at Joya de Nicaragua using tobaccos that are cured in a barn under fires of hickory and maple. The smoke from these fires imparts (in the case of Just a Friend, according to my palate) notes of barbeque sauce, chewy meat, hickory, leather, sweet tobacco, and peat. It’s an interesting product and process, though the cigars aren’t my cup of tea. In any event, some readers got me thinking with their comments. I hadn’t previously considered KFC to be flavored. Regarding cigars, I take “flavored” to mean infused with artificial flavors that are not naturally inherent in the tobacco leaves as a result of growing, cultivation, curing, fermentation, etc. So, in my eyes, fire-curing tobaccos—or barrel-aging them, for instance—does not make them flavored. I still think of these cigars as differentiated from, say, Flavours by CAO or Acid by Drew Estate. Perhaps the distinction is not important and this is simply a matter of semantics. Perhaps, though, as the government gets more and more involved in the regulation of premium cigars, this will become an important issue. Recall that a previous FDA proposal stated that under its option for a premium cigar exemption, a cigar would only qualify if it “does not have a characterizing flavor other than tobacco.” Would using fire-cured tobacco or tobacco aged in rum barrels be a violation? What about aging a finished cigar in cedar? To date, the FDA has not provided answers. And, in a particularly troubling development, we’ve learned it may not matter; an unauthenticated draft of the FDA’s deeming rules submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was recently leaked, and the draft shows no exemption for premium cigars. But ultimately, if OMB reinstates an exemption for premium cigars, the notion of “flavored” may become very important.

Mixing Up the Rotation

I’m guessing most cigar smokers started smoking milder cigars, graduated to medium-bodied sticks somewhere along the way, and these days tend to focus on smokes with full body and strength. These seasoned cigar veterans may avoid mild cigars entirely, or they may relegate them to that occasional morning smoke as an accompaniment to a cup of coffee. (I’m basing these broad generalizations off anecdotal evidence, hundreds of conversations, and observations from the ever-expanding world of social media.) To these brothers of the leaf I say this: Don’t be afraid to mix up your rotation with a milder cigar now and then. Not only are these cigars highly enjoyable, but they often provide subtler, more delicate flavors that are harder to find in Nicaraguan powerbombs. Think almond, cream, hay, etc. As an added bonus, you may find your full-bodied favorites taste even better when you sprinkle in a Connecticut Shade smoke from time to time.

Cigars for Friendly Bets

I’m a lifelong Cubs fan and my colleague, Patrick S, is a diehard follower of the Mets (nobody’s perfect, right?). This year, our teams squared up in the National League Championship Series. Before play started—and long before the Mets were eventually vanquished by the Kansas City Royals—we each agreed to send the winner a five-pack of local cigars as a friendly wager. If the Cubs won, he was going to send me hard-to-find smokes from the PG Boutique near his home in Virginia. If the Mets won (as they did), I’d send a sampler of house blends from Tesa here in Chicago. Maybe it’s just me, but for friendly wagers—especially those that are sports-related—cigars just seem to be a more fitting form of payment than money, not to mention a chance to acquire smokes that can’t easily be bought locally.

–Patrick A

photo credit: Drew Estate

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