To Celebrate the life of little “JJ”, who passed away suddenly almost 3 years ago, I joined many others who follow Stogie Review and lit up a Don Pepin Garcia JJ yesterday. I had picked up the Maduro Sublime, which is a Toro at a full 6 inches and 54 ring guage. This cigar is wonderful to look at, touch and smell before smoking. The wrapper is shiny, dark and smells quite sweet and rich. The cigar feels perfectly constructed all the way down it’s length, without any noticeable lumps …
PIO Cigars (previously PIO VI Cigars), a small boutique brand based out of Miami, has recently released the Resurrection — purportedly limited to 500 boxes in 100 brick and mortar stores. Made in little Havana, Miami, the cigars feature Equadorian, Dominican, and Nicaraguan fillers, Ecuador binder, and a Connecticut Broadleaf maduro wrapper. Thanks to Jarrod from Tex Cigars for sending me this stick.
At first glance, the cigar had a rugged, splotchy matte appearance, with veins featuring prominently and the foot a little bit abused. That said, the cigar felt nice and …
One of the most attractive cigars I’ve smoked this year is the Viaje Oro (the j is pronounced like an h). Viaje is a smaller company focusing on making quality hand made Nicaraguan puros, the Oro being the fullest bodied smoke in their line-up. Holding this cigar in your hand and smelling the wrapper is a real pleasure, with a seemingly veinless, lumpless, chocolate scented cigar promising an interesting smoke. Also, the Viaje band is one of the most thoughtfully designed that I’ve come across.
Origin: Nicaragua
Build: Nicaraguan binder and filler with Corojo 99′ …
When you’re first getting into cigars, and you would like to try something beyond the cheap brands in terms of flavour and experience, there’s a good chance your local tobacco shop will point you towards a Padrón. This brand has established itself as the source of good value, high quality entry level cigars. José Orlando Padrón, coming from a long family history of tobacco growing in Cuba, started his own cigar company in 1964 using American tobacco. As his market changed he needed a more reliable supply of materials and …
Growing up in Canada, my first experiences with cigars were fraught with notions of history and romance. Undoubtedly this is because of the predominance of Cuban ciars on the corner store shelves and most notably of the Romeo y Julieta brand. There always seemed to be more of these than the eponymous Cuban brands of Montecristo, Cohiba and Partagas. Sometimes I feel when reading reviews of Romeos that they are slotted a notch below these brands today because they tend towards medium body and don’t have the same distinct strong flavours of …
We recently reviewed the Bolivar Petit Libertador, a 2008 Habanos SA regional edition (France). As a sequel, we now review the Punch Small Club, a 2009 regional of the same size (102mm, or 4”, by 50), but with surprisingly different flavour profile. As with the Bolivar, you can buy these online from just about anywhere in the world, but you’ll be best off buying them in person in France, where they go for around 10 Euros. Strangely, this cigar isn’t included on most online lists of 2009 regional editions (edición …
