Cigars and Wine in Grapevine

This month’s herf cigar was the Rocky Patel Edge Toro Maduro.  This was really an awesome smoke.  Like several other Edge cigars I have smoked before, this one was dark in color, but still smooth in taste and boldness.  I don’t care for cigars that are too dark in boldness, they get old before I am done smoking them, most of the time.  These are the cigars that you hear people talking about when they say, “…don’t smoke this on an empty stomach”.  In my opinion, if you have to eat something in order for the cigar to not make you sick, then it is too strong.  Of course everyone has different tastes and what is too strong for me might not be too strong for someone else, but you get what I am saying.

The Edge series of Rocky Patel’s are the perfect blend.  They have plenty of smoke, they stay lit if you put it down for a couple of minutes, and the taste is outstanding.  I tasted earth- flavors during this smoke; right now I can’t place the exact taste, as it was 4 days ago when I smoked this.  I guess I will just have to smoke another one

Cigar Details:
Wrapper: Nicaraguan
Filler: Nicaraguan-Honduran Ligero
Size: Price: $6, locally
Cigar Aficianado Rating: 90
Someone else’s review: Stogie Guys

We are visiting the island of Kahaui on a vacation to Hawaii this week, and of course I had to find a local cigar to try.

Everything is so expensive here.  The first cigar shop I went into had these local cigars for $11-$14 per stick.  I thought this was a bit high, but then I looked and saw some Padron 2000 and 4000 series for around $12 and a stick, and a Opex X Fuente Fuente for $42.  All of these were about double what you would pay for them in Dallas, so I figured the Kahauian Cigar was about a $6 smoke.

I visited a couple of other cigar shops before returning to the original one to buy the cigar I wanted.  Most other shops were around the same price, but had less selection than the first one, so I acquiesced to paying $11 for a stick.  I only bought 2 sticks, 1 Light and 1 Maduro because of the price but also because I wanted to try them and didn’t know when I would be back here.

I lit up the Lighter of the 2 last night and smoked it all the way down.  The draw was very good, the quality of the cigar held together, and it had plenty of smoke.  The taste was somewhat lacking.. I did taste hints of cream and possible some nutty flavors, but the flavors were really the weakest part of the whole experience.  Now this was just the Light version, so I am interested to try the Maduro, but this isn’t what I would call a well-priced cigar.

I was pleasantly surprised with this cigar.  Being that it is only about 4″ long, and with a 52 ring gauge, I expected it to get hot quickly, but it never did.  There was plenty of smoke, a nice earthy, maybe leather, flavor and it stay lit very well.  I am planning on picking up more of these to try some other samples, and if I like those as well as this first one, I might choose this cigar as my next Herfers Club monthly cigar.

Wow, its been almost a year since I posted in here.  I haven’t stopped smoking cigars, I have just been lazy about posting, so I will try and get better about that.

This month for our Herfers Club we had the Coronado by LFD.  I tasted hints of floral in this cigar.  It burned very smooth and even, had just about a perfect draw, and wasn’t hot at all.  There was plenty of smoke.  It started to get a bit bitter towards the last 1/5 of the smoke, so I put it down and didn’t smoke it any further.  This was a good choice for the club this month.

First time I have tried this Ale, I found a few bottles on sale at a local  shop, so I picked up 2 or 3 types.  I popped this one open last night.  The term “stout” on the bottle is 100% correct.  This was possibly the darkest beer I have ever had.  There was a distinct dark-chocolate taste to it, mostly bitter, almost like Baker’s Chocolate.  The beer was thick like Guinness, which I am not a huge fan of.  But I am trying to develop my tastes for different beer, so I am glad I tried this one.  I will pickup a few more flavors by Rogue, but I won’t be rushing out to get another bottle of this one.

Yes, I am going to start blogging about beer also.  Those who know me, know that I am more of a beer connoisseur over wine, anyway.  So why resist the inevitable?

First, I have never been a huge fan of Sam Adams.  I find their Boston Lager to be rather bitter and harsh, and a bit darker than my tastes prefer.  That’s just me, I generally enjoy a lighter taste like a Lager or Pilsner, over a Stout or Bach, but of course there are exceptions.

So I grabbed this 6-pack today in hopes that it would be like the Sam Adams White Ale, but it isn’t.  However, I still think the taste is pretty good.  It does start off with a somewhat bitter Sam Adams bite, but not one that is over-powering.  After a few sips it develops into a nice taste with hints of dark wheat and “winter sprices” according to the bottle.  Not sure what “winter spices” are, but it does have a nice dark wheat taste to it.  However, so far, the White Ale is my favorite.  I will be blogging about that one later.

First, sorry it has been so long since I last blogged.  My site was down for a short while, and I took my time getting it back and going.  My ISP didn’t seem too interested in helping me get it back and going, and couldn’t provide me of an explanation as to why all the content was removed, so I had a few words with them on that for a while.  Finally, I was able to get at least a little bit of help, and here we are, up and running again.

I have spent the week with my brother in Tampa, FL this week, and we went out for cigars the other night.  Ybor City is an area of downtown Tampa, and there are some hand-rolled cigars made right here in town, so I decided to try a couple of them.  The first one I smoked was this Corojo in a Natural wrapper.  It started extremely spicy and bitter.  The bitterness went away pretty fast, but the spiciness stayed for the first 1/3-1/2 of the cigar.  After that, it developed into a creamy taste until the last 1/4 of the cigar, where the spiciness came back.  There was PLENTY of smoke, and the draw was about perfect.   The ash burned evenly and was pretty light colored, so overall this was a good smoke.

Two friends and I each picked up this cigar last night and smoked them after dinner, so that we could taste compare and try something new, both at the same time. The cigar was advertised to have tastes of Cedar and Coffee.

My cigar started very dry. It burned incredibly even and had plenty of smoke, but the taste didn’t start all that great. However, about 10% into it, it developed a slight coffee flavor and the dryness dissipated. The dryness did not return and the hits of coffee came-and-went during the entire course of the cigar. The burn remained even, and ash very white, and I never had to re-light it at all.

The quality of this smoke was quite good, but I didn’t care for the taste all that much, and I didn’t like the dryness at all. A good smoke experience, but not one that I would look for again in the store.

This was September’s cigar pick for our monthly club.  I was excited to see that it was a Don Pepin Garcia pick this time, and one that I had not had before.

I smoked 2 of them before writing this post, one Saturday afternoon, and one Sunday evening.  The first one started out a bit hot and very spicy, but quickly mellowed into a mild-to-medium smoke with hints of leather.  The second one wasn’t hot at all, was smooth all the way through, and I got the same hints of leather and some earth tones to it.  There was plenty of smoke and the flavor was quite good, but I think that I still liked the Blue Label better.

The cigar burned a bit unevenly towards the end, but this didn’t affect the flavor or quality at all, in my opinion.  I look forward to smoking the other 4 sticks I got.

I haven’t written a post about these before, but I know I have smoked some. This cigar started with quite a punch in spice, but quickly mellowed into a nice woodsy, earthy smoke. The flavor resembled that of Oak. There was plenty of smoke and a great draw.

I smoked the first 1/3 of this stick one night and let it go out, then picked it up the next day. After a very short dry spell, it returned to the earthen woodsy flavor from the previous day. I would like to smoke another one of these, but it won’t make my top 10 list.