Recently we spoke on the show about the Cigar Journal Awards, and the best value cigar from Honduras was voted as the Flor de Selva for the Villa Zamorano. As luck would have it when I returned to work on Monday morning there was some samples from the company waiting for me in my humidor. According the Maya Selva Cigars website, Since 1995, when Flor de Selva was launched in France, the “Maya Selva Cigars” […]
Based on the press release the Laranja by Espinosa was a cigar I was most curious about. One, it utilizes a Brazilian wrapper, which is amongst my favorite, and the other was the press release stating that the wrapper was orange, for which the cigar is named. Laranja is the Portugese word for orange. Researching the tobacco, I was unable to find a reference to it, and I wonder if this was fabricated to increase the […]
Conspiracy, if there is one person who has embraced them it is Dion Giolito and his company Illusione cigars. However, I feel there might be some type of conspiracy in play here as the company which has embraced small ring gauges has released a cigar with some added girth. The website states, “Critical mass. Heavy in flavor and in size. The illusione *G* Gigantes creates the smoke to fend off thought control allowing an A-1 […]
I like to consider myself a cigar geek, and despite Dave and Mr. Jonathan trying to turn that into a negative thing I wear the title with pride. However, this Tierra Volcan caught me off guard when we featured it during our IPCPR videos. Made by Mombacho in Granada, Nicaragua by a company based in Toronto that when we tweeted the video some our our Canadian friends spoke highly of them. Until this year the cigars […]
Each year at the IPCPR show, Davidoff hosts a dinner in which they give out Golden Band Awards to retailers from around the country. This year our own David Garofalo was a recipient of an award for his service to the industry for his battle of cigar rights throughout his home state of New Hampshire. Once such story that he relayed to me this weekend was how in the state of New Hampshire you could […]
Fratello Cigars is the brainchild of Omar De Frias. The one thing that strikes me that the cigar has developed a brand instead of adding new blends repeatedly, which seems to be a mistake some new companies make. Instead of developing the name and the brand they look to flood the shelves with product that has yet to be established. At the trade show this year, Fratello introduced a box pressed torpedo in the line. […]
On the weekly radio show Mr. Jonathan was known for finding strange notes in a cigar, but with the addition of cigar blogger Barry Stein to the mix, the battle of supremacy was up for grabs with each trying to outdo the other. It was decided that these two cigar smokers would battle it out with a review. Mr. Jonathan vs Big Barry, the battle for Supremacy has begun… Barry: Every year the phenomenon known […]
Debonaire is a cigar from Phil Zanghi, and if that name isn’t familiar to you, it should be. Back in 1996 Phil Zanghi and his partner at the time Rocky Patel began Indian Tabac. In fact, one can say based on a Smoke Magazine article from 1999, that it was Zanghi who was the primary reason Rocky Patel quit his day job as a lawyer to focus on cigars. Eventually the two would split up and […]
The cigar industry has a lot of father and son combinations, and AJ Fernandez has just joined the club. New World by AJ Fernandez is the result of a combined effort of father and son. Co-Blended by Abdel Fernandez and his father Ismael this smoke was introduced at the 2014 IPCPR Trade Show in Las Vegas. According to the press release sent out by Creativas on behalf of AJ Fernandez. “The team at A.J. Fernandez […]