The Borons Cigar Blog

Last Friday I wrote a special blog all about this proposed FDA situation, and the more I’ve thought about it the more frightening it has become. This is no joke, guys, if the Federal Food & Drug Administration becomes responsible for overseeing cigars, it could seriously be the death of our beloved industry, one that has served the American public for over 150 years.

I went online and found a web document written by the FDA entitled: Proposals for Comprehensive Tobacco Legislation. In the conclusion at the bottom of this very long document, the very first sentence says, and I quote: “In closing, FDA and the Administration strongly support comprehensive tobacco legislation to significantly reduce young people’s tobacco use…” Now so much of what we hear from the anti-smoking zealots is that they want to keep tobacco away from children, protecting our youth from the vicious evils of smoking. And the one thing that I have said over and over ‘til my face turns a disgusting shade of purple, is that “KIDS DO NOT SMOKE PREMIUM AGED HAND ROLLED CIGARS!” When was the last time a bunch of eighth grade boys were caught in the middle school lavatory firing up Cohiba XV’s, Montecristo Classics, and Macanudo Maduro Vintage 1997? We all damned well know the answer – NEVER!

I personally feel that one of the cigar industry’s biggest problems was not clearly separating itself years ago from other forms of tobacco, especially the types kids want to get their hands on, ie; cigarettes, chewing tobacco, snuff, etc. The horrible mistake here is that the FDA and all the hating government goons think that tobacco, is tobacco, is tobacco, and as we cigar smokers know, THAT is just plain wrong. If you take a look at alcoholic drinks, beer, wine, and whiskey couldn’t be more worlds apart in the beverage department, yet they are indeed all alcoholic. But beer, wine, and whiskey are all made differently, with different ranges of proof, and in no way can they be judged on the same basis as one another as they are all very different. Well, the same goes for cigars, dammit. Fine cigars are a hand made product, all natural without added chemicals and preservatives, and during the aging process, nicotine is actually sweat and dissipated from the leaves. Cigars are a pastime, a ritual, a rite of passage… NOT a habit.

Premium cigars are an adult product, one that in NO WAY children can afford, or can really enjoy for that matter. This statement is blatantly obvious, right? Of course it is, so WHY don’t people in the government see it that way? Because as I said, in their blinder-covered eyes, tobacco, is tobacco, is tobacco, it is vile and evil and all forms must be removed from the face of the earth. That’s why these state legislators don’t care when raising the tobacco tax to a whopping 75% like in New York State. One has to think, “Hey, if you raise the taxes that high, then no one will ever buy cigars in that state again.” And while that line of thinking is correct, it is my own opinion that the legislators DO NOT want to save cigars shops from going under because the goal is to eradicate all forms of tobacco forever. The agenda is clear to me, and THAT is why we cigar lovers have such a brutal fight on our hands for a long time to come.

Hey guys… we have got to continue to fight the good fight because if they win… wow, do we ever lose. So, if you haven’t done it yet, click the link below and let your congressman know exactly how you feel about the FDA getting their greasy governmental mitts on our premium hand rolled cigars.

CLICK HERE > Let your congressman know that we DON’T want the FDA messing with our CIGARS!

And until next week, stay smoky my friends,

JR Cigars Blog with the Zman

YOU GOTTA CHECK OUT THIS WEEK’S SPECIAL

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What do Frank Llaneza 1961, Gurkha Colorado, Juan Lopez, Siglo, and Troya Clasico all have in common? They’re some of the best-selling, Cuban-style smokes out of Nicaragua. This great assortment of 10 cigars includes 2 Toros from each of these must-try, extremely flavorful, full-bodied brands. Here’s your chance to sample ‘em all at once… and for less than $20 bucks. You’d be crazy to pass this deal by!

CLICK HERE FOR THIS WEEK’S BURNING SPECIAL!

This video is posted here for archive purposes. Your one stop shop for Ed/Tom reviews if you will.

Ed and I are back at Stogie Review to cover the Quesada Oktoberfest. This yearly release is said to go best with Oktoberfest beer. Since I am not a drinker, I have not tried that pairing.

This cigar is fairly simple and straight forward in terms of flavor. What makes it shine is hard to describe. The flavor delivery, the refined flavor profile, the strength and body are almost perfectly balanced. The experience puts this in my top 3 cigars of 2011. This is a great cigar, period.

The biggest downfall of this cigar is it’s limited availability. It is a yearly release of limited production. Once they are gone, we have to wait until next year.

So take 24 minutes and check out our review of the Quesada Oktoberfest. As always, press the little HD button on the video player for 720p hi-def.

MP3 Audio Only – Right Click, Save As

Perdomo… I like em. Whenever I see one I haven’t tried, I give it a fair chance. It was Perdomo who lowered prices during SCHIP tax hikes, while every other cigar company raped us. Yes, they thought we were stupid enough to place all the blame on the government. I remember stuff like that. Anyway… I picked up a few of these at a local cigar shop. I paired this cigar with water as I often do.

Wrapper: Nicaragua Maduro

Binder: Nicaragua

Filler: Nicaragua

Size: Toro Grande 6 x 54

Price: Around $6.00

Pre-Smoke & Construction:

The dark wrapper was smooth and had almost no flaws. The smell of the wrapper was sweet with cedar, and the foot had almost no odor at all. The cigar was rock solid and evenly packed. As a result, the pre-light draw was fairly tight. The cold draw flavor was a dark sweetness.

The ash held for around an inch, and the burn required a couple minor corrections. Strange thing about the tight draw. After about smoking 1/4 of an inch, it opened right up and was perfect.

Flavor:

The first third with a simple black coffee with subtle notes of earthiness. After about one inch in, that maduro sweetness kicked in. It was similar to dry cocoa with a dark chocolaty bitterness (Not the bad kind). Passing smoke through the nose, there were slight notes of wood.

The second third continued on with black coffee and dark chocolaty sweetness. The aftertaste was the sweet bitterness associated with what you’d get from dark chocolate. The earthiness remained in the background. When passing smoke through the nose, there was a slight pepper.

The last third went well. The strength crept up a bit. The chocolate and coffee remained dominant flavors. Occasionally they would switch positions in the flavor profile. The increase drowned out the earthy notes altogether.

Conclusion:

This was a good medium to upper medium bodied cigar (maybe lower full). First the good. The flavors were good, construction was good, and there were no bad flavors. The price was decent as well. The bad would be to those who demand more complexities and transitions in flavor. When I’m in the mood for that, I won’t smoke this cigar. But for a good everyday cigar, this one fits the bill.

Frank Seltzer

This is my first post for the JR blog. I am excited to have been asked to contribute but I may be unfamiliar to some of you. Since 2006, I have written for JR and Cigar Magazine on everything from small cigar companies like Marsh Wheeling, Finck, and F.D. Graves, to the biggies like General and Altadis-and I’ve been smoking cigars for a whole lot longer than that. I’ve been lucky enough to visit many factories throughout the US and Latin America and to have made many good friends in the business. But before life as a cigar writer, I was in news so I’m used to immediate deadlines (with the magazine and catalogs, the deadlines do not allow for immediate postings because it takes a while to actually print the stuff. My goal here is to not only give you fun information but to also keep you up to date on the latest happenings in the industry and supply information that you can use to help defeat smoking bans in your community. Now onto the news.

Alan Willner

First up. General Cigar, maker of Partagas among others, this week has named a new Vice President of Marketing. His name is Alan Willner. He comes to General Cigar from Starr Hill Brewery, where he was president and CEO. Starr Hill is an award winning craft brewery and partner of Anheuser-Busch. He also has worked with Coors and Nabisco. Bottom line he has about 20 years in consumer marketing. General president Dan Carr says Willner will help General further define their brands and get more customer engagement. He will be in charge of marketing, PR, events and Club Macanudo in New York.

Alejandro Martinez & Jose Blanco

By now, many of you know about the move of Jose Blanco from La Aurora to Joya de Nicaragua as Senior Vice President. Blanco has been with Grupo Leon since 1980 and retired from the company this summer as VP of Sales for La Aurora. Jose was known to many of you through his regular visits to stores and his blending seminars. Jose is a passionate life-long cigar smoker and loves playing with tobaccos. What you may not know, is that Jose is now working on a new cigar for Joya de Nicaragua. Dr. Alejandro Martinez-Cuenca, the owner of Joya which also is Nicaragua’s oldest cigar company, says he and Jose are working in the company’s Esteli factory developing a new cigar for next year. Martinez-Cuenca says already they have tasted more than 70 blends. Adds Alejandro, “This is an exciting time for the company which traditionally has been using primarily Nicaraguan tobaccos and now with Jose’s knowledge of Dominican tobaccos we look forward to expanding our offerings.” The new cigar– as yet unnamed and undecided on the blend–most likely will carry the names of Blanco and Martinez-Cuenca. It will be not as strong as the company’s Antano series instead it will be more medium bodied but with full flavor.

PASSINGS

Edgar Cullman, Sr. of General Cigar fame, also passed away in late August at the age of 93. Cullman and his family were long involved in the cigar business, building General Cigar, which they bought in 1961, into a major player. Cullman was the force behind General’s first premium cigar Macanudo. The Cullman family ran General Cigar until 2005 when its sale to Swedish Match was completed.

Dan Blumenthal, one of the partners in Villazon, also died in August. He was 94. Blumenthal and his partner Frank Llaneza were makers of great cigars like Punch, Excalibur and El Rey del Mundo among many others. For more information about Dan’s contributions to the cigar business and for an article on the Cigarmaker to the Stars, look in the current JR catalog. What? You don’t have it? You can get it here.

Finally Smokin Joe Frazier–the hall of fame heavyweight champion–has died at age 67. He had been diagnosed with liver cancer in September and passed away on November 7. Frazier grew up in Philadelphia and was the first fighter to defeat Muhammad Ali. Said Ali in a statement, “The world has lost a great champion”. The name Smokin Joe did not come from cigars, but the champ apparently did enjoy the leaf as written about in Dave Savona’s blog from 2009.

We all love our creature comforts, don’t we? There’s nothing like coming home to a warm house, sitting down to a nice dinner, firing up a great cigar, then watching a good movie or your favorite TV show or going online and yakking with your friends, and then crawling into a nice cozy bed and sleeping like a baby ‘til the sun comes up. Doesn’t that just sound like a great night?

A little over a week ago a bizarre nor’easter hit my area hard, dumping an incredible 19 inches of snow in my little pocket of northwestern, New Jersey. (Yeah, that’s my front porch view on the left). In all my life, I’m not sure I ever even remember snow in October let alone a foot and a half in one day. Now this was no ordinary snow – the temperature was a little above freezing and the snow was wet and three times heavier than the normal stuff we get. Unfortunately, snow that heavy snaps trees, power lines get ripped down, and transformers explode like it’s a late celebration for the 4^th of July. Long story short: My home was without power for six whole days this past week.

As you can imagine, it was a horrible week as my family lived like frozen rats. I had no generator, no kerosene heater, and a minimal amount of firewood. The stores were completely out of stock on these items and every hotel in North Jersey was booked. Since I have a home office, I had to work from the back room at a friend’s local business on my itty-bitty net book. And while my wife went to work and my kids off at school, the temperature in my home dropped to 43 degrees, which made getting up in the morning a living freezing hell. Luckily, when we came home we went to dinner and then to my brother in law’s house for showers and warmth. But by 10 pm, we headed back to our frosty home and attempted to sleep for the night.

Sounds pretty hellish and stressful, right? Oh yeah, it was, actually worse than I thought it would be. But there WAS one thing that kept my sanity in tact and my will to live in check: CIGARS.

First off, like a gift from God himself, my buddy allowed me to smoke cigars in his back office. I can’t tell you what an amazing bit of stress relief this was being able to puff my favorite gars while trying my best to get my deadlines done on time. Now, if you wanna hear about some great timing, I had just stocked up on smokes with a big-ash order that came the day before the storm, as the man in brown handed me my monolithic JR order. Call it a vision, or call it dumb luck, but I bagged a gaggle of premium hand rolled goodness, including the Punch Rare Corojo, La Aurora 107, the Perdomo made Counterfeit Cubans, and the new Macanudo Cru Royale (a cigar that is loaded with flavor, and NOT your grand pappy’s typical Macanudo!) The very first cigar I lit up while working on day one was the Romeo Y Julieta Reserva Real, medium bodied, and the perfect start to the day with a cup of hot java (and no idea when my power would come back on.) That sweet and woody Connecticut seed, Ecuadorian wrapper is so amazingly flavorful and such a good choice for an early day smoke for me.

After work the family either went out to eat or we chowed down at the in-laws. (I barbecued on the second night to use up some of our rations before they went bad.) After dinner I bundled up and headed to their big, old fashioned porch, (complete with rocking chairs) and fired up a much deserved smoke as I let the awful stress of living like a vagrant fade away, as each puff of thick blue smoke swirled above my head and into the dark and starry night. Sunday through Thursday it was the same routine – work, eat, smoke, then freeze in our beds… until finally on Friday afternoon, I got a call from my neighbor that the power was back on! I raced home, flipped on the lights and took in the heavenly smell of a freshly heated furnace. That night we ate take out food in the comfort of our very own kitchen (as a good $500 worth of chow went bad and was tossed the day before.) And just like every evening prior that week, when diner was over, I bundled up and headed out back with a smoke, but this time it was a celebratory cigar, a sweet and luscious Connecticut Broadleaf wrapped JR Ultimate Belicoso Cabinet.

The nightmare was over as my family was safe and secure once more in our home, enjoying all the creature comforts that life has to offer. But if there was one thing that saved me from losing my mind, it was those amazing cigars that I savored during that stretch of brutal days and nights. Ah yes, life is indeed good again, once more.

And HEY GUYS… don’t forget to let your Congressman know that we DON’T WANT the FDA messing with our CIGARS! Click the link below and let the political world know!

> CLICK HERE & LET CONGRESS KNOW THAT THEY CAN’T GOVERN OUR CIGARS! <

JR Cigars Blog with the Zman

You’ve GOTTA Check Out THIS SPECIAL DEAL!

We have these great humidor-quality boxes of Bock y Ca Coronas aging in our warehouse that are dying to be smoked. They are fantastic medium-bodied cigars handcrafted offshore in Nicaragua with spicy, flavorful long fillers and eye-catching Ecuador Sumatra wrappers.

CLICK HERE to Get a box of 20 for just $24.95!!! GET YOURS NOW!

The FDA took my baby away, they took her away, away from me – The Ramones?

Okay, that may not be exactly how the classic Ramones tune goes, but you have to understand that we lovers of the lavish leaf have a serious situation on our hands. There are people on Capitol Hill that want the Food & Drug Administration to permanently monitor and oversee the products created by the cigar industry. They would like our cigars, our babies, regulated the same way that cigarette tobacco is regulated, and if that does happen, the ramifications could and would be disastrous.

The following comes direct from the group, Cigar Rights of America: Whereas on April 26, 2010, December 20, 2010, and July 7, 2011 the U.S. Food & Drug Administration publicly posted their intent to regulate cigars in the Federal Register, it is incumbent upon the cigar enthusiasts of the United States to voice their opposition to any proposed new regulation of premium/traditional cigars by the United States Government.

So what does this mean for the cigar industry along with “We the People” who want the right to continue to enjoy the legal, handmade product that has already been over-taxed beyond reproach? Here are some of the “REAL” possibilities…

• Walk-in Humidors could become a thing of the past. In fact, you wouldn’t be allowed to see or touch any cigars as they would be hidden from sight, only available to choose from catalog sheets.
• The ornate artwork that has decorated boxes and bands for well over a century could be replaced by warning labels and grotesque images of diseased and autopsied body parts.
• The tobacco itself could be tested with restrictions put on blends, flavors, and nicotine strength.
• Boutique blends and companies could be no more.
• Advertising, special promotions, events, and email notifications might be completely disallowed.
• And the horrible possibility of mail ordering cigars could become extinct… yikes!
• And even worse, literally thousands and thousands of people could lose their jobs in the United States and throughout all of the tobacco producing nations.
• Oh yeah… the already painful taxes placed upon cigars could increase dramatically!

Okay my friends, followers, and lovers of premium aged tobacco, before you lose all faith and fall flat on your precious ashes, know that there are those in the government that are against this horrid tyranny, and YES there is something that is being done to help save cigars and the industry we love so dearly. Again, from the folks at Cigar Rights of America…

H.R. 1639 has been filed in the U.S. House of Representatives; and a companion bill, Senate Bill 1461, has been filed in the Senate. Both are filed under the banner of the Traditional Cigar Manufacturing and Small Business Jobs Preservation Act. This bi-partisan legislation would decree that premium/traditional cigars should be off limits to FDA regulation and, ‘to clarify the Food & Drug Administration’s jurisdiction’ in the ’sale, manufacturing and distribution of traditional and premium cigars.’

So listen to me… I WANT YOU to do YOUR part and YES, it will help tremendously! Click the link below and let the political officials in YOUR region know that you support this bill and YOU want to protect an industry and a product that means so much to you… so much to all of us! It’ll take you a couple of minutes to do and it will definitely have an impact on saving your most beloved cigars… your babies.

CLICK HERE to Contact your Congressman NOW!

Thanks guys, let’s stick together and let the politicos know that they cannot take another one of our rights away!

Stay smoky my friends,

JR Cigars Blog with the Zman

I picked up this cigar the other day at a local shop. The price was right, and it looked good. Charlie Torano says the name “Loyal” is dedicated to his father’s commitment to providing exceptional quality cigars at an affordable price. Without further ado, here are my thoughts on the Torano Loyal…

Wrapper: Ecuadorian Sumatra

Binder: Nicaraguan

Filler: Nicaragua & Dominican Republic

Size: Robusto 5 x 56

Price: Around $5.00

Pre-Smoke & Construction:

The shiny wrapper had minimal flaws, and small to medium sized veins. There was a nice aroma from the wrapper and foot that reminded me of a sweet cedar and rich soil. The cigar was pretty well packed, with a small soft spot near the foot. The pre-light draw had slight resistance, and had an earthy flavor.

The ash held for over an inch, and the burn required one minor correction.

Flavor:

The first third was primarily earthy mixed with smooth spice. What kind of spice? I’m not sure. It had a mild spicy zing, that’s about as descriptive as I can get. The smoke feel was smooth with a hint of cedar.

The second third became very smooth and sweet. It was like a mixture of woodiness and a cocoa like flavor. Through the nose, the spice really calmed down and became creamy. Simple but not bad at all.

The last third kept the same flavor profile as the second third. The only thing that changed was a slight pick up in the body, but it remained in the medium range.

Conclusion:

This was a good medium bodied cigar. It wasn’t complex at all, but the flavors were satisfying. Perhaps those of you who seek a complex flavor profile with a lot of twists and turns should look elsewhere. But you are like me, a simple cigar like this can often hit the spot. I say give the Torano Loyal a try.