Daily Cigar

My wife and I went for a walk with the kids the other night. it was the best sort of summer evening. Warm, breezy, and early enough in the season that bugs are just starting to exist again but aren’t much of a bother.

When she asked if I wanted to go, I almost said now, but then I realized it was a perfect cigar smoking opportunity. The breeze would keep smoke at bay, and for whatever reason walking enhances my enjoyment of a great cigar.

I hustled to my humidor, and picked out the shortest stick I had - a Perdomo. I believe it is what they call a Phatom size in their Estate Seleccion Vintage 1991 series.

All I can say is YUM! that sucker was awesome! I’m a bit predisposed to like cigars that are shaped like me - that is, short and fat - but this ‘gar burned like a champ, with very tasty and plentiful smoke. It didn’t get bitter or wood-smokey near the end. In fact it’s about the only cigar I’ve smoked yet where I could have burned my fingers if I’d been just a little distracted.

Going to have to find more of these guys…my usual vendor of great cigars cheap doesn’t seem to have them.

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A long time ago I met with a local guy who invited me out to welcome me to cigars. He gave me several sticks to try, one of them being a Cuban San Cristobal La Habana. I was pretty excited at the time, but I figured the cigar would be way too strong for me and carefully tucked it away against the day when I would really need it and be ready for it.

Well, as thing would happen, the foot of that very same cigar split. It also peeled a bit. To be honest it was looking pretty ratty. Then a few days ago I was rearranging my humidor and I noticed a lot of white crystals from the tube of humidity beads I had in there and decided to vacuum them out. I crabbed the shop vac and turned to, trying to be very careful not to suck up my stash.

Well, you guessed it. I misjudged the power of the vac and faster than I could stop it that little cuban got sucked into the hose. Thank fully I had the hose kinked so it didn’t go very far. I carefully shut off the vacuum and gingerly extracted the poor battered victim out and placed back in its home. I sent the story to a friend via email, and he wrote back “Just reading that I got a feeling like I was watching a guy get kicked in the nuts.” I won’t say it hurt that bad, but it was unpleasant.

I decided that since everytime I saw it I relived the horror of watching it be sucked up the vacuum hose I might as well burn the evidence, so to speak. All I can say is that the vacuum may have sucked a lot of the flavor out of that guy because it was pretty mild. Very good, but much milder than I expected. It took about an inch and a half to get any real flavor going. Up until that point it was like a Fonseca. It’s just as well, as I’m unlikely to get another anyway.

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I had a chance to try the Astral “Foregt Me Nots” I’d gotten last year again. I’d say they’ve smoothed a tad perhaps, but overall I’d make the same comments. Smokable, but nothing special.

I seem to find myself with quite a few not very enjoyable cigars. The 5 Vegas are just not for me, and the Astrals are just not worth the trouble. No worries, I expect to be in possession of some new and very enjoyable replacements soon!

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People will talk at length about the right drink for a particular occasion, and even longer about the right food. But what about the right cigar? Now, for a situation where you’re relaxed an really able to enjoy the complexity, you’d feel no compunction about smoking something complex and expensive. Maybe a Cuban someone gave you, or a Cohiba or whatever.

But what about when the usual vagarities of the office have you frustrated? What then? Punch?

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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.

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