It was just about exactly one year ago when some friends of mine, at a conference  down at Disney in Orlando, handed me a Fonseca over drinks out on the patio. So tonight I decided that I’d take a trip down memory lane and smoke a Fonseca – one of the originals from the box of Fonsecas they sent me after I’d gotten home. It was that box that got me started in cigars.

I’ve been accumulating a lot of cutoffs and scrap in my workshop, so I took one of the tubs full of scrap wood and fired up my outdoor fireplace, and experienced two kinds of smoke – one enjoyable, one not so much. I was amazed at the memories that popped into focus as I puffed away. They say that smell is the sense that has the strongest connection to memory and I believe it. I remembered sitting on the porch in a warm summer rain, sitting outside Disney’s convention center talking about various things, and the taste of the Bushmills I was drinking at the time. I remembered the feeling as I opened that package with the first box, feeling like I was opening pornography or something. A good kind of bad ;-)

Anyway, it burned perfectly despite a recent surge in humidity in my humidor and very poor lighting on my part. It started very uneven, and soon evened out to a perfect burn. Taste was as a remember – mild but satisfying, if a bit sensitive to over-pulling.

It was a shame they were only 5-50, and not larger. Tonight would have been the night to smoke a 9-60 if they made such a beast.