Archive for the ‘The Griffin’ Category

More New Cigars and New Taxes by Frank Seltzer

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013

Davidoff is coming out with a new cigar which is a huge departure for them.  The company which makes The Griffin’s, Zino and Avo along with the traditional White Label Davidoff is branching out.  All of the Davidoff cigars are made in the company’s factory in the Dominican Republic and blended by cigar master Hendrik Kelner.  All of the cigars contain some Dominican tobacco…but soon that will change.  Davidoff  had Kelner and his team work on coming up with what it calls adding to the variety of taste experiences and smoking pleasure. According to the release:

For this challenge, Henke and his team embarked on a worldwide search for tobaccos that would enable us to create a unique cigar. The search landed in the tobacco fields of Nicaragua.

Preparing, curing and ageing this tobacco for 10 years with the unique expertise of Davidoff craftsmen in the Dominican Republic allowed us time to ‘tame’ the wilder tendencies of Nicaraguan tobacco and deliver a blend with intensity and excitement and all the refined sophistication you would expect from Davidoff.

 The result is a Nicaraguan Puro called “Davidoff Nicaragua”. The line will come in three sizes, A Robusto at 5” x 50, a Short Corona  measuring 3.75” x 44 and a Toro at 5.5” x 50.  The trio will use a 10-year-old Havana-seed wrapper with Jalapa binder and fillers from Esteli, Condega and the volcanic isle of Ometepe in Nicaragua.  No word on pricing yet but they will debut at the IPCPR show this summer and will be made in limited quantities.

 

KFC (no troubles with THAT name_

Drew Estate, which is known for its ACID line among others, is adding to the MUWAT series…if you don’t know this is the My Uzi Weights A Ton and is made for Drew at the Joya de Nicaragua factory.  About 2 and a half years ago, Jonathan Drew and Steve Saka were smoking a Liga Privada T52 with the president of Universal Leaf when they spied a pillon of Kentucky Fire Cured Tobacco.   The three took a leaf and wrapped it around the T-52 and loved the flavor. Trouble is the leaf would not burn right.  So for the past couple of years, the Drew team worked on curing the leaf properly and now are coming out with the MUWAT Kentucky Fire Cured…or KFC as they call it in shorthand (hmm…anything else called KFC?  Oh yeah..cue the lawyers in three, two, one…)

 

In the official press release according to Nicholas Mellilo ,who takes care of the leaf for Drew,

 

“First off, Kentucky Fire Cured is from a stalk-cut tobacco. The initial firing of KFC is done at low heat between 100 F to 115 F degrees and maintained until the color reaches solid brown. Once color is set temperatures increase to 120F- 130F to completely cure down the midrib of the leaf and darken. Once the midrib is dried the temperature will be reduced and the smoke maximized with saw dust to finish the leaf. When KFC hits your olfactory nerve you know it.”

 

The Kentucky Fire Cured MUWAT will come in three sizes—6” x 52 Just a Friend,  5” x 56 Molly and 4” x 46 Chunky.

 

More Taxes

 

If you don’t know it, the new Obama budget presented to Congress calls for additional taxes on cigarettes and tobacco.  Federal taxes on cigarettes would just about double.  I have not waded through the whole thing to find out the cigar tax increase, but you can bet there is one in there.

Anti-smokers are almost wetting their pants with excitement saying the tax increases will drive down the number of smokers.  Couple that with more smoking band and viola no more smokers.  Gee…trouble is a couple of new studies say not so.

According to a study of American smokers by the Paris School of Economics smoking bans do not work.

 

…based on extensive surveys in America, [the paper] suggests that bans on smoking are not just effective but actually make smokers happier. By not allowing them to light up in restaurants and bars (as New York already does), governments give weaker-willed individuals an excuse to do what they otherwise cannot: stop smoking. As an additional benefit, bans also seem to make spouses of smokers happier.

 

Why?  They aren’t going out and getting hammered and smoking, they do it at home.  As for the tax increases, a paper by researchers at Cornell and York Universities looked at if higher prices would curb the younger smokers.  SO are they price sensitive?

 

Not very, it turns out. That is because a big share—46% of teenage girls and 30% of teenage boys—do not smoke for pleasure, but to stay thin or lose weight.

That may not be healthy, but it is rational: cigarettes appear to suppress the appetite and increase the metabolic rate. At any rate a desire to lose weight makes young smokers much less sensitive to price changes: other ways of shedding pounds, such as eating less or exercising more, are less appealing.

 

So smoking bans don’t work and higher taxes on cigarettes do not reduce smoking, but they are gonna try it just the same.  Bottom line, never confuse them with the facts, their minds are made up.

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