Cigar Chewers Sound Off

I figure someone must have done this already, but an admittedly cursory search failed to reveal it. Are there any other Chewers out there that like to smoke cigars? If so, what are your favorites?

To me, variety is the spice of life, and I have yet to settle ona brand; I've tried dozens, and there are dozens more I want to try. But some of the ones I've enjoyed the most:

Almost anything with the name "Gurkha" is going to be good, but the Ancient Warrior, Legend, master's Select & Class regent are especially good.

CAO Balcks are excellent.

I've liked every AVO I've tried except the XO. The Avo maduro is probably the second best maduro on the planet.

Nestor Reserve maduros ARE the best maduros on the planet.

Nat Sherman Host Selections are good for when you want a mild smoke; and the Gotham series West Side are great for when you want something alittle punchier w/ a spicy kick. The Omerta (which I found in Costco - COSTCO!) for $35.00 a box is a great in between medium.

The Rocky patel Connecticut could very well be my favorite mild cigar right now.

Or maybe The Griffins. Never smoked a cigar farther down to the nub.

For something different, I love Acid Kuba Kubas, and La Vieja Havana Leather Patches.

Almost all the above, and plenty more besides, are available for deeply discounted prices (although not all sizes are available, and because they purchase a lot of things as one shot discount deals, they somethines run out of things when the allotment's gone) from cigarsintl.com. They have the widest selection I've ever seen, and they ship incredibly fast. hey have samplers available that are usually opretty cool, too. If you smoke cigars regularly, do yourself the favor of checking them out.

Anyway, anxious to see what my fellow Chewers are chewing on.

Conventional wisdom these days is that Cuban cigars aren't what they used to be, what with communism sucking the life out of everything it touches, and a lot of Cuba's best cigar makers leaving the country & ending up in Central America & the Caribbean. They also tend, from what I hear, to be fuller flavored, and I generally don't like fuller flavored cigars (there are exceptions, like the Nat Gothams and the Gurkha Legends). So I'm not that psyched to try them. But if I saw a Cohiba sitting on a shelf in Vancouver (which I'm visiting next month), I might buy one, just to say I did. Smoking one of those "legal Cubans" must've ROCKED, though. Aging mellows & refines tobacco, and stuff that's been aging for like 30+ years in ideal conditions. . . God, that must be good. If you look hard enough, you can occasionally find pre-embargo Cubans somebody's kept coming up for sale, but they can be expensive (a pal recently bought one for his dad for Father's Day, & it cost like $25.00). But according to the "connisseur's Corner" Cigar Aficionado runs every month, wherein they taste old cigars like that, they're damn near perfect. It's not unusual for one to geta perfect 100 rating.

I'm kind of surprised at all the love maduros are getting. Not that there's anything wrong w/ them, mind. Sometimes, ya just gotta have a maduro. I just didn't think they appealed to that wide an audience.

Big ring guages are usually the way I go, too. But I recently read something in the reviews of thinner cigars in Aficionado: the wrapper is where a lot of the flavor comes from (and I know this to be true; sometimes they release a blend you know w/ a different wrapper & the whole flavor changes). So thin cigars get more of the flavor of the wrapper to shine through. Food for thought, but I haven't acted on it.

As for bad cigars, I hated the Rocky patel Vintage & the Carlos Torano Silver. I didn't really like the Perdomo Slow Aged 8-2-6 or the Avo XO, either.

How happy am I? I work w/ a guy that's a cigar smoker, and I'm always passing off smokes when I have a lot of a certain brand & I want to make room in the humidor. He came over to my office just now & said: "Here, I'm partially returning the favor." Seems a friend of his just got back from abroad & smuggled in a few Cuban Montes, and my friend passed one off to me. I may not ever have gone out of my way to try one of these if I had to pay for it, given my earlier expressed misgivings about Cubans in general, but hey. . . if it's fo' free, it's fo' me. I'll have the opportunity to herf this bad boy this weekend. Can't wait to see if I agree w/ the Monte love Sammy & Ali have expressed.

See? Much like w/ lil' green rep squares, the Great Karmic Wheel comes 'round!

Fuente products are usually a safe bet. The regular line is fantastic, although the draw on the monstrous Canones was way too tight. I like their Montesino line, too, but don't care for the Bauza (too strong for my taste). Never tried an Opus X or a Hemingway, but I've heard good things.

I smoked up that Cuban Monte my co-worker gave me today. I was surprised at how much I liked it. Bit heavier than I usually go in for, but nowhere near as heavy as I expected, w/ a hint of sweetness. Burned really, really well, too. Only had to relight it once, which, considering how much I was jabbering w/ my pal Jay, is pretty amazing. Most other cigars probably would've gone out multiple times w/o those maintenance puffs.

On a recent trip thru Vancouver, I bought a Cohiba, and was thoroughly underwhelmed. I really wanted to find a Quai D'orsay ( a mild Cuban smoke, if you can believe it), but none of the tobacconists I went into had any, so I figured I'd see what all the fuss about Cohibas was. It just tasted like tobacco, and not very good tobacco, w/ no detectable nuances, to me. Just My opinion.

I went to the humi to deposit yet another Cuban Monte that another co-worker passed off, and discovered that a cigar a fellow atty had given me several months ago (it needed rehumidifying, so I left it sit), had developed a sheen of gray fuzz, like really thick peach fuzz, and a few small patches of white cottony stuff that can only be mold. Hadda throw it out so as not to infect the rest of the population. Pissed me right the fuck off, too, as the guy who gave it to me had removed the cellophane & band & wouldn't tell me what it was (leading me to believe it was an illegal Cuban, knowing this guy), and it was fat 60 ring gague, 5 1/2" robusto. Probably woulda been a damn good smoke.

This ever happened to any of you? What caused this? It's never happened before (although I usually leave the cellophane on the cigars when I store them, so they don't get torn while being handled). Was this just an unlucky cigar that happened to have some mold spores in it, or am I possibly screwing up my humidor somehow?

Agreed. One of the best maduros out there. The Cameroon, Sun Grown & Champagne are great, too.

I have noticed some cigars in the humidor seema bit soft in the middle when they've sat directly under the humidification unit for too long; I try to rotate them a bit to keep that from happening these days. Maybe I refill it too often?

I'm lovin' the speed, selection & low prices at cigarsintl.com, as mentioned in the opening post.

Bumping this thread to remark that I recently tried two outstanding cigars. One was the CAO 65th Anniversary edition. Medium bodies, and slightly sweet & spicy. It's designed to commemorate the founder's 65th year in the biz, and is a limited edition that probably won't be prodcued again. I highly recommend these, and if you want to get some, get e'm soon. Tehy're not making anymore.

Also, the Gurkha Royal Brigade. think this is a special edition only made for Cigarsintl.com by the K. Hansotia Co. Earthy notes are the main component, but they're backed by a notable sweetness, leather & a touch of spice. Only available in a 6 x 60 perfecto, they take awhile to smoke, but I enjoyed every damn minute of it. Very, very good. Not to be missed, IMO.

Bumped to mentiona few recent experiences. Perdomo La Tradicion Sun Grown: very good. Full flavored, but with a hint of sweetness. Kind of reminded me of the Cuban Monte, but the sweetness was a little more intense, and the underlyng full flavor a bit more pronounced as well (which are good things). A well balanced, pleasant smoke. Same can be said for Alec Bradley's the Maxx, except the sweetness is a lot more pronounced. To me, that's a good thing, and I liked these even better than the Perdomos, but I can see how it'd be a turn off to some. Also really enjoyed the La Aurora 1495. Leather & spice are the dominant elements. It's kind of like what would happen if an LVH Leather Patch and a Nat Sherman Gotham had a kid. It's not as leathery as the former, and not as spicy as the latter, but kind of combines lesser versions of both characteristics. While this was a very good smoke, it's nowhere near as good, IMO, as either of the "purebreeds" I compared it to. Last but not least, the Carlos Torano 1916 corojo. Given how little I liked the Silver label, I didn't have high hopes for this one, but it was actually very good. Earthy and chocolatey, with notes of leather and spice. Medium bodied and pleasant.

It's not a fluke. The Don Diego Playboy brand is consistently good and mild. A colleague got me a box when I passed the bar, and I enjoyed them a great deal, as did the friends I shared them with.

Bumped because I recently smoked a La Gloria Cubana. I had it stashed in the humidor for nearly 2 years. I bought it on the recommendation of a co-worker who tends to like mild stuff, as I do, so I thought it'd be along those lines. BUt when I researched it, I found out these had a rep for being very, very strong. I then figured I probably wouldn't like it & put off sparking it for a while. But I finally got around to smoking it this holiday weekend, and it was really good. The description in the CI catalog says "Full, rich, creamy & strong." It didn't seem full or strong, but rich and creamy? Definitely. Quite possibly the creamiest smoke I've ever enjoyed. Good show.

Two friends & I spent Saturday the 31 visiting both Cigars International retail stores in Bethlehem, PA (just about an hour's drive from my home in Western central Jersey). It's not an exaggeration to say we were like kids in candy stores. I think I spent like $120.00 between the downtown store and the superstore on Nazareth Pike. You can smoke in both, and we did after making our purchases in the superstore. I had a long wish list going in, and got almost everything on it (a few things were long discontinued, but I had hope maybe they'd have a few strays lying around; I did find 2 discontinued brands I had forgotten about and thus weren't on the list and scapped them right up), and this promises to be very good smoking indeed. I doubt I'll have to buy cigars for a year. If you can make this trip, I highly suggest you do so. The downtown store is surrounded by some cool shops, bars and restaurants. We ate lunch at the Bethlehem Brew Works (excellent pale ale and bratwurst sandwiches w/ kraut soaked in one of their house brews; highly recommended), and took a spin thru the Moravian Book Shop, oldest still operating book store in the world). All in all a very pleasant day.

Smoked an Indian Tabac Split Decision Quad last night. This is rolled with 4 - count 'em - FOUR wrappers. A Connecticut shade, a Habano, a maduro and a candela. Supposedly, it started as a joke. Rocky Patel (owner of ITC) was trying to decide on a wrapper for his upcoming 10th anniversary cigar, and he & his master roller AJ Fernandez rolled up one of these w/ the 4 wrappers, convinced it'd suck. It didn't, and they now make a very limited edition (as you can imagine, they're hard & expensive to make) in double, triple & quad variations.

I've seen & smoked 2 wrapper cigars before, and seen ads for triples, but a quad? This was unheard of. I was mightily intrigued, and ordered one from cigar.com. (Note: they're now available, a bit cheaper, at cigarsintl.com). This was an interesting smoke; started out a bit harsh, but after the 1st few puffs, mellowed nicely. The flavor seemed to shift continually, as the different wrappers took turns taking hold of the smoke. Sometimes a little sweet, sometimes a little toasty, sometimes earthy. . . a little something for everyone. I don't think I liked it enough to try again, given the cost (this single cost $10.00), but I'm glad I can say I did it. A drawback: it was a little hard to cut (I guess this shouldn't be surprising, given the fact it's got 4 wrappers on it), and started to unravel a little at the base. It was also kind of hard to keep lit evenly. But ither than that, a most intriguing cigar.

Pretty much medium, although the 1st 2-3 puffs made me think it was going to be very harsh & full. It mellowed considerably.

I bought mine so long ago, I don't recall where I got it or how much it cost. I'm also not sure what the capacity is, but I know w/ that trip to Bethlehem I'v exceeded it. It is still my 1st humidor I ever bought, so I guess something similar will work well into your career. If memory serves, I think I bought it for like $65.00 from Thompson Bros., but that was probably close to 15 yrs ago. I know I sound like a shill for them, but they really do sell good stuff fairly cheap on Cigarsintl.com, including humidors and accesories therefor. I'd suggest getting something with at least a 50 or 75 capacity, so you'll have room for churchills (even if, as I do, you have to lie them in sideways). Small capacity humidors, like the 20's they give out as free samples, are cool to store overflow, but they won't actually store 20; the humidification unit that hangs down from the roof of the thing crushes the middle 2-3 cigars of the top layer. I never put more than 12 or so in that one, and it's too small for churchills. Also, cedar lining is a must. Avoid other materials like lucite or something. A hygrometer is helpful but not absolutely necessary, but a humidifier is. The extra humidity stuff they sell, like the water pillows and Drymistat tubes, are cool if you need a massive infusion (such as if you've been away & unable to refill your humidifier, or if someone gives you a cigar that hasn't been properly stored and dried out. Contrary to popular belief, these CAN be resurreected w/ 30 days or so in a properly humidified environment). Just leave everything alone for a few weeks while they revive.

A travel humidor is also a good idea (I love the 5 capacity Herf-a-dor CI sells; they often run specials w/ the herf a dor + 5 premium smokes for just $10.00 more than the cost of just the herf a dor, and these work extremely well. I take a fully loaded one w/ me every time I go to visit the in laws; it's a life saver). Even if you don't fancy yourself traveling w/ your smokes, a 2 finger leather, non-humidifed case is a good idea so they don't get crushed in transit to your buddy's house or wherever.