The Stogie Guys

Next week the center of the cigar world will be right in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip, as the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association (IPCPR) Trade Show returns to the Sands Expo and Convention Center at the Venetian Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. As we have each year since 2008, the last time the show was in Las Vegas, StogieGuys.com will be on the trade show floor providing updates on the many new cigars set to be released.

I’ll be providing live updates starting Monday morning from the middle of the action. But just because the trade show doesn’t open until then, that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty to report already. Here are some of the high-profile new releases that we already know about:

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If you do a little research on the Trinidad brand, you’ll find no shortage of inconsistencies. Some claim that Cuban Trinidads were once reserved for foreign diplomats visiting the communist isle. Castro himself refuted this. Others maintain that Trinidad was specifically crafted to appeal to American consumers who illegally purchase Cubans. This assertion remains highly controversial.

Whatever the case, today there are two separate versions of the brand that is named for the city of Trinidad, Cuba: one made by Habanos SA with Cuban tobacco, the other made by Altadis USA in the Dominican Republic. Like so many other cigar brands, the split was a direct result of Fidel Castro’s criminalization of private enterprise and the subsequent embargo.

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Labor disruptions characterized the production of cigars in Tampa during the early 1900s. Many of the disputes between manufacturers and workers turned violent and resembled something you’d see in a Western film. Abductions, shootings, and lynching were just some of the plotlines that graced these production standoffs. One of these battles among the industry’s good, bad, and ugly reached an epic pinnacle in 1901, when a wage dispute between Cuesta-Rey and a local, predominately Cuban cigar workers’ union resulted in a violent strike that crippled the Tampa economy and led to kidnappings and deportations.

Sources can’t agree on the number of men involved, but somewhere between 6 and 16 cigar workers were kidnapped by a group of vigilantes, deported by boat to a deserted beach in Central America, and warned to never be seen in Tampa again. Well, those brave men eventually made it back to Tampa. Their story has been fictionalized in the novel The Cigar Maker, but the tale was most stunningly captured in the memoir of Luis Barcia Guilaber, a Tampa cigar worker who was in his late thirties at the time of his abduction.

Barcia portrays himself as the sincere underdog, a powerless but determined David squirming against the forces of a corporate Goliath. As Barcia says, he was fighting “a bunch of greedy cigar manufacturers…against thousands of underpaid workers who were requesting better wages.” Barcia captures the story of the labor dispute, his kidnapping, and his journey back to Tampa in memoirs written in 1957.

During the labor dispute, rumor grew of a group of men who were clandestinely arresting and deporting suspected leaders of the labor dispute. Hearing this committee of armed citizens was headed for his house, Barcia turned off all lights and waited quietly in silence while men pounded on his back door and eventually entered his home. Barcia was captured, protested to no avail, and thrown in a trolley and taken to a boat with six other cigar workers.

Barcia’s words are straight out of an alligator-country spaghetti western:

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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.”

Despite their relatively expensive price, I’ve always considered the cigars in the Ashton Classic lineup to be of excellent value. The robusto-sized Magnum (5 x 50) is no exception. I purchased this one at my local tobacconist for $7 and was rewarded with great construction and subtle flavors of nuts, cream, citrus, hay, and pepper. The Magnum is a must-try, even for those who rarely smoke Connecticut shade cigars.

Verdict = Buy.

–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.”

It’s been a while since I lit up a Tatuaje Cajonu 2003 (though I’ve got a box of the Gran Cojonus stashed away in a cigar locker somewhere). It’s a great looking cigar, with a dark, oily wrapper framed by twin bands. The cigar produces a dense smoke with tons of earthy notes and a dark chocolate finish. The full-bodied smoke stays the same from beginning to end and sports flawless construction. Still, I  found it to be a touch one-dimensional. Given the high price and all the other great Pete Johnson smokes, I’d conclude that it’s a good cigar but hardly Tatuaje’s finest.

Verdict = Hold.

–Patrick S

photo credits: Stogie Guys

As we have since July 2006, each Friday we’ll post a mixed bag of quick cigar news and other items of interest. Below is our latest Friday Sampler.

1) A bill that would have expanded California’s statewide smoking ban to include cigar shops and private clubs, after passing in the Senate, this week died in the Assembly in Sacramento. “By all appearances, one of the worst smoking ban expansion proposals in the nation has been defeated,” read a press release from Cigar Rights of America (CRA). “This victory sends a message to not only California, but the country. However, it is California. The opposition will be back, and CRA will continue to diligently monitor the state legislature for any attempt to revisit this issue—and they will.”

2) The bill to prevent the FDA from regulating premium cigars continues to slowly gain support in Congress. It now has 30 cosponsors, and includes a bit of bipartisan support, with four Democrats on board. If you haven’t already done so, be sure to write your representative and ask him or her to become a cosponsor.

3) In June’s “Question of the Month,” we asked readers, “What is your biggest cigar pet peeve?” Smoking bans and/or tobacco taxes came in tops with 37% of the vote, followed by expensive cigars with poor construction (31%), a band that tears the wrapper (15%), inconsistency within a brand or blend (14%), and insufficient information on manufacturer websites (3%). Be sure to weigh in on this month’s question by voting in the sidebar to the right. And feel free to contact us if you’ve got a suggestion for a future month’s poll.

4) Inside the Industry: Undercrown, a new Drew Estate line that we first reported on over a year ago, is set to be released in five sizes at the trade show later this month. Also set for the show, Gran Habano will release “Zulu Zulu” (originally a private blend for George Rico) featuring an Ecuadorian Connecticut wrapper and Nicaraguan binder and filler tobaccos. Meanwhile, General Cigar has announced that the name of its new CAO line will be “OSA Sol” (OSA stands for Olancho, San Agustin, where the blend’s wrapper is grown).

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We’re pleased to announce a new contributor to StogieGuys.com: Mark Carlos McGinty, author of the award-winning novel The Cigar Maker. “Mark M” adds unique expertise to our site, focusing on the rich history of the cigar industry and examining the intricacies of the cigar industry today.

Regular readers will recall that Mark has contributed to the site a few times already. In May, he wrote an article on the complex legal issues that will arise when the Cuban embargo finally ends. More recently, he wrote about the history of the Cuesta-Rey brand and the two revolutionaries who started it in the 1890s. (Both articles are well worth reading, if you haven’t already seen them.) As Mark’s bio notes, cigars and Cuban culture run in his family:

Mark Carlos McGinty is a descendant of Cuban cigar makers and the award-winning author of The Cigar Maker. You can read an excerpt of his book here. His work has appeared in Maybourne Magazine, Cigar City Magazine, Yahoo! Entertainment, and La Gaceta. Mark grew up in Minnesota but spent a good part of his childhood with his Cuban relatives in West Tampa eating ropa vieja and Cuban sandwiches, drinking café con leche and fresh-squeezed orange juice from his grandfather’s tree. His great-aunt rolled cigars for Arturo Fuente so, of course, his favorite cigar is the Arturo Fuente Flor Fina 8-5-8.

Mark spent seven years writing The Cigar Maker, a time when he ate a lot of Cuban food and smoked way too many cigars. Most of those seven years were spent researching the history of Cuba, Tampa, and the cigar industry during the period of 1850–1910. A labor of love with dozens of family anecdotes woven into the story, The Cigar Maker was a finalist at the Indie Excellence Book Awards in 2011, won the Bronze Medal at the Independent Publisher Awards, and was a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s 2010 Book of the Year. Visit the book’s official website to learn more: www.TheCigarMaker.net.

Mark’s first novel, Elvis and the Blue Moon Conspiracy (Beaver’s Pond Press, 2003), won an Eric Hoffer Book Award Honorable Mention for General Fiction. He graduated from Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, and obtained his master’s degree from Xavier University in Cincinnati. Mark lives in Minneapolis with his wife and daughter and pays close attention to the Minnesota Twins, a subject that could one day warrant its own book.

Please welcome Mark to the site in the comments below. And as a bonus, we’ll select one commenter to win a signed copy of The Cigar Maker.

–The Stogie Guys

photo credit: Stogie Guys