Straight From Jamaica
Jamaica is not well known for exporting cigars. This wasn’t always the case. During WW II many cigar makers left Cuba for the British colony of Jamaica as the Brits would not expend currency outside of the “Empire”. Jamaican cigar production took off. At the end of the war the Cubans left Jamaica but the quality cigar making infrastructure remained. The US embargo of Cuba invigorated...
The Big “4 0”
I am a fan of larger cigars with the 6 X 60 my favorite size and mild to medium body my favorite strength. I have also tried and liked 7 X 70’s and after I get a neck brace I will try the new 8 X 80’s, perhaps at the 2014 IPCPR. At the 2013 IPCPR I spent time at the CLE booth eying their 6 X 60’s. CLE turns out to be the initials of Christian Luis Eiora, past ownerof the Camacho brands...
Aging Room’s M21 Fortissimo
Oliveros Cigars launched a new operation in 2012 called Boutique Blends Cigars whose primary target is consumers looking for “complexity and character” in limited production cigars. The concept is to use aged, flavorful tobaccos which are also limited in supply. Boutique Blends includes the Swag and Aging Room Small Batch Cigars, some of which received high honors from Cigar Aficionado in...
Cigars in Dante’s Inferno?
It takes capital, guts and some industry knowledge to design and launch a brand of cigars. Some retailers want to surpass just selling sticks and the more adventurous of them invest their own capital and enter the production side. One retailer in the DC area did just that and launched the Dante brand, named after Dante’s Divine Comedy where the nine circles of Inferno (Italian for hell) are...
This Julius Caesar is from Tampa.
We have all seen those pictures from the late 1800’s – well-dressed men smoking “fine” cigars wherever they were. Cigars and brandy in the drawing room after dinner was a social tradition. Back then Tampa was the cigar capital of the US. Meanwhile in 1895 in Cleveland, Hungarian immigrant JC Newman was rolling his own brand of cigars for the locals. Then in 1954 he moved the operations...
Rodrigo’s G 6
A Big Boutique Blend Cigar We have recently reviewed a couple of Rodrigo’s cigars (Lancer and Cinco 5) and now add his Boutique Blend to the list. George Rodriguez began Rodrigo Cigars a short time ago in the Dominican Republic where he linked up with William Ventura, past master blender for Davidoff. All Rodrigo cigars are made in Tamboril, a municipality of Santiago in the Dominican...
