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SMOKING WITH JOE MANTEGNA

Plus: Bhutan bans tobacco sales

Los Angeles, November 19 – What do Joe Mantegna, John Wayne, Lana Turner, George Reeves, Errol Flynn and Bobby Darin have in common?

All of them are covered in the Fall issue of Smoke.

Hollywood historian Laurie Jacobson takes a romp through the history of stars and smoking in a fast-paced read called “Smoking Guns: 7 Hollywood Mysteries and Scandals Yield New Truths” with fun – but true – stories about Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe and the tragic life of singing star and bobbysox idol Darin.

There’s a to-the-point interview with three generations of the Newman family that owns the Cuesta-Rey brand and distributes Arturo Fuente brands in the U.S., a terrific tour of Chicago’s top smokeshops, a thorough exploration of the fabled tobacco fields of Connecticut’s Windsor Valley and a feature on Mantegna, complete with a picture of the contented actor sitting next to an open box of Fuente Fuente Opus X.

And, of course the tasting. There were 28 cigars in this group and only three scored less than four points, the benchmark for “excellent.” The top scorers were the Camacho Corojo (Monarca) and La Aurora Cien Anos (Robusto) brands, each with a mark of 4.6. There was also a review of four flavored brands, including large-sized cigars from Crowd David and the Heavenly Cigar Company.

The tone is a little lighter and less serious than the new Cigar Magazine, but an easy and fun read. Grade: no doubt, an “A.”

No Cigars For You!
The tiny Buddhist nation of Bhutan’s prohibition laws on tobacco sales will go into effect on December 17. Located in the Himalayas, east and north of India and with China to the north, this is a small, mountainous country of 734,000 with 93 percent of its workforce in agriculture.

Although smoking per se is not prohibited, the National Assembly voted in July to ban all tobacco sales and levy a duty of 100% on tobacco products brought into the country.

Meanwhile, Back Home:
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control estimates for smoking in the United States places the number of smokers at 45.8 million adults, of 22.5% of the adult population of the country. This is a decrease in the percentage of adult smokers, down from 24.1% in 1998.

Short Filler:
The deputy chair of the State Duma Health Committee says Russia ranks third in the world behind China and the U.S. as a smoking nation and that 300,000 Russians die annually because of tobacco. However, that figure pales next to the 450,000 estimated to die annually from alcohol-related diseases! Measures against both are coming: a ban on advertising signage in public, warning labels on tobacco products and most importantly, a reduction in the tar and nicotine content of Russian-made cigarettes, among the roughest in the world . . .

A 78-year-old Ohio man finally cashed in his collection of more than one million pennies, rolled in wrappers and kept in 575 cigar boxes by year and mint! Eugene Sukie had the 3 1/2 tons of coins trucked from his home in Barberton to a local supermarket for counting and earned $10,4780.13 for his thrift. Plus, the company whose machines he used – Coinstar – gave him $1,500 for the use of his story, enough to reimburse him for the company’s 8.9% commission. No word of whether any of the cigar boxes will go up on eBay . . .

The 2005 Festival de la Habano next February will have a Canadian night on February 23, with dinner prepared by noted Toronto chef Jamie Kennedy, using specially-flown-in Canadian ingredients. Canadian-grown wines will accompany dinner and entertainment will include Canadian jazz artist Jane Bunnett and violinist Pierre Schryer . . .

Steals and Deals:
BestCigarPrices.com has a nice offer on a sampler well worth trying. It’s the “Aurora Preferidos Treasure Sampler,” a box of five Aurora Preferidos perfectos, all in metal tubes.

There are two Preferidos De Luxe (5 inches by 54 ring, with a Brazilian maduro wrapper), two Preferidos Platinum (5 x 54 with a Cameroon wrapper) and one Preferidos Gold (5 x 54 with a Dominican-grown Corojo wrapper) for $56.25. Expensive, but worth it to try these difficult-to-make cigars which ranked no. 11 in our list of the best medium-bodied cigars available on the U.S. market.

Flipping Out:
Remember that our new Rankings Flipbook is available to all of our CigarWire subscribers this month. It’s a 3-by-5-inch pocket guide to our rankings of mild, medium and full-bodied cigars, perfect for that trip to your favorite walk-in humidor. Sign up today!
~ Rich Perelman

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