Cigars, Cigar Information and where to find Premium Cigars, Discounted Cigars and even Cheap Cigars - "NAME ME ONE, IN ALL OF HISTORY, THAT AMOUNTED TO ANYTHING"

"NAME ME ONE, IN ALL OF HISTORY, THAT AMOUNTED TO ANYTHING"

New issue of Cigar Magazine readies you for confrontation!

Los Angeles, September 10 – Steve Saka is the President of Drew Estates, one of the most innovative cigar companies in the world. He’s also a talented author.

In a spectacular article written for the Fall issue of Cigar Magazine, Saka recalls an episode many smokers have endured themselves:

At a party, “I was blindsided by a blonde [woman] with a ridiculous bouffant hairstyle. Rather than just complain about my cigar, she challenged me with ‘Cigar smokers are slovenly men. Name me one, in all of history, that amounted to anything.’ Maybe it was the Scotch (or the stench of peroxide from her overgenerous coif), but . . .I froze. I stared at her like an idiot did didn’t respond at all. And, just as the name Winston Churchill (duh!) popped into my head, she spun on her heels and walked away without affording me any satisfaction.”

Saka is determined that others should not share his fate and provides a lengthy list of great men (and one woman) in history who were cigar devotees. The list includes, in alphabetical order:

• Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach;

• American comedian, film and television star George Burns;

• British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, of course;

• American writer Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain;

• American inventor Thomas Edison;

• Britain’s King Edward VII, who reportedly lifted his mother’s (Queen Victoria) smoking prohibition at his coronation dinner by saying, “Gentlemen, you may smoke.”

• Austrian psychiatrist Sigmund Freud, reported to have enjoyed the Don Pedros and Reina Cubanas brands;

• American Civil War hero and later U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant;

• American President John F. Kennedy;

• Rudyard Kipling, the great English poet;

• Hungarian composer Franz Liszt;

• American comedian and film star Groucho Marx;

• American journalist and writer H.L. Mencken;

• American financier J.P. Morgan;

• American general George S. Patton; • Spanish painter Pablo Picasso;

• American baseball star – the best player who ever lived – Babe Ruth;

• American filmmaker and writer Orson Welles.

And Saka ends, of course, with the relevant question left unanswered: “who in history, sporting an outdated bleached-blonde bouffant, has ever amounted to anything?”

That’s only one of the highlights from another lively issue, which also includes these features of note:

• Lew Rothman contributes a fascinating, if brief, article on Fredman Torres of Tobacco Home, a leading maker of cigar boxes for brands from the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua and others.

From his factory in Nicaragua, Torres starts with raw cedar, teak, walnut and other woods and shapes them, Rothman writes, “into manageable sections, which can then be milled, sanded, glued, stapled, nailed, screwed, dovetailed, routered, vanished and painted for the endless array of boxes of produces for cigar manufacturers.”

In line with today’s mores about the environment, Torres has brought the use of cedar-lined plywood and fiberboard into his factory and uses lumber which is harvested under Nicaraguan and international conservation laws.

Not impressed? Consider this: Torres’s boxes must not simply look pretty. According to Rothman, “What is the product inside going to look like by the time it reaches the consumer? Will the heads be intact? Will the tucks be chipped or split due to too much pressure? In some cases, will the box-pressed cigars lose their shape? In the case of round cigars, is there enough tactile pressure to keep the cigars from rotating so that the cigar bands become misaligned?”

It gives you a lot more respect for the boxes we routinely give away then simply admiring the printing job on the label.

• Of course, there were cigar ratings in this issue, this time focusing on maduro cigars:

Among four mild-bodied brands, the Romeo y Julieta Vintage VII (6 inches by 50 ring) topped the scoring at 87.5, winning the appearance (88, along with the Sancha Panza Extra Fuerte Madrid) and taste (88) categories while the Montesino Toro (6 x 50) won for construction (88). The Montesino was a close second with 87 points.

There were 11 cigars in the mild-to-medium category, with the Savinelli ELR Double Corona (6 50) leading the field with 88.8 points. It finished first in the appearance (89) and construction (89) categories and beat out the Perdomo Reserve Epicure (6 x 54; 87.8 points). The Perdomo had the best score for taste (87) along with the H. Upmann Signature Magnum (6 x 50) and the Avo Classic No. 2 Maduro; the H. Upmann and the Don Tomas Clasico Robusto (6 1/2 x 50) tied with the Savinelli for best appearance (89).

In the medium-to-heavy group comprised of six cigars, the Punch Pita (6 x 60) dominated, finishing first in all for categories: appearance (89), taste (89), construction (90) and overall score (89.5). Second was the La Gloria Cubana Corona Gorda (6 x 52), which tied for best construction (90) with the Punch.

Nine cigars were listed in the heavy-bodied category and the all-maduro Onyx Reserve line took top honors. The Onyx Reserve Toro (6 x 50) had the best score for appearance (90) and construction (88) and scored 88.3 points overall. The construction score of 88 points was equaled by the El Rey del Mundo Robusto Larga (6 x 54), the Hoyo de Monterrey Dark Sumatra Media Noche (5 3/4 x 54) and the Excalibur No. III (6 1/8 x 50). Tops in taste was the Cohiba Black Robusto Crystal (5 1/2 x 50) with 89 points with the El Rey del Mundo and Hoyo de Monterrey Dark Sumatra a point behind.

And there are many other terrific features to enjoy, including Simon Chase’s case for Britain as the “spiritual home for Havana Cigars,” the story of Manuel Quesada and MATASA, the expanding tobacco empire of the Swiss-Dutch firm Villiger-Stokkebye and much more. If you enjoy cigars and you can read, you have to have Cigar Magazine on your must-read list four times a year!
~ Rich Perelman

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