Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

I would just like to take this time to thank each and everyone one of you who have stopped by to read about my thoughts on cigars.

Now go and enjoy some turkey, your time with loved ones and, if you get some time, enjoy a great cigar or two!

World’s Longest Cigar

A Floridian created the world’s longest cigar last Saturday when he built a cigar measuring over 180 feet. Now, I’m sure some of you are saying that this is a pointless endeavor and that this guy should be worried about more important things; like creating tasty cigars in a more manageable vitola.

You scoffers are obviously overlooking the buzz this guy is creating for his brand, which means more sales for this guy. You would also be missing the point that it’s just cool doing something like this. After all, if you can’t be the best, you might as well be the longest.

From the story:

“We still here and we still making big things,” said Wallace Reyes, the man who hand-rolls cigars at the Ybor City Museum almost every day, and the man behind the world record attempt. “So why not bring the worlds longest cigar to the cigar capital of the world?”

Over the past few weeks, Mr. Reyes rolled super-long cigars sections in preparation for Saturday’s record attempt.

***snip***

On Saturday morning, the sections were joined over a several hour period and the final adjudication was made later that day.

Before the announcement, Reyes said, “We’re gonna have a brand new record!”

Fortunately, his hard work paid off, and the record was his.

And if you are one of those people who do not believe everything you read then here is video proof!

That is one BIG cigar!

Winston Churchill Cigar

Everyone knows that Winston Churchill loved his cigars and, I think, many people admire him partially because of his ferocious appetite for the good life, which included lots of liquor in addition to the cigars. Now, have you ever wanted to know what one of Sir Winston Churchill’s cigars would cost today? Wonder no more!

The cigar has now been valued at £800 by an expert during the filming of the Antiques Roadshow.

Student Christian Williams, 33, was given the cigar when he was just 12 by his grandad Ronald Williams, a WWII veteran.

At over six inches long the cigar has never been touched by its owner, who keeps it safe in a sturdy wooden box.

It was taken from a historic meeting between Churchill and the other Allied leaders at the famous Casablanca Conference.

Based off current exchange rates that means the cigar is worth something like $1 million – that’s an expensive cigar! But, based off the looks of it, I don’t think anyone is ever going to be smoking this cigar due to the poor conditions it was stored in.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="460" caption="Winston Churchill D-Day Cigar"][/caption]

Still a cool cigar and an interesting story.

Cigar Rights of America Photomosaic

A couple of weeks ago I was playing with a program called AndreaMosaic. What it does is takes a bunch of pictures and arranges the to look like another picture. This sort of thing is more commonly known as a photomosaic.

What I did was upload all of the Twitter avatars of everyone who is following Cigar Rights of America on Twitter. The thing is that since there were only slightly more than 400 followers at the time the ending image looked horrible. So, I cheated and created the image that you see above by reusing images as often as the program wanted to use them and by having more tiles (images) make up the mosaic.

I also created this other photomosaic that you see below using the images less often, that means less tiles.That also means that you can make out the individual images a lot better.

The reason why I like this second one the most is because you can actually see the individual pictures that make up this photomosaic. And, if you click on this image, you can see a larger rendering of this image. So you can see the individual avatars that make up the Cigar Rights of America logo even better.

Creating these photomosaics only took a couple of hours. Oddly enough, the most time consuming part of this endeavor was the manual uploading of all the Twitter avatars. That involved lots of clicking and some file conversions – not fun. Actually creating the photomosaic was a snap because AndreaMosaic automates the process, all I had to do was put in a couple of parameters and ipso facto you get what you see here!

Cool, huh?

Exploding Cigars – How to Cut a Dry Cigar (If you Have to)

As I write this I am smoking an excellent Arturo Fuente Chateau Fuente (natural) but last night there was this cigar that exploded when I cut it. No, it was not filled with TNT or Cemtex. It was just way too dry.

The cigar was part of an amazing dinner at The Cellar restaurant and, I can safely say, that cigar, a Torano The Brick, was the worst part of the dinner. (The rest of the tequila themed dinner was sublime and the company was just as good. The other cigar, a Torano 1912, was also very good). When I looked at The Brick I immediately noticed that the cap was splitting and that it was very dry. Even though I normally would not smoke a cigar like that I thought “What’s the worst that could happen?”

The worst was that, upon cutting The Brick, tobacco fragments sprayed every which way but the ash tray! I was mortified. Here I am, at this award winning French restaurant, and I was responsible for this long filler carnage on the white cloth table. To add insult to my malfeasance as the resident cigar expert at the table, the cigar was bad. Luckily, most of my table mates had not yet arrived and the ones who were there were understanding. Even John, who drove over an hour from Temecula and fell victim to the shrapnel, wasn’t annoyed.

After the dinner was over I realized there was a couple of ways I could have avoided this explosion. The best way to avoid exploding cigars is by not cutting them. Just put it in your humidor for a couple of months and then smoke it. But, if you really want to smoke a cigar that is a little too dry there may be a way to do so without letting tobacco rain.

If you gently press against the cap with your thumb while cutting it then there should be no pyrotechnics. I tried this tactic with the Fuente that I am currently smoking and, even though it was properly humidified and wouldn’t have exploded anyways, it works. The cap stayed on the cutter with the gentle application of pressure that I put on it.

While an exploding cigar is hardly something that most cigar connoisseurs will encounter with any regularity it does occasionally happen. In an effort to mitigate any more such explosions, I will continue to slightly press against every cap that I slice. It does not take any extra effort and is well worth it if it prevents any more explosions.

IPCPR Preview

What do porn stars, comic book readers, dentists and cigar smokers have in common? They all have conventions! And this is the time of year for the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association (IPCPR) to have theirs. They even have a culturally sensitive mascot, seen below.

According to IPCPR, their annual convention has hundreds of retailers handing out free cigars and other goodies in a couple hundred thousand square feet of space. It’s going to start August 8th and end on the 12th in New Orleans. Yes, it starts tomorrow. So, unless you are already planning on going, you probably won’t be. That means no free cigars but that doesn’t mean you won’t be able to know what is going on.

What follows are some links to coverage of IPCPR:

Stogie Review has continuous coverage through their Twitter page. They will be physically attending the shindig but, hopefully, they will leave out the bathroom breaks from their coverage (I hope!).

If you’re a fan of Oliveros cigars and want to see Kinky Friedman then you can go to the Oliveros booth on the 9th, 10th or the 11th to see him.

CAO is going to unveil its new line, La Traviata, which is kind of similar to my first name, at this year’s IPCPR. Here’s a review.

Chief Hava is going to have a Twitter BOTL event on August 11th. And you might also want to check out his post on how the Texas smoke Nazis, in tandem with duplicitous business interests, are stomping out cigars in Galveston, Texas. TEXAS!!!

Want to know what Padron, Patel, Tatuaje, Casa Magna and others will be unveiling at this years IPCPR? Then head on over to The Stogie Guys! They have a short description of all the new cigars.

Alright, that’s enough. Go smoke a cigar!

Brick and Mortar Versus Online Cigar Shops

My first cigars were some Arturo Fuentes from a local tobacco shop. These cigars ignited my passion for cigars and I am forever grateful to my mom for getting me those sticks. In no way am I overstating the facts when I say that cigars have enriched my life. So, thanks mom and thank you to the brick and mortar (B&M) that started me on this journey.

Unfortunately, I don’t live on Calle Ocho. Cigar smoking is just not that important in my area. The B&Ms in my neck of the woods are lackluster, at best. Yesterday, I went to a new shop that, from the outside, looked promising. It was actually a cigar shop(!) – so it should have a ton of cigars on hand. Or so I thought.

There were not that many cigars in the walk-in humidor in the back of the narrow shop. It looked cool with its glass doors but outside of the slim selection of Fuentes, Nubs, Punches, Patels, and some other mainstays there wasn’t much to choose from. That doesn’t even go into the horrible humidification system he had, but I digress. I asked the owner what he thought of the Casa Magna I was buying and the summation of his answer was: “They’re good. I like them because they are milder.”

Seriously, that is what he said. If you don’t know the Casa Magna was the #1 cigar for Cigar Aficionado in 2008 and it isn’t milder (I guess it’s milder than some other cigars but it isn’t, by any means, a “mild” cigar). So, even when I’m lucky enough to find a place that has a moderate selection of cigars, the proprietor has a poor knowledge of the products he is selling.

On top of all of this is the markup. I can understand paying a couple of extra dollars per cigar. But double what it goes for online? That’s too much. [Maybe, since I do live in the tax-loving state of California, there are a ton more taxes that I am unaware of - that could easily explain the extra markup.]

My stance on B&Ms can be summarized thusly: If you have a good one close by then, by all means, go there. It is worth paying a little extra for cigars if you have a great proprietor and can get some camaraderie from going. But, even if I had one by my house, I would still use online cigar shops.

Maybe I’m just different from the average cigar smokers. Personally, I don’t like going out all that much to smoke my cigars. When I go to a restaurant this Thursday for a cigar smokers’ dinner that will be the first time I will be going to a cigar event. I’m sure I will like it but, on average, I like to smoke alone. Smoking alone is a way for me to relax and enjoy my cigars. Maybe if I had a good friend who also smoked cigars I would smoke with him like Denny and Alan do at the end of every episode on Boston Legal. What all this means is that I probably wouldn’t be going to a B&M for the camaraderie alone.

Furthermore, there’s just no way for a B&M to have the same selection and prices that an online shop has. The online shops regularly have great deals as well. If it weren’t for the samplers offered online I would probably not have the same exposure to cigars that I currently have. Heck, if it weren’t for online shops like the ones that are advertised on my site I probably would not be blogging about cigars. And please don’t think that I wouldn’t be advocating online cigar shops if they weren’t advertising on my site and giving me the occasional freebie. I have a little more ethics than that.

For what it’s worth, online cigar shops will continue to be my go-to source for cigars. There are just too many deals and the prices are so much better online. When a truly good B&M opens up by my house I will go there frequently. Until that fortuitous day comes my cigars will be delivered – properly humidified.

Update on Nebraska Cigar Bar Exemption

Here’s an update on yesterday’s story about cigar bar exemptions in Nebraska; from Cigar Aficionado:

Many lawmakers opposed the original bill, not necessarily for its attempt to exempt cigar bars, but for its vague language. They felt the bill contained loopholes that would allow businesses to stock up on tobacco products to meet the definition of a cigar bar and permit patrons to smoke.

Hopefully the amendment gets passed.

Stogie Review Interview with Pete Johnson

The guys over at Stogie Review posted a great interview with Pete Johnson, the maker of boutique cigar brand Tatuaje. He is also featured in the most recent issue of Cigar Aficionado. I actually just received a couple of the highly rated Tatuaje cigars the other day and can’t wait to smoke them. Until then, we have this 23-minute video.

Cigar Smokers Fighting Back?

In Florida, cigar smokers are beginning to see the point in fighting back against an all-out assault by our government on cigars. It’s a start but I think they are going at it the wrong way. Here’s a couple of cigar smokers’ arguments:

“It’s not going to affect my average smoker as much. It’s going to hurt the little guy.”

Look, I feel for these people. They are getting attacked and they’re trying to protect themselves however possible. But trying to divert the attack to another group or arguing for a better way to socialize our country is not the way to go!

The nanny-staters will gladly go and attack Burger King and McDonald’s but they are still going to continue taxing cigars. I firmly believe that the only way to defend against this type of drastic, revolutionary encroachment by our government is to oppose it every chance we get.

Because, like I have said before, S-CHIP and other entitlement programs our government creates for the “benefit” of those who “can’t” fend for themselves is just a way for that government to increase its power and influence over every aspect of our lives.

Right now they are just talking about taxing “sinful” products like cigars and trans-fats but tomorrow they will be talking about outlawing these products as a way to prevent future health care costs. Then what will your argument be? “Make fries illegal but keep robustos legal”? That won’t work.

Cigar smokers, I plead of you, don’t try and divert the government’s taxes to another segment of Americans as a means to argue against cigar taxes. Don’t try to figure out a better way for the government to take control of yet another aspect of our lives. Don’t accept their premise that we need the government to provide health care for Americans.

Instead, argue for your freedom to partake in a pastime that is (still) legal! Do it before it is too late.