Memoirs of a Cigar

I am smoking a staple of Cuban Cigars, the Bolivar Belicoso Fino. A marvelous cigar with excellent consistency. I don’t think I have ever had a Bolivar Belicoso that did not impress me. The perfect drink to pair a Bolivar Belicoso with is a French Cognac. If you haven’t had your Bolivar with a French Cognac, please do, as you will experience what cigar pairings are all about.

This is a box from 2008, and I had laid a few of these down to rest, and they only get better. When smoking a young Bolivar Belicoso Fino you get that rich powerful chocolate flavor. But with this Bolivar, one with a few years under it’s belt, it settles into a fantastic smoke. The first third permeates with toasty tobacco, sweet oak and white pepper. The middle third reveals a finesse like quality with herbaceous notes and a hint of floral fruit notes on the aftertaste. The last third maintains the finesse like quality with a bit more bite. The white pepper returns, but with a suaveness that clearly reveals why you get goose bumps when saying “Bolivar Belicosso”.

Check out this short clip referencing the Bolivar Belicoso from my all time favorite movie Black Hawk Down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgb_1b8qMzo&feature=youtube_gdata

The “Benji Menendez Partagas Master Series Majestuoso”, or “Partagas Benji” as I like to call it, is the #15 rated cigar of Cigar Aficionados Top 25 Cigars of 2009. Everyone has been telling me it’s the best Dominican Partagas they have ever smoked, so I had very high expectations, and had saved this cigar for an occasion when I had the time to savor it completely.

This Friday night the time was right for the Partagas Benji. I whipped up a half dozen Mojitos, threw on a Lounge House Music CD, and retired to the waterfront terrace with my Benji Menendez Partagas Master Series Majestuoso.

The draw from this cigar was flawless, and I mean like breathing air flawless. The draw is so effortless, the flavors hit the back of my throat instead of my tounge! The flavors are mainly sweet wood and leather mixed with salty notes of black and red pepper, and a touch of nutmeg. An outstanding cigar with amazing complexity and balance, and a very unique flavor profile.

When smoking the Partagas Benji, you can tell it was blended by a long time icon in the cigar industry. Smoking a Partagas Benji is like smoking a classic Cuban that you never tried before. I really hope they continue this limited production and turn it into a regular production cigar, as I can see myself smoking this Partagas Benji for years to come.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, the Indian Tabac Super Fuerte Corona Maduro is one of my favorite smokes. I love the strong maduro flavor in this compact format. It’s also a cost effective (and legal) alternative to the Cohiba Maduro #5 Secretos.

I smoked one at lunch today with a co-worker at La Bodeguita Del Medio, with a Cuban Sandwich of course, and had a second one after work while walking the dog around the lagoon. I just can’t get enough Super Fuerte Maduro!

I have been patiently aging a box of these for almost 3 years now. Smoking an aged Indian Tabac Super Fuerte Maduro revealed a sophisticated and elegant smoke well beyond what I was expecting. I was stunned that the little powerbomb I had become accostomed to smoking could settle into such a smooth elegant smoke. The texture of the smoke was soft and silky, while the flavor profile revealed previously hidden notes of hazelnuts and espresso. Aging made a tremendous difference in one of my already all time favorite smokes. I would rate my 3 year aged Indian Tabac Super Fuerte Corona Maduro at 91 points.

The 2010 Davidoff Puro Belicoso is the strongest Davidoff ever released. It’s a Dominican Puro, meaning it’s made 100% from tobacco grown in the Dominican Republic. It includes a beautiful dark wrapper made from Hybrid Seed in the Yamasa region of the Dominican Republic.

The cigar has a velvety mouthfeel unlike any cigar I can recall. It saturates the palate with thick rich smoke. The flavors are of heavy leather, light pepper and spice. I also noticed some dark fruit notes on the aftertaste in the first third of the cigar.

The Davidoff Puro Belicoso is a rich and rewarding aged smoke which almost forces the smoker to sit down, relax, and take your time. Maduro smokers will revel in it’s rich taste, while Davidoff lovers will enjoy it’s richer then normal flavor profile.

I even ran into a pair of ducks who enjoyed the smell of the cigar and hung out downwind just a few feet away. I always thought it was just an old wise tale, but I guess what they say is true, there really are Davidoff Ducks!

This past Friday I gave my cigar buddy Richard one of my prized posessions, my last Habaneros Gangster. It’s a 64 inch ring gauge Habaneros I picked up from Lost City Cigars in West Palm Beach Florida. This is my favorite large cigar, and the wrapper smells so sweet, I drove most of the way to work with the cigar held up to my nose, inhaling it’s sweet floral scent.

Habaneros are made by a master roller from the Romeo y Julietta factory in Cuba, who has now opened his own factory in Florida. The sweet fresh conneticut wrappers are a masterpiece. After parting with my last Gangster, I had to smoke a Habaneros myself, so I pulled out the Habaneros Churchill.

I smoked it while walking my dog Maggie to Marlin Park, where she could run around the beach and dig in the sand. Walking around the canals, passing the palm trees, smoking a Habaneros, it felt like I was back in Florida again.

I have said it before, and I will say it again, I believe Habaneros Cigars to be the best mild cigars in Florida, and the best value too. The prices are beyond belief for such amazing smokes. If you are ever in Florida, please do yourself a favor and stop by Lost City Cigars in the City Place Mall in West Palm Beach. You will be glad you did!

I’m smoking my first 601 ever, and I have got to tell you, I don’t know why I waited so long to get into these. The 601 Box Press Maduro Toro is the #6 rated cigar of the year by Cigar Aficionado, and it’s easy to see why in just the first few puffs.

After executing a perfect cut on the tripple seam cap, and slowly roasting the foot, you are immediately immersed into a world of maduro bliss. Sweet flavors of coffee, nuts and cocoa swirl around your tongue with each puff, concluding with a sweet clean finish that leaves your palate salivating for the next puff. Your lips tingle from the naturally sweet nicaraguan maduro wrapper. You can taste the natural sweetness in this wrapper quite clearly. It’s like using the brown ‘sugar in the raw’ in your coffee, as opposed to the cheap white sugar packs.

Honestly this is one of Don Pepin Garcia’s finest creations. The box press is perfect, and the draw is flawless. The triple seam cap produced what might be my straightest cut ever. The taste is sweet and spicy, complex and balanced, full flavor without being overpowering.

In short the 601 Box Pressed Maduro is a perfect maduro cigar!

As I write this I’m sitting on a small wooden dock overlooking the water, with my dog Maggie and a cigar. What a great way to end the day.

The cigar is a rare cigar, that was just released at the end of 2009 at the IPCPR Trade Show. To make it even harder to get, it’s only available in stores (not online), and only 60 stores in the US have gotten shipments. I picked mine up at West Coast Cigars in San Jose last week for $10.00.

The Frank Llaneza 1961 is a good smoke. Scratch that, a great smoke. Frank has been blending and creating cigars since 1961, and is considered the “Godfather of Honduran Cigars”. After the Cuban Embargo he was involved in the blending of many great Cuban Cigars such as Hoyo, Punch, Excalibur and El Rey del Mundo out of Honduras.

Although this is not a Cuban Cigar, it’s definately a rich and rewarding ‘Cubanesque’ smoke. It’s covered in a dark Ecuadoran Sumatra Wrapper, and is a rich and spicy smoke. I noticed flavors of cream, nuts, wheat and a meaty bite, with a smooth leathery aftertaste. This is the kind of cigar you smoke down to the very end, which I did, and enjoyed every minute of it.

Today I stopped by West Coast Cigars in San Jose. This was my first time visiting this charming cigar store which is inside a little house with a big front yard complete with outdoor tables and chairs. It was a beautiful and sunny day, and the yard was so welcoming, it made me want to have a picnic.

The inside of West Coast Cigars was just as comfortable. The owner was genuinely nice and very knowledgable. He accompanied me into their large walk in humidor and advised me on all the great new cigars they had. West Coast Cigars have an impressive assortment of cigars. They have almost every brand I could think of, and several unique sizes and shapes I didn’t know existed.

Their prices are quite good. I ended up buying 13 top quality cigars, most of which were 90+ point smokes, all for a total of $115.00 including tax! It’s probably the best selection of cigars for the price I have ever purchased in California. I think alot of it has to do with the reasonable pricing of cigars these days. Since Cigar Aficionado awarded their #1 Cigar of 2008 to a $5.00 cigar, everyone is making phenomenal cigars at very good prices. You can now buy a 90 point cigar for around $8.00 in California, which if you know about the Tobacco Taxes in California is quite a feat. Of course most stores have a huge mark up too, so hats of to West Coast Cigars for keeping their prices so reasonable.

All in all West Coast Cigars is a great Cigar Store! They have a top notch selection, excellent prices, and a very friendly atmosphere both indoors and outside. If I lived closer, I would probably hang out there and smoke more often. I’m sure many local cigar smokers have made West Coast Cigars their home away from home already.

Today Chloe and I accompanied her friend Sophie down to San Jose for a job interview as a TV Co-Anchor. I’m keeping my cigar smoking fingers crossed for her. Hopefully if she gets the job, I can fandangle myself an interview discussing the world of fine cigars.

After the interview I headed over to West Coast Cigars, which I will discuss more in my next post. Needless to say I bought a bunch of great new cigars.

We then made our way over to Santana Row for some Mexican Food at Consuelo. Fresh Guacamole, Chorizo in melted Cheese, fried Plaintains, and a pitcher of their killer Sangria.

After dinner I lit up my CAO La Traviata. Oh, what a great smoke! Spicy nuts and chocolate blended with cream and spice. There was a live flamingo guitar player nearby, and the usual assortment of classic muscle cars cruising by. There was also a Lamborghini Murcialago that went by, sounding like a finely tuned jet engine. Every head on the street turned when they heard that powerful high pitched engine roar. After a while the street lights came on, and a gentle night breeze blew through. My CAO La Traviata gave me an hour alone to witness the world going by. It was almost an out of body experience. What a facinating little thing these cigars are!

The El Titan De Bronze Gran Reserve Salomon is a wonderful smoke. You can call it a Salomon or a Figurado or a Perfecto, but no matter what you call it, it’s a great smoke.

I always expect great things from a Salomon shaped cigar, and this El Titan De Bronze delivered! It starts off smooth and elegant with a fabulous draw. Light intermingling flavors of cedar and spice and sweetness consumed me. The cigar was such a complex smoke it’s hard to describe all the flavors, let alone when some started or finished. I can say it was cigar smoking perfection from start to finish. The cigar was mild to medium bodied, with a sweet Conecticut Wrapper. The flavor profile was constantly changing throughout the entire 1 hour and 45 minutes I enjoyed it. It was very well constructed, great tasting and always interesting.

El Titan De Bronze: Always A Great Smoke!!!

The Torano 50 Year is a very good looking dark cigar, made with a Brazilian Arapiraca Sun-Grown Wrapper. The filler is from Nicaragua, and the binder is from Honduras. The Carlos Torano 1959 Exodus 50 Years celebrates 50 years of Exodus from Cuba. Fittingly, I enjoyed mine with a Cuba Libre of Bacardi 8 Year Rum and Coke.

I smoked the Torano 50 Year Torpedo, which was very firm in the top half, and just a bit softer in the bottom half.The Cigar starts off with a rich leather and chocolate taste. Toward the middle the cigar opens up to deliver a dark chocolate taste combined with raisins and oats. The final third gets a touch of cream added in to complement the dark chocolate and leather flavors.

This is a very well made and rich cigar. The ash held on all the way past the binder. I probably could have kept the ash holding on for the whole cigar had I wanted to. It burned nice and slow and delivered a thick, rich and balanced taste throughout. The core flavors were heavy leather and dark chocolate. This cigar will appeal most to experienced cigar smokers who enjoy very rich and full flavored smokes. The 50 Year might be a bit too strong for beginners, or those who prefer more mild smokes. Although rich and powerful, the 50 Year was very well made and its flavors were well balanced throughout, so it was never overpowering, even on an empty stomach.

As I do with most torpedo’s I’m trying for the first time, I used a dickman cut, named after Joe Dickman, a Fuente-Newman Cigar Rep. A dickman cut is a cut most used on a torpedo cigar which is done at a 45 degree angle. The angled cut allows more surface area to maximize the cigars flavor. I used my new Xikar Ultra Slim Cutter which, as always, delivered a perfect cut.

There ain’t nothing like an E.P.C., and that’s the truth. This was my third EPC Edición Inaugral 2009 and I am still in awe of this cigars mindblowing taste, balance and complexity. The very first time I smoked one I knew it was one of the best cigars I had ever smoked, but each time I try one they seem to further convince me that they might be ‘the’ best cigar I have ever smoked.

For those of you living on the moon for the past 30 years, EPC are made by Ernesto Perez Carillo, who created and ran La Gloria Cubana Cigars. After many decades of sucess driving La Gloria, concluding with his Artesanos De Miami series, he has created a new cigar company of which EPC IEdición Inaugral 2009 are his first masterpiece.

The Artesanos de Miami Cigars are amazing, and have a sweet honey taste and smell to them. I have bought many of these impecible torpedo from the La Gloria Factory Store on 8th & 11th in Miami. They seem to magically settle after about 4-6 months into a rolled up leaf that would please the cigar gods tremendously.

In the below picture you can see the last cigar made by Ernesto Perez Carillo at La Gloria Cubana; the Artesanos De Miami Torpedo, and the first cigar made by his new company; the E.P.C Edición Inaugral 2009. They share impecible looks and construction obviously. I think I have also discovered that the dark leaf in both blends might be the same, as the foot of both cigars give off the same plesant honey smell which I love so much.

God these cigars are good! I can’t wait to see what Ernesto Perez Carillo releases next!

http://www.lacasadelhabano.cu/site/content/view/32/63/lang,english/

I stumbled across this very cool page on La Casa Del Habano’s Website that lets you create and customize your own ‘virtual’ Cuban Cigar.  The cigar is displayed and grows and shrinks at the slide of your mouse.  It would be great if you could actual order the cigar you made, but its a very neat Cigar Application none the less.