Cigars, Cigar Information and where to find Premium Cigars, Discounted Cigars and even Cheap Cigars - “ANYTIME YOU MAKE A CIGAR . . . YOU HAVE GOOD TOBACCO LEFT OVER”

“ANYTIME YOU MAKE A CIGAR . . . YOU HAVE GOOD TOBACCO LEFT OVER”

Plus: 43-ring Lonsdales now considered “cigarillos?” in Smoke magazine

“ANYTIME YOU MAKE A CIGAR . . . YOU HAVE GOOD TOBACCO LEFT OVER”

Los Angeles, August 27 – Cigar lovers are always learning and one of the best – and most fun – ways to find out more is each quarterly edition of Smoke magazine.

In the Spring issue, featuring actress Nicole Muirbrook on the cover, the hidden gem is a fabulous insight into cigars from the man behind the La Aurora and Leon Jimenes brands:

• Guillermo Leon, head of the Grupo Leon Jimenes, said more special-edition cigars like the Aurora 100 Anos are coming. “We have had excellent success with the limited Cien Anos and I have said this will be the last year for it,” he told interviewer Frank Seltzer.

“But anytime you make a cigar, be it the Cien Anos or even a private label, you have good tobacco left over . . . extra bales of wrapper, binder and filler in every kind of tobacco. For eight or ten years, we’ve had inventory of four bales here, 20 bales there. We have excellent aged tobacco but in limited quantity. So what are you going to do with it? Creating a premium limited run cigar I think is a very good way out for us. Once the old bales are gone, the cigar is gone.”

Leon said the cigar development can be tricky. “Some cigars like the 1495 were pretty easy. We knew we wanted a strong cigar with great taste for the 1495. We got that right in three blends using the Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper. The Cien Anos took us more than 40 blends to do it.”

• Celebrated fashion model Muirbrook, still only 23, was found by a modeling talent scout at age 13 in Salt Lake City, Utah of all places and began a whirlwind tour of the fashion scene around the world. She stayed grounded by having her parents with her during her teenage apprenticeship as a model, but after landing in Boston, she learned how to smoke cigars with some members of the Boston police department!

She married film editor Christian Wagner in 2006 and they both enjoy cigars, with a mild preference for those from an island south of Miami.

• The Spring 2007 tasting review included 32 cigars “from A to Z” or in this case, from Arganese to Zarzuela.

Twenty of the 32 cigars earned a score of 9.0 or better. The top scorers were the C.A.O. Brazilia Samba and the Carlos Torano Exodus 1959 Silver Edition Grand Churchill with a 9.5. The Graycliff Chateau Grand Cru President was close at 9.4 and the Joya de Nicaragua Celebracion Gordo and Savinelli Nicaragua Special Selection 2004 Torpedo scored 9.3.

There wasn’t any discernible pattern in the cigars that earned high marks. Of the 20 that scored 9.0 of better, seven were from the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, four from Honduras and one each from the Bahamas and Brazil.

One quite interesting commentary on the dominance of 50-ring and larger cigars came from the reviews for the Lonsdale-sized (6 3/4 inches by 43 ring) Cuban Bolivar Inmensas. Several reviewers called it “thin” and one noted that it was “A long, thin cigar that looks like a cigarillo more than a cigar.” It received a score of 8.8. Thin? A 43-ring gauge Lonsdale? Smoke needs to find some reviewers who weigh less than 225 pounds!

The Summer 2007 issue features an interesting interview with 40-year-old Charlie Torano, now head of Torano Cigars which is not only producing its own line-up of outstanding blends, but continues to produce cigars for others and has now taken over distribution of the Dunhill cigar lines. Writer Bob Ashley talked to Charlie about the current situation.

• About the Torano’s commitment to a new factory in Esteli, Nicaragua, he said “Are we happy that, of all people, Daniel Ortega is the one standing at the door right now? Nobody is happy about that in our industry. But there are a lot of factors that hedge against whatever reasonable fear we might have with Ortega in office.

“One is that Nicaragua has a democratic system in place as imperfect as it might be. There is a free press and 65% of the people did not vote for Daniel Ortega. Nicaragua is a place that bled a lot during the Sandinista revolution. The country is absolutely dead tired of brothers fighting against brothers.”

The Torano family has long roots in Cuba and owned more than a dozen farms in the Pinar del Rio area when the cigar industry was nationalized. What will happen when the embargo ends?

“When Cuba opens up, from a tobacco standpoint, there are going to be a lot of claims against the [Cuban] government by a lot of industries. It’s extremely complicated.”

And what about when Cuban cigars become available?

“I don’t think Cuban cigars will in any way have the market in the United States that they do in the rest of the world. One reason Cuban cigars have dominated outside of the United States has to do with distribution monopolies. For example, for years, the only cigars you could get in Spain were Cuban cigars.

“Cuba makes good cigars. With an 80% market share outside the United States, they can’t all be junk. I just don’t think they are better than the cigars that we make or that other companies make. Today, I would put any great Nicaraguan or Dominican or Honduran cigar up against any Cuban cigar in a true blind taste test.”

• The summer cigar review includes 32 cigars, again a smorgasbord of brands and sizes. The top scorers were the Graycliff Crystal Pirate at 9.5, followed closely at 9.4 by the C.A.O. Italia Gondola, the magnificent Cuvee Blanc Salomon, the Carlos Torano Reserva Selecta Robusto, Macanudo Maduro Crystal and Don Kiki Brown Label Toro at 9.4.

Once again, twenty of the 32 scored 9.0 or better: 11 were from the Dominican Republic with two each from Honduras and Nicaragua plus individual high scorers from the Bahamas, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba and the U.S.!

And there’s much more in the current issue: a riff on lighters, fashion and what goes together from Michael Herklots, a note on the revival of absinthe in the U.S. after decades of embargo by Richard Carleton Hacker and a great story on Emilio Reyes, one of the hidden giants in the cigar industry.

Smoke continues to be an easy and fun-to-read romp through the world of cigars and the cigar life four times a year. And at their current subscription deal of five issues for $9.95, it’s like a broken drum . . . you can’t beat it!
~ Rich Perelman

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