The Stogie Guys

On July 31, I told you about a private cigar tasting we attended with Mike Copperman at Bethesda Tobacco. In that post, I said it’s amazing how refined your palate can be if you (1) pay attention to the geography of your tongue, (2) smoke through the nose, and (3) have a human cigar encyclopedia at your disposal.

While you can revisit that post to study the geography of the human tongue and how it relates to cigar tasting, you most often won’t have a human stogie information bank at your side. But – in order to further your understanding and appreciation of cigars – I’d like to share with you how to smoke through the nose. It’s a relatively simple strategy to maximize the flavors you’ll get from each stick and, no, it’s not inhaling.

First, take a decent puff from a properly-lit stogie. Not surprisingly, your mouth will fill up with delicious smoke. Good. Next, slowly release about 80 to 90 percent of that smoke by gently blowing out.

After that, close your lips, trapping the remaining smoke in your mouth. This time, instead of releasing, literally swallow the smoke (as you would any food or beverage). Then, with your mouth still closed, blow out through your nose. If you see smoke, congratulations…you’ve just smoked through your nose.

Why go to all the trouble? Well, let me answer that question with a question: Ever notice you can’t taste food when you have a cold? That’s because flavor information can’t make it to the odor receptors in your nose.

Our noses can tell the difference between many different tastes, but our tongues can only detect a few flavors: bitter, sour, salty, and sweet. Only about 10 to 20 percent of flavor information comes from our tongue. Smoking through the nose, therefore, will allow you to detect flavors and aromas on the palate you otherwise wouldn’t be able to by just smelling cigar smoke.

Now you certainly shouldn’t do this on every puff – once or twice per cigar should do the trick. Just give it a try and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Happy smoking!

Note to our readers: As you probably already noticed, the picture to the right has no relation to this particular post. I just had some trouble finding a good image and thought a hot Asian chick smoking a cigar wouldn’t be a bad choice. Sue me.

-Patrick A

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

We have received a number of comments from our wonderful readers inquiring when we planned to post a review of a Cuban cigar. After all, over the past few months, we discussed Oswaldo Payá, analyzed Cuban reform, and even shared a Cigar Aficionado Fidel Castro interview with you. Well, beloved Stogie Guys, inquire no more.

A few days ago, I was lucky enough to partake in a Cohiba Siglo V. Since JFK signed the trade embargo in 1962, of course, Cuban cigars have been illegal in the Land of Liberty. I should therefore point out I was overseas when I purchased and smoked this cigar (cough, cough).

The Siglo V is an expertly constructed 6.69 inches by 43 ring gauge stogie with a beautifully smooth creamy brown wrapper. Placing the foot of this unlit cigar under your nose is like breathing in the subtle perfume of a delicate angel.

I gave the stogie a proper snip with my V-cutter (I didn’t want to unnecessarily squander any delicious tobacco) and patiently toasted the foot with an array of wooden matches. A sweet plethora of notes gradually accumulated.

The first puff yielded a heavenly blend of sophisticated floral notes pleasing to the whole palate. The second and finishing phases of this Cuban witnessed an evolution of complex salty and sour flavors complemented by an ever-present dark chocolate sweetness. Not surprisingly, I have no complaints about the burn or draw.

Now some will argue, perhaps effectively, that Americans are over-fascinated with Cubans simply because they are illegal. While I agree that forbidden goods are always more desirable, I tried to clear my head of such thoughts while writing this review.

Notwithstanding my attempts at inward thought control, I can’t honestly conjure any negative aspect of the cigar and, thus, must wholeheartedly give the Cohiba Siglo V a perfect five out of five stogies.

[Reader Contest about this article here.]

-Patrick A

We’ve written about how CAO leads the cigar industry with its innovative marketing strategies, so it comes as no suprise that, once again, CAO is bringing something new and unique to market:

Lovers of unusually shaped and creatively crafted cigars should examine C.A.O.’s Brazilia vs. Italia: Artistry of Champions sampler set. The collection of five cigars breaks new ground in cigar making. Two of the shaped cigars are C.A.O. Italia blends, two are C.A.O. Brazilias and one is a combination of the two blends dubbed “Bratalia.” Two of the cigars feature oversized trumpets with feet nearly wide enough to serve as baseball bats.

By the way, those “trumpets” are the 96 ring gauge cigars that we wrote about a few weeks back (the ones that were scaled down from 137). At $100 dollars for the set, these five cigars certainly aren’t cheap, but there’s nothing else like them on the market.

So if you’re feeling adventurous and burdened by too much cash in your wallet, pick up the Artistry of Champions sampler set at your local cigar retailer…and feel free to send one over to the Stogie Guys!

-Patrick S

We often tell you how smokers are victimized by government-imposed smoking bans that make it illegal for restaurant owners to permit smoking in their establishments. But don’t think for a second that smokers’ treatment as second-class citizens ends there.

Tobacco taxes are another way to victimize smokers. In May, we explained why these taxes are so wrong:

When politicians and well-funded “activists” target taxes on unpopular or unorganized groups in order to fund their pet projects, it is the political equivalent of a schoolyard bully picking on the weakest kid in school. If politicians cannot convince citizens that taxes to fund their projects should be spread broadly across the tax base, they should reevaluate the necessity of the program, not look for a more vulnerable group with which they can saddle the burden.

But now we find another even more extreme example of smokers being targeted with “tobacco taxes.” In Alabama, three Jefferson County cities have been illegally collecting taxes on tobacco for two years to the tune of $2.1 million.

The Alabama Supreme Court reversed itself Friday and ruled illegal a 10-cent tax on tobacco products levied by some Jefferson County cities. “I think the Supreme Court got it right on the legality of the tax,” said lawyer Pete Short, who filed a lawsuit seeking to get the tax overturned. “The law was clear that cities in Jefferson County could not tax tobacco products.”

So will they try to give this money back to the victims it was stolen from? Quite the opposite:

The high court ruled that money collected under the tax by Bessemer, Hoover and Hueytown – about $1.8 million – go to Cooper Green (government) Hospital after a third of the sum is awarded in attorney fees.

So, to sum up, Big Brother took $2.1 million from smokers and, after two years of litigation, the victims get nothing back. Whatever money remains after attorney fees returns to the very government that stole the money in the first place!

That wouldn’t pass for justice in a kangaroo court in a third world dictatorship…But for people who choose to smoke, it’s just another example of how smokers can’t get a fair shake.

-Patrick S

In our July 26 post, Patrick mentioned that we planned to attend a La Flor Dominicana BBQ at Bethesda Tobacco. I just recently had the opportunity to smoke one of the cigars I purchased at that event – and I was not disappointed.

The La Flor Dominicana Reserva Especial Belicoso is a beautiful milk chocolate-colored stick in a silky Ecuadorian Connecticut seed wrapper. With a handsome red and black band, this smooth five and ½ inches by 52 ring gauge stogie is truly a pleasure to behold.

After snipping the cap with a double guillotine cutter and toasting the foot with my torch, the cigar gave off a delightful array of spicy notes. The first puff produced peppery bitter flavors with tiny hints of sweetness, an intriguing interplay between the Piloto Cubano filler and the Nicaraguan binder. Overall, this stogie yielded a nice, subtle balance on the palate. But – for a medium to full-bodied cigar – the flavors were not as pronounced as I would have liked.

Fortunately, there were no issues with body construction: The burn remained perfectly even throughout, and the draw was anything but cumbersome. In my own experience, I’ve noticed that a stogie’s physical attributes are at their peak when you don’t notice them at all. When there are no problems with burn and/or draw, the smoker can focus his or her attention on the most important characteristic: the taste of the tobacco.

On the whole, this is a superior cigar with a lot to offer. The only drawback is that its flavors aren’t as strong as advertised. Notwithstanding that critique, I give the La Flor Dominicana Reserva Especial Belicoso a very respectable four out of five stogies.

-Patrick A

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