Not the best picture, but this is the Warlock I had I am a fan of Omar Ortez blended sticks. I particularly love the Omar Ortez Puro Maduro. This is a good value-priced stick that really packs a punch. So when I found out Ortez was working on another creation for Altadis, I was particularly […]
A couple of months ago, I posted a Pre-Review of the Liga Privada Dirty Rat. A lot of times with new cigars, there may be circumstances that prevent from providing a fair review. Therefore, my concept of doing a Pre-Review is to provide some initial thoughts of a cigar without going as far as to […]
During the 2010 IPCPR, it was my opinion that General Cigars had the best year in terms of new product releases. One of the most exciting things General has been doing is investing in building their existing brands. I mentioned La Gloria Cubana as one of the brands that has seen an expansion take place. […]
Single Region Serie Jalapa (Left) picture with another new release -the Brigade (Right) Back at the 2010 IPCPR, one of my most exciting visits was to the Torano Family Cigar booth. During that visit, I saw a lot of energy and excitement around the recent re-branding of the company and the new releases that were […]
For the past two years, the emergence of the “value” premium cigar has resulted in a lot of companies jumping on the bandwagon. I define these as high quality premium sticks in the $5.00-$7.00 range. Sticks such as Gurkha, Torano, Oliveros, Perdomo, and CAO have all capitalized on this bandwagon and have had both commercial […]
La Palina Alison (Sorry for bad lighting) The race for Cigar of the Year just got that much tighter. No doubt, 2010 has been a highly competitive year for cigars. And just when I thought things were settling down, along comes La Palina to throw a monkey-wrench into things. I happened to stumble on this […]
Erik Nording is one of the legendary pipe crafters in the world today. Simply put his pipes are works of art. Therefore, when Rocky Patel decided to blend a cigar to honor Nording, it caught my attention. The result is the appropriately named – the Rocky Patel Nording. While I have great respect for the […]
During the 2010 IPCPR, it was my opinion that General Cigars had the best year in terms of new product releases. One of the most exciting things General was doing was investing in building their existing brands. One of the brands that General was clearly focused on building as La Gloria Cubana. La Gloria Cubana […]
In 2009, I did my first Cigar of the Year list. The way I worked this list is I selected 20 cigars that I felt warranted Cigar of the Year consideration. One by one, I opted to countdown the list by figuring out which cigar I would be most likely to part with. When it […]
Last year, when I rated the Top 20 Cigars for 2009, I surprised a lot of people by including the Indie Cigar, the Roxor Maduro as my number 7 Cigar of the Year. While this surprised many people that I rated this cigar ahead of the Liga Privada #9 and the Don Pepin My Father, […]
