The poor battered victim
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.