Partagás 109 165th Aniversario Humidor

Posted on March 19, 2014 by atgroom under Commemorative Release, Partagás

I’m seated on a bench in a public park overlooking a small lake. In the small lake there is a small island, and on the small island there is a small paved area with a bench and a large stone monolith that has a familiar silhouette carved into it: Melbourne’s memorial to John F. Kennedy. My plan coming here was to enjoy a cigar on that bench, and to share a little of my fine Cuban tobacco smoke with a man well known for his enjoyment of the same (and a man who did more to keep the prices of Cuban cigars down than anybody else in history), however, upon arrival I found the bench occupied by a young couple paying tribute to Jack with another of his favourite pastimes, and so me and my Partagás 109 from the 165^th Anniversary Humidor are exiled to the far shore. It’s a big risk starting a three hour cigar in a park on a day like today; the sky is overcast, and rain is a definite threat.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: there are few sizes nobler than the Nro. 109. If I really had to choose I suppose I’d take one of the long and thin panatelas, the Laguito No. 1 or No. 2 over the 109, but not much else. I pick the end of the cap off with my fingernail and torch the tip with my bic. The first notes are very sour, although right from the start there is a distinct heavy cream note trying to creep through. The sourness well and truly ruins it. The tobacco flavour is very light, almost undetectable. I often wonder if it’s my trained palette at work when the flavours are distinct like this, if I have spent so many years trying to taste something beyond the tobacco that my brain is now able to block it out. I need an amateur for a blind test.

The qualities that make the JFK memorial ideal for cigar smoking – namely that it’s sheltered from the elements and quite private (you’re invisible unless someone actually walks into the area, and you can usually see them long before they see you) make it ideal for heavy petting, something I did quite a bit of there in my teenage years. In my early twenties I also used to go there to smoke a different vile weed: the daemon marijuana.

It was never really my thing, the daemon. I used to take it occasionally to help me sleep, but as the years went by it stopped being a peaceful hand that lulled me into dreamland, and instead would keep me awake all night staring hatefully at myself in the mirror. There was a period though, in the back-end of my university days, when a few of my friends were enthusiastic marijuana smokers and drinks in bars seemed awfully overpriced, that we would occasionally get stoned and wander through the city on a Saturday night seeking adventure. The JFK memorial is typically where we would start from.

It’s funny how being inebriated seems to attract adventure. I’ve never been sure how I act when I’m in that state, with every hair on my body alive and prickling, aware of the sensation of my clothes brushing against my body as I move; when time seems to reset every five seconds or so, and conversations become impossible to follow, but as far as I can tell it’s pretty normal. In the early stages I suppose I might babble a bit and lose my train of thought in conversation, but not very far into the second university cigarette I get paranoid that I’m babbling and tend to clam up, answering only to direct questions and only monosyllabically then.

I remember one Saturday night we watched a shopfront burn. The neon sign had shorted out and caught fire, and as we watched the flames spread to some bushes out the front, and then the doormat. It peeled the stickers off the glass windows but didn’t do a lot beyond that. I called the fire brigade, but by the time they arrived it had mostly burned out, and they didn’t even stop their truck, just crawled by slowly checking it out before deciding it wasn’t a threat and tearing off to some more pressing emergency. Singing with strangers was a popular theme on these nights. Once when we were replenishing our buzz in a dark alley we came upon some girls who were trying to break into the back door of an apartment complex. They said they knew somebody who lived there, and we ended up having a sing-a-long with them, some discarded bread crates serving as a stage. I can recall at least five other occasions when we’d run into someone in a similar (or worse) condition to ourselves, who serenaded us with their freestyle rap. Once I wandered into a karaoke bar and attempted to sing Total Eclipse of the Heart, a song I crush when alcohol is the cause of my insobriety, and found myself totally butchering it. I wasn’t able to follow the key changes at all.

Halfway through the cigar is very pleasant, with a heavy cream note. There is a distinct coffee flavour as well, which is accompanied by some bitterness, but it doesn’t detract from it. In the aftertaste there is a slight orange citrus note. The draw is a tiny bit tight. It’s entirely my fault. When I opened this cigar I picked off just the cap, which with a regular shaped cigar would have been fine, but the 109’s conical head should probably be cut a little lower. To rectify the situation I periodically put my nail into the nub and wiggle it a bit, freeing up the tobacco. It makes a world of difference.

I remember one night on the herb we made friends with a group of black guys. We were walking along the street, stoned out of our minds when they stopped us and asked us where a certain club was. They weren’t blackfellas like we have in Australia (which in Melbourne are few and far between), but African Americans like you see in the movies, with baggy pants and baseball caps. They sniffed out our weed pretty fast, and soon we were sitting on a stoop passing around jazz cigarettes feeling like we were in a Spike Lee joint. They took us to the club, where at first the bouncer didn’t want to let the white boys in, but the leader of our new friends explained that we were “aight,” did a complicated handshake, and in we were, the only white faces in a room that was wall to wall in baggy pants, snapback caps and girls with juicy butts in tight leopard-skin dresses. It was straight out of South Central LA, a place I never would have imagined would exist in the middle of Melbourne. I say we were the only white faces: I mean we were the only white male faces. There were a lot of white girls there, every one of them looking at my friend and I with undisguised distain. My friend went off to dance, and when he did one of the white girls came up to me. “I don’t think you should be here” she said, looking down her nose. “I don’t think your friend is okay.”

The condescension and blaring hip-hop was too violent an assault for our messed up brains, and so within ten or so minutes we were back outside in an alley with a few of the black guys, passing joints around. One of our new friends wandered into the circle and held out his hand for me: “check this out.” His woollen fingerless glove was soaked through with something thick and viscous. I tentatively touched it with my finger. Blood. “Are you alright bro? Did you cut yourself?” He smiled a toothy smile. “Nah” he said “I just beat the shit out of some white-boy around the back.”

We parted company shortly after.

The ending of the cigar is very dry and dusty, like sandy soil. It actually makes you thirsty. In the final inch or so it grows bitter with the tar, but in that bitterness there is a very distinct powdered chocolate note – the kind you get on the top of a cappuccino. Ten years of age improves most cigars, but typically when you say a cigar needs more age you mean that it’s too strong, which is not the case here. The tobacco is very mild, and the whole thing is well balanced, but it’s not terribly elegant. Ten more years should round off the rough edges and make it a smooth, elegant, coffee and cream bomb.

In 2014 this is the weakest of the four Partagás anniversary cigars, but it’s the one that has the most potential to improve in my eyes. If you have a box I’d leave it alone and check back in 2020. Even now, it’s still better than a PSD4.

Partagás 165 Aniversario Humidor on the Cuban Cigar Website

Partagás Grand Pyramid 160th Aniversario Humidor

Posted on March 11, 2014 by atgroom under Commemorative Release, Partagás

With each passing lustrum the Partagás Aniversario humidors grow more and more complicated: the boxes more elaborate, the bands better printed, the sizes more unusual, and the release more numerous. So it is for 2005’s 160^th Anniversary Humidor; 250 editions of an ornately carved little box, 100 cigars in each, 50 robusto extra and 50 grand piramides. The latter of these I will combust today.

I open the end of the cigar with a sharp knife and take a match to the foot. It begins very well, a smooth, mild tobacco. “Pepper” is often sighted a characteristic of Partagás cigars, and it’s a term I try not to use in my own tasting notes because I’m never sure exactly what people mean by it. Sometimes I taste capsaicin in a cigar, the tang that gives chilli peppers their heat (and their flavour), while other times there is a definite note of cracked black pepper, or a non-specific spice that lends it a “peppery” heat. On this occasion there is a note of peppercorns in the back-palette, the aroma of the green berries that I used to crush into puddles to see the oil rainbows at the age of five or six.

For a long and complex cigar like this, I thought it might be time to tell a long and complex tale of revenge, which begins, as most such tales do, with two pubescent boys, me (who at that time was known as Shroom, thanks to my trademark bowl-cut hairstyle), and David Poplar, who everybody called Dropbear. We were friends for a time, but – as is usual for hormonal dorks – we had a falling out, and became the bitterest of enemies. I don’t remember what we fell out about, but I remember the aftermath: six months or so of putting gum on each other’s lockers and stealing things from each other; pens, rulers, compasses, the power cables to each other’s laptops, that sort of stuff. More than once these thefts brought us to the principal’s office, where I would tell my version of the truth, Dropbear would lie through his teeth, and we’d both end up in trouble. At one point I shot him in the leg with a crossbow (it had a rubber safety tip on the bolt and didn’t break the skin, but it left a hell of a bruise). By far the worst and most lasting skirmish though, was when Dropbear got me kicked out of the Advanced Maths class. In later years I would emerge as a wordy, artistic type, barely able to do math beyond simple arithmetic, but at one point I was a promising mathematician, well deserving of my place among the twenty or so scholars of Advanced Maths. It was inspection day, when all of us had to submit our workbooks from the past term so that Mr. Patterson could make sure we were doing our homework, and fully confident in my pages of neat calculations, I spent the period we were given to finish off anything messing about with my friends, leaving my workbook unguarded my desk. At the end of the period I turned it in with confidence, totally unaware that Dropbear had spent that fateful period defacing it, tearing out pages, writing in mistakes, crossing things out, and drawing obscene cartoons in coloured marker. The next day my parents were called, and despite my protests, my tearful scene in Mr. Patterson’s office, I was demoted, an advanced math student no longer. I changed schools a few months later, but that night I swore that one day I would destroy Dropbear, not with some simple act of revenge, not with an act of petty theft or a defaced maths book, but with a Machiavellian plot that would see him utterly crushed and ruined forever.

Progressing, the cigar grows stronger with a bitter espresso note. It’s very pleasant, really. Very balanced. You can taste the care. The burn remains dead straight.

Fifteen years after I’d last seen the Dropbear I was living in Japan. It was an Autum night, just on the cusp of jacket weather, and I had been invited out to a chankonabe restaurant to celebrate a friend’s birthday. Chankonabe is what the sumo-wrestlers eat, a high protein, high fat soup of fish, squid, and prawns, cooked in a rich sake broth. Once the meat is eaten the pot is filled with rice, making a tasty, carb heavy stew for weight gain. The logic goes that the senior wrestlers need to build muscles, so they eat first and get all the meat. The junior wrestlers need weight, so they get the rice. The restaurant that night was all you can eat and drink, and being an epicurean of the first order, I took full advantage, filling myself to capacity with rich food and jug after jug of beer and sake. After the meal, well and truly lit up, the party moved to an Australian themed bar where I was a well-known regular. The bartender there was a middle-aged alcoholic Japanese man named Mori-san. When I first started going to that bar I would order my trademark whiskey-ginger, and would argue each time with the amount of whiskey he put in my drink. At first Mori-san would take this with good humor, adding perhaps an extra thimbleful to my glass, but once I was well established as a regular (I was at the point where I would occasionally tend bar while the proprietor had a nap on the couch), he decided to try a different tactic to ween me off large drinks: he would hide my glass beneath the bar and pour me a full six shots of whiskey with just a splash of ginger and see what happened.

My second whiskey drink rendered me insensible, or at least incapable of joining society without making a spectacle of myself, and my embarrassed friends propped me up at a corner table. I guess they felt a little bad about it, because after a half hour or so of mumbling to myself, somebody brought over a guy I didn’t recognise. “Hey Groom, why don’t you talk to this guy… he’s fresh off the boat from Melbourne.” I lifted my head a little, and focused a bleary glaze on the newcomer. “What suburb are you from?” He looked utterly disinterested in a conversation with a soak like me, but replied nonetheless “Prahran.” “Oh really? I went to school there for a couple of years.” “Yeah, me too.” I focused on him a little more intently. There was something familiar about this guy. “What did you say your name was?” “Dave… but ah… everyone called me Dropbear.” I laughed a long, malicious laugh. “You don’t recognize me? It’s Groom, you dick! Shroom! Do you remember what you did to me in Advanced Maths?”

I berated him for about twenty minutes, fifteen years of pent up pubescent anger, outlining each of my many grievances, and being quite open about my oath of vengeance. He sat there awkwardly, a sober bystander unable to extricate himself from the ramblings of an angry drunk. Eventually he found an excuse, he was travelling with another of our high-school alumni, who he had to go meet at a different bar. As with most drunks, once it seemed like I was going to be abandoned my tone shifted. “Wait wait,” I said “I’d love to see you again while you’re here, what’s your number?” He was traveling and didn’t have a phone, but to placate me he gave me the card the hotel had given him in case he got lost. The hotel was just nearby. The card had his name and room number written in pen on the top.

Not long after Dropbear had left, one of my friends sidled over and suggested that it might be time for me to do the same, and asked whether I needed any help to travel the 200m or so to my home. I took the hint, told him to get fucked, and stumbled out into the night on my own.

The coffee has sweetened, the bitterness become cocoa. With two inches left, there is a sort of grassy, herbal note, some freshly mown lawn. The strength has lightened, if anything. Above all, this is a classy, classy smoke.

My apartment was right in the centre of the red-light district, where no right minded Japanese person would ever choose to live, but it suited a party-boy foreigner like me perfectly. It was a former building manager’s apartment, and occupied the entire fifth and sixth floors of the building, with floors one to three being hostess bars, and four a happy-ending massage parlour. I had a playful relationship with the massage girls, mainly Filipino women in their 40s, who would be outside the building soliciting when I came in at night. When I first started living there they would clutch my arm whisper “massagi, massagi” in my ear, but as the months went by they had gotten to know my face and realised that I wasn’t a prospective customer. Nowadays it was me, who, rambling home in the early hours with a buzz on, would yell “massagi, massagi” at them. On the night in question I encountered one of them in the elevator on my way up – my favourite one, the one who played along with my silly game the most, and dragged her all the way up the stairs and almost across the threshold of my place before she escaped back down to the parlour below.

Finally home, and nearly spent from an exhausting evening, I slid the bolt across on the door, emptied my pockets onto the hall table, undressed, and turned on the shower. The bathroom was a Japanese style wet room, with a drain on the floor and no shower enclosure to speak of. With a well-practiced hand I removed the drain grating, and slowly lay down on my side next to the hole. I began to gently throw up, my retching scarcely more violent than breathing, the peaceful release of an undigested soup of fish, squid, and prawns, cooked in a rich broth.

I had been at it maybe twenty minutes when I became aware of a pounding on my door. My house was so centrally located that it was not unusual for me to receive late night visitors, friends who didn’t want to spring for a cab home and wanted a couch to sleep on, and so I yelled out “I’m in the shower, I’ll be there in a minute” and kept on with my expulsions. The pounding continued unabated, so eventually I got up, wrapped a towel around my waist, and dripping wet threw open the door to dress down this late night caller. Standing on my doorstep was the massage girl from the elevator a few minutes earlier. She grabbed me by the arm and started to pull me down the stairs. “No, no,” I protested “I was just kidding around! I don’t want a massage!” but she continued to pull until we got to the parlor below. Five girls in bikinis and three very sheepish looking Japanese businessmen in various stages of undress stood in a circle around the center of the room where a few overflowing plastic containers were failing to hold the deluge that was pouring through the ceiling at a similar rate to my shower above. Plainly visible floating in the tubs were chunks of fish, squid, and prawns. I laughed, explained as best as I could that I understood and would stop my shower, and then went back upstairs and passed out.

I awoke around midday to find my landlady (a sweet elderly Japanese woman) and a tradesman in my kitchen. With broken English and sign language she communicated that my shower’s drainpipe had clogged and burst in the ceiling. The tradesman brought over in a bucket the clog, a ball of prawn and squid, the suckers still visible on the tentacles. She looked at me quizzically. She picked up a frying pan from the bench and gestured to it and the shower. “You wash in there?” I grinned. “No no no.” I pointed to my mouth and made the universal gesture of throwing up. She lit up with understanding. “Okay, next time…” she pointed to the toilet. I bowed. “Okay.”

Two days later I was sitting on my balcony smoking a morning cigar (it was a Trinidad Reyes, if I recall correctly) and enjoying a can of coffee when two long, black S-Class Mercedes-Benzes came up my street and double parked in front of my building, disgorging a number of large, heavily tattooed men with sunglasses. The Yakuza. Japanese gangsters. The baddest men in Japan. Although not an uncommon sight in the streets of the red light district where I lived, this was the first time I’d seen the Yaks in mine. They were met at the door by my harried looking landlady. A few minutes later she rang my bell.

She explained in her broken English that because I had thrown up in the shower, the pipe bursting was my fault, and although the insurance company would pay for the damage I would need to apologise to the owner of the property below whose business had been hurt by the incident. I mimed confusion. “Oh no” I said “it wasn’t me who threw up… it was my friend.” From the hall table I picked up a card with the address of a nearby hotel, a name and room number written in pen on the top. She took it and scurried back down the stairs.

I returned to the balcony and to my still smoldering cigar, and watched as out in the street the large men piled back into their limousines and drove off in the direction of the nearby hotel.

I never heard from Dropbear again.

The cigar finishes very nicely without tar, the tobacco never peaking above medium. A wonderful elegant finish to a first class cigar, that is on par with the 155^th Anniversary, even if it doesn’t reach the heights of the 150^th. In an absolute ranking I’d have to give put the 155^th higher than this, but that’s mainly just because it’s older. The 160^th Anniversary Grand Piramides is a great cigar, and much better than a PSD4.

Partagás 160^th Aniversario Humidor on the Cuban Cigar Website.

Partagás Robustos Extra 155th Anniversary Humidor

Posted on March 4, 2014 by atgroom under Commemorative Release, Partagás

If last week’s cigar, the fantastic Partagás 150^th Anniversary 109, was history, well, so is this week’s, the Partagás 155^th Anniversary Robustos Extra. Where that was a snapshot of a glorious past when anniversary cigars were epics made with passion out of extinct tobaccos found after decades lost in long abandoned silos, and put to use in the making of singular, never to be repeated smokes, this represents the moment when everything started to go wrong, when the capitalists began to take over, and when everything became about money.

Well, perhaps that’s a little unfair. While the release comes far too hot on the tail of the 150^th for my taste (a century and a half in business is one thing, but a century and eleven twentieths?), this release is still a far cry from the slick anniversary humidors that today come at a rate of one a year. The box is a presidencial, a humidor that might have otherwise ended up as a diplomatic gift for a head of state, with a Partagás logo hastily glued on the lid, and is a far cry from the slick humidors made by international luxury brands that we see today. The band is basically a prototype for the mafia special bands that adorn so many of the unofficial production cigars that come out of the Partagás La Casa del Habano, and like them it features a large, gaudy landscape of the Partagás factory façade – for the panels on the sides someone has used the Photoshop gradient tool to good effect. Like the mafia specials, this band has not rolled of the giant, antique presses at Vrijdag in Holland, and is not made from the premium stock of the regular Habanos band. I’d say it was probably printed at the copy-shop down the road from the Partagás factory, but I don’t think that there were any copy-shops in Cuba in 2000. I’m not sure there’re any now, for that matter. Perhaps someone flew over to Mexico. Either way, there is no embossing, the gold is faded and peeled off in places, and I can clearly see the grid pattern from the Inkjet printer on the panels. It seems to have been made for the salomones size that is also found in the humidor, with no thought for how it would look on the smaller ringed cigars – the word “Cuba” is obscured by the overlap.

From the get go the cigar is much heavier than the 150^th, with an early tannic bite and heavy tobacco. It quickly mellows out, with a strong coffee and bean flavour. The draw is perfect, classic Cuban. I’m sure that a fan of non-Cuban, 60 ring gage cigars (n.b.: to avoid further accusations of racism, I cast no aspersions as to where this hypothetical cigar smoker might originate from, or what rubbery treats he and his countrymen may or may not enjoy) would consider this to be completely plugged, but to me it’s perfection in a draw – it takes about the same amount of pressure as to get the smoke through this cigar as it would take you to get a McDonalds thickshake through a straw: enough to make you earn it but not so much that you hurt your jaw.

An inch in and there is a strong, dominating cream flavour (the true mark of elegance in a cigar) over a slight, sandy earthiness. The day is a lot breezier than it was when I was enjoying the 150^th, and my ash has fallen more than once, never holding on for more than five millimetres or so. I’ve managed to get a chunk on my pants. Low points for construction (I jest of course; with a perfect draw and straight burn, the construction of this cigar could not be improved upon. The low points here belong to the smoker and his inability to move a delicate object from an ashtray to his lips and back again without mishap.)

I don’t often taste nuts in a cigar, but they’re there in this one: almonds, lightly toasted. Overall this is a much fuller, stronger, and rougher cigar than its compatriot in the 150^th, although that’s not to take anything away from it, as it’s still first class in every way. I wonder what five years more will do to it.

I don’t fully understand the process by which a big cigar remains mild until the end. Cigars essentially act as a filter for their own smoke, and just as the filter in a range hood over time becomes soaked with the evaporated oil of a thousand stir-fry dinners, three hours of smoking will drench the nub of a long cigar in oil and tar and cause it to become bitter. Except sometimes it doesn’t. While the last inch of the 155^th Anniversary is not the light, practically refreshing finish that I found in the 150^th, it is nonetheless very clean. I feel no desire to spit, and am not reaching for my iced-coffee any more than I have at any other point during the smoke. The age of the cigar plays a part: fifteen years in a cool dark box have caused the oils to evaporate and distil into a cleaner fuel than they were in their youth, but the lion’s share must go to the tobacco, the quality of which is unrivalled. The final notes are of grass and wet mud. The last few puffs reveal for the first time a heavy, dark cocoa. I’d love another inch to explore the flavour, but my fingers are being scorched. Despite being a little shorter than the 150^th 109, this cigar took me quite a lot longer, with a smoking time of three hours forty-five.

It’s no 150^th Anniversary 109, but the Partagás 155^th Anniversary Robusto Extra isn’t too far off, and it’s a whole lot better than a PSD4.

Partagás 155^th Anniversary Humidor on the Cuban Cigar Website

Partagás 109 150th Anniversary Humidor

Posted on February 25, 2014 by atgroom under Commemorative Release, Partagás

The Partagás 150^th Anniversary Humidor: a bland wooden box, containing 150 gaudily banded cigars split equally over three sizes: a robusto, a coronas grandes, and an old school bullet tipped Nro. 109, one example of which will meet its maker today.

Produced in 1995 the Partagás 150^th Anniversary Humidor is arguably the first of the official commemorative humidors. Yes, there were a few that preceded it, namely the 1492 (much more on that later), and the 1994 humidor – but these were created by the Cuban tobacco industry to celebrate the leaf itself, and not designed with a particular brand’s flavour profile in mind. Lost to the ages there were also probably some fairly special branded humidors – I’ve no doubt that in 1945 a few 100^th Anniversary cigars did the rounds – but as far as official Habanos production, as far as the modern commemorative humidors, as far as things you could buy without a strong connection in the Politburo: this is the first. There won’t be any fucking around today, readers, no stupid stories of hedonism past or present. No, today we’re smoking history.

The day is mild, the coffee is warm, and the cigar is fantastic from the first puff. I honestly didn’t even want to smoke a cigar today, but I found myself with a few hours and thought I had better get the jump on a dusky beauty. One puff has completely turned me around. I’ve often described cigars as elegant, and this is a quintessential example of that: a light tobacco taste over a bucket of cream. More than anything it’s reminiscent of a well-aged Cohiba Lanceros. Smooth, smooth tobacco with a cake aftertaste. Vanilla sponge cake. More my grandmother’s than my aunt’s.

Clouds of great heavy smoke hang in the air, fragrant and luxurious. I lay it down as long as I can between puffs, let it cool, let it burn at its own pace. Smoking this too quickly would be a crime. About an inch in there is a change, razor sharp between puffs. The cigar becomes fuller, with more of the dirty, woody note familiar to Partagás.

Handling it delicately I let the ash on this cigar get very long, over two inches. The long ash game is not one I usually play because it only has one ending (a pile of hot ash on my crotch) but for some reason I feel compelled today. The burn is a little uneven, and a long stretch of unburned wrapper on one side supports the column. I could even it up with the application of the tiniest flame, but I don’t want to interfere with this cigar at all, lest I spoil it. Cigars are much hardier beasts than they are generally given credit for – more than once I have had a cigar fall from my lips into a swimming pool to find it still lit and perfectly smokable when quickly fished out – but certain things deserve respect, and this is one of them.

The ash eventually starts to crack and tremble a little way past the halfway mark of the cigar, and I apply a match for just a second and let it down gently. Fantastic construction: for the first time in memory I have played the ash game to its limit and had my pants return unscathed.

With three inches remaining the cigar goes out, and when I bring it back it has changed. A strength is evident now, although there’s no hint of tar or bitterness, but the profile is fuller, more tannic, robust mud and earth, some pepper and spice, dry dark cocoa beans, and just a hint of that drip you get in the back of your throat when you do a line of good cocaine.

Very notable is that more than two hours and five inches into this cigar I still have a quarter of a cup of coffee left. I am not at all drunk (alright, I admit that there was a small amount of rum in the coffee, but we’re talking two thirds of a shot over two hours here) as I was for some of the other very highly rated dusky beauties. I am sitting on a hard wooden floor. I am alone. My laptop is uncomfortably hot against my legs, but when I move it to the floor the Wi-Fi drops out (I think my body is acting as an aerial.) This cigar was sitting in my travel humidor for more than a week before I decided to smoke it. I didn’t even want to smoke a cigar today. So much of cigar smoking is about the environment – a Monte 4 can beat almost any other cigar when it’s paired with good drink, a warm night and interesting company – and everything about this environment is against the cigar, and yet it exposes its greatness with every puff. By far the best Partagás at this stage of the horizontal, and it’s up there with the very best cigars I’ve had the pleasure of combusting. I would love to have a cigar neophyte try this, preferably the kind of person that would make derisive comments about wafting cigar smoke at a social gathering, and see how they felt about it. When it comes to cigars I am as spoiled as they come: I smoke exclusively Cuban cigars, and more or less only exotic collectable ones. I’ve never claimed to have an especially sensitive or well-trained palette, but to me nothing is more apparent here than the excellence on the tobacco: utterly, obviously, and indisputably first class. I wonder if a non-smoker would feel the same.

Even at the nub with my fingers close to burning there is no bitterness in this cigar, just the full heady flavour of wet earth and well charred whisky barrels. I have absolutely no inclination to spit. I don’t even want to take a sip of my drink. The smoke isn’t even hot! It’s practically refreshing! More than six inches smoked and if someone offered me another one of these right now I wouldn’t hesitate for a second. There is a salty taste on my lips, which might be an unusual quality of twenty year old tar build-up in the end, or more likely the jus from my scorched fingers has soaked into the leaf.

A little over three hours since I began, and the cigar is gone, reduced to so much ash and scattered on the lemon tree that grows under my balcony. At one time there were 7500 of these in the world, and now there is one less. Is the world worse off? I like to think the atmosphere was improved by the smoke.

If this is a cigar, I don’t even know what to call a PSD4. They’re not the same thing. If you have the means I highly recommend you pick one up.

Partagás 150th Anniversary Humidor on the Cuban Cigar Website

Montecristo No. 2 510 Aniversario Humidor

Posted on June 5, 2013 by atgroom under Commemorative Release, Montecristo

The 510 Aniversario Humidor commemorates the 510^th anniversary of Christopher Columbus bringing tobacco back to the old world. I’m not sure why it was released in 2003, as Cuba seems to date this event pretty soundly at 1492 (the holy grail of exotic Habanos is the 1492 Humidor – more on that later). Perhaps it was an afterthought.

The 510 examples of this nice wooden humidor contain 100 cigars a piece, 20 each from five brands: Cohiba Espléndidos, Hoyo de Monterrey Epicure No.1s, Royals de Partagás, Romeo y Julieta Hermosos No.3 and Montecristo No. 2s, one of which will burn this afternoon. Of the five, three were existing sizes and two were unique to the humidor (the Partagás and the Romeo y Julieta). Trivia fact: in some of the humidors they messed up the bands, swapping the Partagás and the Romeo bands. There was an apology letter.

Another trivia fact: there appears to be a typo on the band, which reads “De la llegada del Habano al viejo munddo”, the mistake being the double D in mundo. My Spanish isn’t the best (in fact, it’s the worst), and there’s every chance that munddo is an entirely distinct and valid word to the mundo I’m familiar with (it means ‘world,’ as in ‘El Rey Del Mundo’, ‘The King of the World’). Google Translate agrees with me though, and the fact that on the outside of the humidor proper it’s spelt with a single D is probably a point in my favour. I’ve tried looking for a clean scan of the band to see if it’s a common problem, but the only good image I can come up with is from my own encyclopaedia.

The cigar is constructed perfectly, nice wrapper, nice draw, although once alight does not begin especially well. Throughout the first inch a bitter sulphur flavour dominates the pallet, although the aftertaste is nice, a creamy mid-tobacco.

I have four or five go-to cocktails that I can shake up with a few moment’s notice, and of these the most complex is the Blood and Sand; equal parts cherry brandy, sweet vermouth, scotch whisky and fresh orange juice, the tarter the better. I had one of these last night, which unfortunately killed the last of my whisky without slaking my taste for it, so I’ve shaken it again this afternoon except with dark rum substituting the scotch. It’s not bad, although I like the scotch version better. I tend to use the best scotch I can find in this cocktail (which is to say I tend to shake it from someone else’s cocktail cabinet); a good peaty scotch, Laphroaig, Lagavulin et al, adds a delicious smoky aftertaste to the sour cherry mess that is the main flavour.

I’m not sure if it’s just a factor of my changing tastes and ever increasing operating budget, but it seems to me that there’s been a rebirth of the bitter, complex cocktail in the last few years (I think it started with that Old Fashioned craze a few years back, itself started by fans of Mad Men wanting to look cool). When I were a lad cocktail bars were a lot fewer and father between than they are now, and upon entering one you would typically be presented with a book containing twenty or so different options, from which you would select a gooey mess of chocolate and cream called a “Toblerone” or something like that.

There was a girl I used to see around this time who had a taste for such concoctions, and our standard Saturday was to find a dimly lit lair where we could order expensive drinks and make out. I would generally order beer, or sometimes whisky (you must remember that this story takes place in an era before Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and cocktails were still widely seen as ‘for girls’), but on one occasion we entered a particularly dark basement bar called Bambu, where the waiter wasn’t satisfied with that. “C’mon” he exhorted, “Have a cocktail. I’ll make you anything you want – doesn’t have to be on the menu. What do you like?” “Well,” I said “can you make me a cocktail that’s tasty but still manly?” He said he knew just the thing, and returned with something that I think he called a Bollo. He described it as containing four Italian liqueurs, and presented me with a balloon filled almost to the brim with a pitch black liquid, a few pieces of orange rind barely visible somewhere in the depths. It emitted a heavy, bittersweet, musky complexity. It was wonderful. The first real cocktail I’d ever had.

Bambu fast became our regular haunt (it didn’t hurt that they had a curtained off section that was the most private make out space in any bar in the city), and each time he would produce the same drink, more or less unbidden, until six months later I returned and my bartender was gone. I asked his successor for a “Bollo, I think it has four Italian liqueurs” but he didn’t know what I was talking about. I then asked for something “tasty but manly” and got some sour lemon thing in a Hurricane glass that was neither.

I’m sorry to say it, but throughout this whole exercise this Monte 2 never really came alive. It was a decent enough cigar, don’t get me wrong, but not particularly complex and always very rough around the edges. If I had to reach for tasting notes I’d say there was a little coffee in the middle, and the bitterness of cocoa, although none of the sweet it needs to make chocolate. All things considered it is a Monte 2; no better or worse than a good quality standard production (and considerably worse than the standard production Monte 2 I previously enjoyed alongside the Gran Reserva). It’s better than a Monte 4 only because it is longer and a cooler shape.

That said, you’re not buying the 510 Humidor because it’s the cheapest way you can think of to get some Monte 2s. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt from these last six months, it’s that the further a cigar deviates from regular production, the more effort the Cubans put into it. Pure speculation, but I’d guess that the Romeo and the Partagás are the picks of this litter. And let’s face it, this more so than almost anything else is a collector’s piece: these bad boys are not for smoking.

Montecristo No. 2 510 Aniversario Humidor on the Cuban Cigar Website

Montecristo A Montecristo Humidor

Posted on April 27, 2013 by atgroom under Commemorative Release, Montecristo

Here’s a question: have we learnt anything from five centuries of European tobacco? Do the smokers of today, with the benefit of our computers, of our collective hive consciousness, of our advanced theories of knowledge; do we enjoy the combustion of fragrant leaf any more than did our long expired predecessors?

What was the last real development in cigar smoking? The rinsing technique? (more on that later). Is anyone out there working to develop our hobby? What giant’s shoulders will the smokers of tomorrow stand upon, when trying to discover the perfect path to nicotine nirvana? Is anybody working on this?

Well yes. I am. In this edition of A Harem of Dusky Beauties we are going to go on a journey of discovery. This is real science here people. Or real hokum, I suppose, depending on your perspective. Today we’re taking cigars tantric.

My subject is the Montecristo A from the aforementioned Montecristo Humidor (as long a cigar as Cuba rolls; if I can’t find enlightenment within its four or so hours, then no cigar contains it). The setting is a small, sealed room (a bathroom, if I’m honest). I have heated it to 40°C, and unrolled a simple yoga mat, and over the stereo I play a gentle melody of pan-pipes and forest sounds. At the head of the mat I place my ashtray, my sweat towel and several cartons of coconut water.

Before I light the cigar I bring my head down to the floor in the Child’s Pose and relax. I breath deep, in and out, slowing my heartbeat to the rhythm of the earth. I clear my mind of my day to day concerns and focus on my intention for the session.

In Sanskrit the literal meaning of yoga is to join or unite, and so I hope to unite yoga with the world of Cuban cigar aficionadoism. The Cuban cigar is the most natural product in the world: its tobacco is grown by peasant farmers without fertilisers or pesticides; it is harvested by the calloused hands of itinerant labourers; it is dried in ancient wooden barns, before being transported to Havana by horse-cart where it is rolled into a cigar using nothing more than the hard thigh of a dusky virgin. A Cuban cigar is a totally natural relaxant that promotes meditation, and stimulates the mind and body! What better match than cigars and yoga! Lord knows the average cigar aficionado could use some toning up.

Rising from my meditation I light the cigar and work the floor, opening up my arms and legs, hinging from the hips and bowing into a forward fold. My awareness of my body begins to grow, as I practice my ujjayi breathing, deep breaths from the diaphragm, regular to my movement. I come to all fours and raise my hips up into Downward Facing Dog, holding the pose, stretching out my back, my spine, before bringing it down through a vinyasa and into a sun salute. I inhale, very light tobacco, notes of cedar, a little cream, and then hold the breath as I go back through the stretch, letting the smoke cool in my mouth before exhaling through the nose. I go through the exercise for several more tokes before kicking the right leg high, my weight over my heart centre. I feel it beat with the rhythm of my breath; I feel it beat with the rhythm of the Montecristo A.

Forty five minutes in, and it’s so fucking hot in this room. When I’m upright sweat sticks in the hair on my legs; when inverted it runs down my arms and face, and I have to wipe it away before each new puff on the cigar. Sweat is good, sweat cleanses, but it’s no fun producing it. Taking a moment’s break in the lotus position I mop my forehead with the towel and take a drink from my coconut water. The cigar has thickened up, medium tobacco now, strong cedar and floral with a little honey. The coconut water is a perfect complement, just enough flavour to clear the pallet, but light enough that it dissipates instantly, leaving nothing to effect the flavour of the leaf.

I work the legs, lunges and warrior poses, always returning with the breath to the Down Dog and the inhalation. I move through the balance poses, keeping the cigar in my mouth or hand, an extension of my body, an insectoid feeler that aids in finding my centre and adds extra height to my Ardha Chandrasana, my Moon Salute. Nine inches is a lot of tar to filter out, and toward the end the cigar grows very bitter, but never loses its class; every puff has been wonderfully refined, absolutely top quality tobacco.

After three and a quarter hours I lay the nub down in the ash tray and return to the child’s pose, my forehead on the mat. The cigar is utterly spent, and so am I. I feel my heart slow, then stop. My body begins to melt, forming tendrils that ease their way through the soft foam of the mat and down into the floor, finding the cracks in the tiles, moving between the grains in the cement slab, and then down into the dry earth. They weave around pipes, around bones, around rubbish and the remnants of prior civilizations, making their way into the bedrock. I move under the vast bulk of the Himalayas, the Andes; under the cool weight of the oceans, past laval vents and whale drops; past tectonic rifts and continental shelf. After a time I feel a tug, and my tendrils entwine with those of another. She embraces me and pulls me up, up toward a small island in the Caribbean, up toward a sheltered valley named Vuelta Abajo. I burst from the earth, strong and green, a crown upon my head. I flex my broad leaves up, reaching, saluting the sun, my every limb extended to its limit, basking in the radiant glow. I drink in the sun’s energy and feel its power within myself, storing it as fragrant aroma and humming nicotine. A warm tropical breeze sweeps across the valley floor, and my leaves join in the murmur of the leaves of a million of my sisters as we gently sway singing the song of the fields.

I am happy.

I awake with a start. A shiver runs down my spine. Hours have passed. The heater globe has gone out, and I lie in the dark on the cold, sweat-damp mat, my entire body stiff and aching. I stagger up and stare at my haggard face in the mirror, dark lines and crow’s feet, the speckled print of the yoga mat impressed upon my cheek. I reach out and touch the cold, dead glass. Is this all there is?

The Montecristo A from the Montecristo Humidor. Better than a Monte 4.

Montecristo A Montecristo Humidor on the Cuban Cigar Website.

Montecristo Salomones II Montecristo Humidor

Posted on April 21, 2013 by atgroom under Commemorative Release, Montecristo

I never understood 2004’s Montecristo Humidor. On the Cuban Cigar Website we list it as a ‘commemorative humidor,’ but what precisely is it commemorating? The official Habanos S.A. page for it gives no clues beyond a vague mention of “large cigars.” What it really reminds me of is a Partagás Mafia Special – a humidor commissioned by a store or regional distributor outside the auspices of Habanos S.A., into which regular production stock is then repackaged and sold at a premium – a sort of faux special release. The Montecristo Humidor, however, is not that: the Montecristo Humidor is 100% official. Seven hundred were made; each one contains fifty Montecristo As (more on those later), and fifty of the cigar I am about to smoke, the Montecristo Salomones II.

I tend to think of my review of the Compay 95 Salomones II a few weeks ago as a negative one because of what happened after: for the first time in decades I got sick. I finished the cigar at dusk and then ordered myself a pizza (I hadn’t really had anything to eat that day, and I was feeling woozy from the nicotine). I can’t remember what I did after that – I probably watched a movie or something – but whatever it was, it was a quiet night in. No substantial drinking. No staying up late. I was surprised, therefore, to wake up the next morning feeling extremely seedy. Compounding the problem was the fact that I was hosting a dinner party that night (the traditional Easter feast for the small religious cult of which I am a leading member) and at 10am two of my brethren were arriving to begin the preparations.

I held it together most of the day, but ultimately threw up in the evening as the scent of rich cooking began to climax. The pizza of the night before formed the main part of my expulsion, seemingly undigested despite more than 24 hours in my stomach. The illness lasted several days, the cause indeterminate. The pizza seemed fine (one of my brethren ate the leftovers and reported no issues), so perhaps it was the 40 year old chocolate liqueur (although I only had the smallest sip), or perhaps the blame lies in the three and a half hours spent with the Montecristo Salomones II.

Most likely it was some kind of stomach bug, but nonetheless, once you throw up with a taste fresh in your mouth you tend to be prejudiced against that thing for a while: consider all those girls who say “oh, I can’t drink tequila – I had a bad night on that stuff once” when you offer to buy them a shot for their twenty-something birthday. I feel like I am prejudiced against the Montecristo Salomones II.

It is a surprise, therefore, when the cigar begins wonderfully, with light tobacco over heavy cream, the flavour I most like to find in a Montecristo, and a certain honey sweetness. Delicious. One could ask for nothing more.

I’m accompanying this smoke with vodka and fresh squeezed orange juice in a 50/50 mix. The vodka is Crystal Head, a vodka that I desired for years based on the strong pitch of its owner, Dan Aykroyd, and that came to Australia a year or two ago, and a while after that I finally acquired. I was instantly disappointed. The bottle has mould lines, and generally doesn’t seem like the high quality carved artefact that Aykroyd portrays it as, and the vodka, well, is vodka. Perhaps there’s something about vodka I don’t get; I’m more than happy to be a wanker about rum, whisky, port, ever tequila, but vodka? To me there is a fine line of differentiation between absolutely undrinkable paint-thinner vodka, and ‘drinkable’ vodka, and on neither side of that line would I drink the stuff straight. With orange though? Refreshing.

Part way through a cedar flavour dominates, over a heavy herbal flavour, almost that of Chartreuse or other herbal liqueur. The cream has gone, and the tobacco has filled out a bit, though there’s no trace of tar, and the quality is obvious.

Around the halfway mark the doorbell rings, and I abandon the cigar for 40 minutes or so while I deal with a friend who is dropping off some video equipment. It’s 40 minutes too long: I had thought I’d only be a moment, and didn’t snip off the coal or blow the smoke out of it or make any preparations for letting the cigar extinguish, and when I relight it a dirty, ashen flavour dominates. It’s a pity, that a cigar like this would be tarnished by my neglect as it really was quite lovely up till now. Hopefully it will pass.

What started out as a glorious sunny day has become overcast, and light rain begins to fall. That’s the problem with giant cigars like this (especially when you live in a city like Melbourne with highly erratic weather); you not only have to find a whole afternoon to devote to them, but you have to depend on the weather to hold for that entire time. I retreat to the porch, where the seats are much less comfortable and the table much more cramped, jamming myself in a bolt hole against the wall. The cigar has not recovered from its abandonment, and tastes only of ash and bitter tar. Somewhat unadvisedly I have switched to gin and tonic. I had no lemon, so I stuck a few slices of lime in there instead. Bitter quinine. Sour lime. Dirty ash. Five inches of tar, filtered down to the last inch. I’m cramped, uncomfortable and cold. There is nothing pleasant about this experience, and yet, how can I not persist? How can I let this cigar, a rare and wonderful dusky beauty, a cigar that was generously given to me, a cigar I am one of a very privileged few to smoke; how can I turf this out into the rain and let it slowly dissolve in the cold and the wet?

I cannot, and I persist.

At the end it gets a little better mainly because I start to feel the nicotine more.

This started out so well, and would have been a great cigar if I hadn’t ruined it, so I feel it unfair to label it worse than a Monte 4… perhaps if it hadn’t been so long though?

A Harem of Dusky Beauties. Consistency.

Montecristo Salomones II Montecristo Humidor on the Cuban Cigar Website

Montecristo B Compay Centennial Humidor

Posted on April 15, 2013 by atgroom under Commemorative Release, Montecristo

It’s a glorious day in Melbourne, the last hurrah of an Indian summer, and my errands concluded I can’t think of a better way to spend the afternoon than on a bench by the river, watching the passers-by, enjoying the sun, drinking a milky coffee and smoking the Montecristo B from the Compay Centennial Humidor.

The Montecristo B was released in 1971 and supposedly discontinued in the mid-1980s, although by all accounts they are still produced in small numbers. They come in humidors of 50, and aside from the addition of a second band and an inscription on the inner panel, the Compay Centennial Humidor is identical to the ‘standard’ production.

I’ve never quite been able to understand where the B fits in the Montecristo line-up; I’ve never quite been able to understand who it’s for. I understand the numbered cigars, those are for everyone (they deliver the Montecristo flavour in a range of reasonable sizes), and I also understand the Especiales (for the connoisseurs), the Opens (teenage punks), and even the Edmundos (Americans whose mouths have become distended from chewing too much gum, a condition that leaves them tragically unable to smoke anything thinner than a 52 ring). Even the A has a place (people with too much time on their hands), but the B, who is that for? It’s 6mm longer than the Monte 4 and 7mm shorter than the Monte 3 – is this a niche that needs to be filled?

I suppose that’s why they’re so rare.

The cigar has a very rounded head, verging on a bullet tip, with a good thick cap. Construction is perfect, the draw nicely firm. The first puffs are tangy and herbal over strong tobacco, very heavy and rich, and obviously of the highest quality. I like the bands on this cigar, which are much less flashy that those on the 95 – just the standard Cuban personalised band below the regular Montecristo one. The effect is that of an affectionate birthday gift rather than a slick exercise in integrated marketing.

As I was taking the pre-light photograph a courting couple took up residence on the seat downwind of me, and as I light the cigar and the first billows of smoke drift in their direction the female of the species begins to cough and glare at me (her boyfriend is on his phone, oblivious). Doesn’t she realize what a special thing it is to inhale the smoke of a cigar like this? Only 7500 of this edition were produced, and even the regular B is a very rare beast. How would poor Compay feel to think that his birthday present would bother someone so? It’s a shame they couldn’t get him to roll the cigars for one of these humidors (well, it’s a shame he died five years before this one was released, but perhaps they could have tried it for the 95). Imagine what a collector’s item those would be.

She has reached the end of her boost juice, and slurps the bottom of it furiously in between hacking coughs and sidelong glaring. I admit it, I am at a stage where I am deliberately exhaling larger clouds in her direction than is strictly speaking necessary. They taste of strong coffee, with notes of hot roasted vanilla bean.

I am resting the cigar on my sunglasses between puffs, and they’re surprisingly well suited to life as an ashtray, at least at this ring gauge. The nose pads grip the cigar exactly tight enough, and the arm folds down just right as a retaining guard. It allows me to rest the cigar in the lee of my body, sheltered from the very slight winds that gust occasionally, and protects the cigar from whatever filth is on this public bench. I think would protect it from all but the most violent of accidental jostling.

It’s really a very nice cigar, this Montecristo B. Perfect burn, with woody notes over full tobacco. A hint of barnyard and some kind of sour fruit… grapefruit maybe, or bitter orange, that sour herbal aftertaste of Chinotto and Campari. A family of Scandinavians has replaced the couple on the bench downwind, and for a moment I feel slightly guilty exhaling my bilious clouds toward their clutch of fresh faced Aryan children, but they don’t seem to be bothered. There’s certainly no glaring going on. The smallest boy is coughing, but I think he has a cold.

In the bottom third of the cigar I begin to find myself swimming a little from the nicotine, its pressure on my temples. I’ve read that the B is a mild cigar, but for this example at least that is definitely not the case: this example is much stronger than a Monte 4, and stronger inch for inch than any other Monte I can recall. It really is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon though, out here by the water, fresh air and a nicotine buzz. The cigar ends in a very classy way, dark chocolate mixed in with the tar, the quality of the tobacco obvious to the last. This will not be a cigar that leaves a bad taste in my mouth tomorrow morning. I eschew the provided smoker’s bin, and instead lob the nub into a garden bed; a noble cigar like this deserves a better resting place that a cylinder of discarded cigarette filters.

All up, a fantastic little cigar, that is better than both the Salomones II and the No. 4 from the Compay 95 humidor. A Harem of Dusky Beauties – your home for practical consumer advice.

[Author’s note: a draft of this article was published a few weeks ago on a major international cigar forum, where several members took umbrage with my quip about Americans with mouths distended from chewing too much gum, seemingly under the impression that I was characterising their entire race as slack jawed ruminants who chew constantly at sugarised rubber much as a cow chews her cud. For this I would like to offer a heartfelt apology. The comment was intended in jest, but it is a poor example of the type, depending on both an inaccurate stereotype and a cheap shot for what little humour it contains. I fully and unconditionally apologise for it, and beg humble forgiveness for any offense caused. In my limited experience, I have always found Americans to be possessed of extremely small mouths that are rarely in motion.]

Montecristo B Compay Centennial Humidor at the Cuban Cigar Website

Montecristo No. 4 Compay 95 Aniversario Humidor

Posted on April 10, 2013 by atgroom under Commemorative Release, Montecristo

In the last edition of A Harem of Dusky Beauties I talked about the Salomones II from the Compay 95 humidor; in this edition I will cover the other cigar from that box, a humble Montecristo No. 4. Please read that article if you would like some greater history of the humidor (or indeed my thoughts on South African chicken restaurants and privacy in our Orwellian present) – I won’t repeat myself here… there simply isn’t time, as today I have for you a rambling essay about cigar construction and blending.

Generally speaking, a cigar is made up of four tobacco leaves rolled into a bunch. The higher the leaf grows on the plant the stronger its flavour and the heavier its nicotine will be, and the slower it will burn. At the farms the leaves are sorted into categories based on what part of the plant they come from, and then they are dried, fermented and aged. The length of their fermentation and ageing, and the methods used to achieve it, vary dependant on what category they fall into. Eventually the leaves find their way into the central warehouses and the blender’s hands.

On one level the blend used in a cigar is a basic formula – an Upmann No. 2 might contain one leaf from the middle of the plant, one from the bottom, and another from the top (with a trained eye and a willingness to destroy an $11 cigar it is relatively easy to establish what proportions of each of these make up a given cigar), but there is some art beyond this in the blender’s occupation; the blender must search out some quality, a terroir is involved; he must inhale deeply of a leaf and say “ah ha! This has the subtle scent of coffee and vanilla bean, it must have come from the north side of the Vuelta Abajo valley, and belongs in a Montecristo Especial!” (presumably he goes on to say “but what’s this grassy aroma? My friend Boxer the plough-horse must have left some fertiliser near this plant… it smells like he had a good breakfast, that scamp!”)

Consider the case of the Punch Punch and the Punch Black Prince; these are two cigars of exactly the same size, from the same marque, from the same factory, bearing the same band and retailing at approximately the same price. What then is the difference then between the Punch Punch and the Punch Black Prince? The blend! The terroir! A hint of cinnamon and Boxer’s heavy lunch! My point is that blends are ethereal, hard to nail down, and that they matter, at least to the connoisseur.

I was once at a fundraising auction for the victims of a Cuban hurricane where the centrepiece of the items offered for sale was a box of special cigars donated by the Cuban ambassador to China. The cigars were Montecristo No. 4s with special bands celebrating 50 years of Chinese/Cuban comradeship, and the box they came in bore a similar sticker where the Habanos S.A. seal would usually sit. Diplomatic cigars, they were billed as, although what that means is hard to say. In the case of the diplomatic Cohiba Lanceros I think the consensus is that they represent the crème de la crème of the production; all Cohiba Lanceros are made equal, but some are more equal than others, and the diplomatics come only from the desks of the level 10 rollers, and while they all have the same blend, only those examples that are made from particularly fine leaves, only those examples that truly exemplify the blend are good enough for the diplomatic box.

At El Laguito with the Lanceros I can see it, but the Monte 4? Is someone sorting through the tens of millions produced annually, across many different factories, and plucking out the very best to throw in a box and send to China? Do high level rollers even roll Monte 4s? I doubt it. The ambassador probably purchased these cigars at the LCDH that morning and got a few bands printed up in a Chinese copy shop.

All of which is my long winded way of making a wider point about the Compay Segundo Monte 4: it tastes like a Monte 4, and were it to taste like something else it would on some level be a failure.

That said, it is a particularly fine example of the breed. Perfectly constructed. Well aged. Nice band. Recommended.

(P.S. It would be remiss of me not to mention the drink with which I accompanied this cigar, a shiso infused vodka and tonic.

When I was a child my sister and I briefly tried to raise silkworms (to what end I don’t recall – there certainly weren’t enough for pyjamas). We fed them on what our mother told us were mulberry leaves (their natural diet), and they lasted a week or so before dying premature and mysterious deaths (my mother attributed their demise to the unnatural heating in our home). I was a curious child, and must have sampled a mulberry leaf or two, because twenty years later when presented with an odd leaf as a garnish on a meat platter in Japan I instantly recalled the flavour: “that’s a mulberry leaf,” I declared with authority. Nobody disputed it.

That was five years ago, and today my friend Stevespool (a well-known Japanophile) has begun to cultivate shiso (known in the west as the ‘beefsteak plant’) to infuse into vodka. He offered me a raw leaf to sample, and after trying it I looked at him in confusion. “No Steve,” I said. “That’s a mulberry.”

That night in the shower I put the pieces together, and the ghosts of my silkworms, wandering for more than two decades, were finally put to rest. My mother had misidentified the plant.

Anyway, shiso infused vodka is pretty good. Sort of sweet, with a strong herbal aftertaste. It turns pink when you add the acid of the lemon to it!)

Montecristo No. 4 Compay 95 Aniversario Humidor on the Cuban Cigar Website

Montecristo Salomones II Compay 95 Aniversario Humidor

Posted on April 3, 2013 by atgroom under Commemorative Release, Montecristo

Compay Segundo, sometime cigar roller, big time Cuban musician. Is it unfair to call him the Cuban Elvis Presley? I can’t say, as honestly I only know him from the humidors. My understanding is that he’s an old club singer that sprang to worldwide fame as the star of The Buena Vista Social Club, a film I never saw. The humidor features two sizes of cigar, 55 fairly nondescript Montecristo No. 4s (more on those later), and 40 examples of this, a glorious Salomones II.

I do love a good perfecto, these giant, bulbous bastards. I showed this cigar to a non-smoker once, and he observed that it was “such a stereotypical big boss cigar.” If you must do a 57 ring gauge, Cuba, this is how to do it: 42 at the business end. A heck of a band, too: basically the Montecristo band, but in place of the crossed swords we have a portrait of the man of the hour, grinning and resplendent in a Panama hat. Has anyone else ever had their face on an official Cuban cigar band? The only one that springs to mind is Simon Bolivar, and with all due respect, he accomplished a little bit more with his time than Segundo did. I wonder if there’ll be a Cohiba Castro humidor for his 90^th in a few years – 45 Lanceros and 45 Coronas Especials, each with Fidel’s smiling face on the band.

The cigar begins well, a little spice on the front palette, over roasted vegetables; the blackened skin of a charred capsicum. The tobacco is obviously first class, with a hint of cream and honey.

I’m pairing this with a bottle of crème de cacao that I found recently among my grandfather’s things. Although it appears unopened, the level has dropped down to the bottom of the neck: the angels share (although a little staining around the label indicates that perhaps the garage floor may have also taken a slice). I asked my grandfather where it came from and he said he got it from his brother’s place (my great uncle died in 1996). The fact that it was produced in Australia but bears no metric measurements or indication of alcohol content dates it to the mid-70s at the latest. Sugar and cocoa, aged in the bottle for more than three decades. I poor a little over ice, and observe the liquid churning vigorously around the ice blocks. Some kind of chemical reaction is occurring. I take a sip. It’s good. A sweet, understated chocolate. I’m not totally sure what this stuff tastes like new, but the decades of age haven’t harmed it. Well, not much. There is just a hint of mildew.

Mid-way through the cigar is very heavy, full bodied and tannic, with a surprising amount of tar for a cigar that still has five inches left to smoke. Dusty wood is on the back palette, with a hint of dried wheat (the husks are burning). As it waters down, the crème de cacao is getting worse, with rust and musty basements now dominating the aftertaste, and not in a good way. I won’t have another.

I throw on a little Compay for the sake of atmosphere, and while I’d like to say it reminds me of wild nights in Havana, that’s not true. I was a young man when I was in Cuba, and although there were certainly bands playing this kind of music on the Malecon and in the tourist restaurants, the night spots I sought out were the ones where young people go to rub their sweaty bodies against one another (back then I was in the market for another kind of dusky beauty) and for me Cuban music will always be over-loud Spanish hip-hop played through cheap speakers. No, what this Best of Compay Segundo reminds me of is eating at Nandos, and I can never think of Nandos without thinking of her.

A few years ago I worked near Doncaster Shoppingtown and would eat my lunch in the food court there. It had been six months, and I was thoroughly sick of everything that was on offer, and so as I did most lunchtimes I was prowling around, my hands in my pockets, scowling at the different menus and trying to decide what was the least offensive on this particular day. This lunchtime was worse than most; it was a week into the school holidays, and every store had a long line of itinerant youth in front of it. Nandos was never really an option for me (I don’t consider their food to be good value), so I only gave them the briefest glance, but when I did my eyes fell upon an absolute vision behind the counter. She was wearing a Nandos hat, her light, almost white blonde hair in a ponytail out the back of it, a few tendrils loose, two hanging forward, framing her face. She had high, reptilian cheek bones and a wide, pink mouth, which was pressed into a bored pout as she waited at her register for someone to approach her (she would later smile, revealing teeth that were as white as they were straight and perfect). Her skin was porcelain, with a luminescent, almost transparent quality, but the real source of her beauty was her eyes; two large limpid pools of ozone blue. My heart skipped a beat when I saw her, and then rapidly tried to make up the loss. Unthinkingly I stumbled toward her, magnetically drawn. My voice caught in my throat as I tried to place my order, as I stammered “one classic chicken burger combo, please.” She had an accent, a slight South African, “how would you like that; mild, medium, hot, extra hot or lemon and herb?”

“Extra hot.”

I watched her while I waited for my food; watched her delicate hands folding stickers around toothpicks to make the sauce flags; watched her kneel to retrieve a Sprite from the low fridge; watched her toss and salt the chips in the fryer. Her beauty was mesmerising, intoxicating, and I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t understand how nobody else seemed to be noticing her. What was this girl doing in a Nandos? A goddess was standing before us and we were doing nothing to celebrate her! Where was the parade? Where was line of fawning suitors? Why was nobody starting a war for this angel?

Her name tag had read “Beth”, and I wasn’t back in the office long before “beth +nandos +doncaster” went into my search bar. I don’t know what I was looking for, really; validation, I suppose, a post about her on some internet forum where perverts evaluate the comparative beauty of our nation’s fast food vendors. I found nothing.

I ate Nandos for lunch every day that week, but come the next Monday she had vanished, back to the ethereal plane from whence she had descended. I loitered around the next few days, but no, she was gone.

Into the last few inches, and surprisingly the cigar has mellowed, light tobacco over toast, with a little bean and sweetness. Perhaps a hint of citrus in there, in the same smoky, chemical way that scotch has a hint of citrus. I’m well into my second hour of smoking, and it’s starting to take a toll on both my palette and my constitution. I French inhale, trying to divine some deeper tasting note, but I can’t do it. I feel a little woozy. Perhaps it’s the crème.

Three months later she returned. I saw her from across the food court, a vision emerging from the water on a clamshell. Had someone been watching me as I caught sight of her they would have seen a man transformed, a scowling beast hunched in a winter coat suddenly erect and beaming, striding across the food court. She was just as I had last seen her; a perfect, lovely angel, with only one tiny difference: her nametag now read “Bethany.”

Back in the office I tried again, “bethany +nandos +doncaster,” and there she was. A Facebook page: Bethany Coetzee, seventeen years old, formerly of Cape Town, now of Doncaster High; my angel beaming at me in the privacy of my cubical. I highlighted her name and searched again, and was unsurprised by the result: a portfolio on the website of a modelling agency that listed her as ‘In Development.’ The pictures were mostly unflattering (I suspect that the makeup artist was also ‘in development’ and wanted to show off their stuff, really cake it on) but there were a few at the end that made my heart beat. They were simple Polaroids, presumably the ones she submitted to the modelling agency with her application, and in them she stood in a neutral pose, no makeup, hair unstyled, against her bedroom wall, wearing only a plain black bra and panties.

I tug on my cigar and reflect on this anecdote, which is one I’ve been bringing out for a few years on later evenings amongst more degenerate company. I tell it as an illustration of far we’ve come as an information society: I never would have imagined twenty years ago as I played Commander Keen on my x486 that two short decades later we would live in a world where one could fancy a random waitress and minutes later be looking at pictures of her in her underwear. As I think about the story now though, I realize it makes me look like an asshole.

A few weeks ago I met a guy at a wedding with a very attractive girlfriend (although nowhere near as attractive as Bethany), and when I asked how they’d met he replied that he’d walked into a room and she was the best looking woman he’d ever seen, as if that was enough of an explanation. Well, what did I do when I walked into a room and saw the best looking woman I’d ever seen? I skulked back to my lair, and creepily stalked her on the internet.

What was I thinking? I should have talked to her! Asked for her number! At the very least I should have strode up to that counter, looked right in that perfect ice blue eye and said “girl, what are you doing working here? Don’t you know how beautiful you are? My Mercedes is parked right outside. Let’s go to the airport and make some real fucking money.”

The cigar ends well, with very little tar, which is surprising, given its length and girth. If you only smoked half of it (either half), it’d be better than a Monte 4, but as it stands it’s just too damn long. Total smoking time, 3:40.

Montecristo Salomones II Compay 95 Aniversario Humidor on the Cuban Cigar Website