Innehållsförteckning för September/October 2021 från Cigar Aficionado

A classic cigar in the regular tasting section of this magazine doesn’t come around too often, but we have one here: the Oliva Serie V Melanio Figurado. It was Cigar of the Year in 2014 and is still a treasure today. There are plenty of high-scoring smokes in these pages making for a memorable issue of great performances 95 NICARAGUA TOP FIGURADO OLIVA SERIE V MELANIO FIGURADO It was fantastic in 2014 when we named it Cigar of the Year, and it’s stilla tremendous smoke today. No humidor should be without this cigar. 94 NICARAGUA TOP CHURCHILL SAN CRISTOBAL QUINTESSENCE CHURCHILL An offshoot of the core San Cristobal line, Quintessence is made by My Father Cigars for Ashton Distributors, and the Churchill is the newest addition. It tied with the…

They’re compact, travel-friendly and easy to use. Punch cutters are simple, no-hassle tools for opening the cap of your cigar. While an improper slice with a guillotine or V-cutter may result in your puro unraveling or smoking poorly, a punch cut brings precision to your smoking game. Most punches feature a retractable, cylindrical blade that, when rotated, creates a circular hole in the head of your cigar. Compared with the severe, angular chopping action of other cigar tools, punch cuts make small, precise openings. There are two advantages: a smaller cut means fewer loose bits of tobacco in your mouth and more concentrated flavor delivered to your palate. The main drawback to punch cutters is that they can’t be used on cigars with pointed heads. Still, cigar connoisseurs would be…

From bright emerald to olive drab, green is an adventurous color choice that enlivens even a familiar watch model with a fresh new face. Last fall, Rolex expanded its Oyster Perpetual lineup with a bold range of midsize, 36-mm Oysters in bright colors—including coral red, turquoise, and yes, a vibrant green ($5,500) with applied white-gold indexes that glow blue after dark along with the luminous hands. The dynamic colors infuse the classic Oyster with some pizzazz. More than just a pretty face, the green Oyster is equipped with the new in-house developed calibre 3230, a cutting-edge automatic movement that delivers fundamental gains in terms of precision, power reserve, resistance to shocks and magnetic fields and more. Meanwhile, Oris enlisted a no-nonsense military vibe for a special edition commemorating its new…

Ron Abuelo XII Two Oaks Panama, $60 The whiskey world’s fervent experimentation with wood aging is not lost on rum makers. This example goes from ex-Bourbon barrels to a finish in new extra-charred oak casks to produce a very smooth, sweet rum with maple, caramel, coffee and nut notes. Appleton Estate Black River Casks Jamaica, $65 This new release, with a minimum 15 years of age, is a nod to its source of limestone-filtered water. The spirit melds pot and column-stilled rums. Palate includes orange, banana, pineapple, ginger and nuts. Bacardi Gran Reserva Limitada Puerto Rico, $100 This is the longest matured of the Gran Reserva line at an average of 12 years in lightly toasted American oak. The bottles are numbered and dated by batch. Lush notes of leather,…

A former Cigar of the Year shows that it wasn’t just a flash in the pan. The Oliva Serie V Melanio Figurado scored a stunning 95 points, sending it straight to Classic designation on our 100-point scale. Both angled in its pressing and contoured in its tapers, the Figurado is as impressive to smoke as it is to behold, thanks to the Ecuadoran Sumatra-seed wrapper, a cover leaf that turned a tasty Nicaraguan blend into something extraordinary. Two Cuban cigars scored 93 points. The H. Upmann No. 2 is a standard pirámide format, sharing its dimensions with the more iconic Montecristo No. 2. Its familiar shape makes it more approachable than the Partagás Salomon, another double-tapered cigar. It requires a little more time and patience, but pays off in its…

Honduras and Nicaragua produced two stellar toros in this tasting, both scoring 93 points. The box-pressed Monarca comes from Padrón’s 1964 Anniversary Series, which debuted in 1994 to commemorate the company’s 30th anniversary. It’s made with older Nicaraguan tobaccos than those found in the normal Padrón line and the extra aging shows, as it unlocks the refined cocoa-like characteristics the 1964 line is known for. Saint Luis Rey has been a sleepy brand, but Altadis U.S.A. is hoping to change that with its new Carenas line. Save for the wrapper, the Toro’s tobacco comes from Honduras. Of note is the Honduran broadleaf binder. Rocky Patel’s Grand Reserve scored 92 points and, like the Carenas, is made in Honduras as well. The former international-only release became available in the U.S. last…

Romeo y Julieta Wide Churchill When you win the NBA championship, it’s only right you celebrate in splendid fashion. Basketball phenom Giannis Antetokounmpo did just that with a Champagne shower and Romeo y Julieta Wide Churchill, gleefully passing around a box of the highly rated Cuban cigars to his fellow Milwaukee Bucks after winning the NBA Finals this July. The ‘Greek Freak,’ as they call him, hails from Athens, Greece and earned back-to-back Most Valuable Player awards in 2019 and 2020 to go along with his 2021 NBA Finals MVP trophy. At just 26 years old, the power forward has had plenty of opportunities to join “super teams” as they call them, which would allow him to easily score the ultimate goal of an NBA title. However, determined to be…

Liga Privada No. 9 Toro Balance is an important element in Rob Dietrich’s life. It extends from his choice in cigar smoking—his favorite is Drew Estate’s Liga Privada No. 9—to his calling: making Blackened whiskey, the official brand of the rock band Metallica. Equilibrium typically marks the spirit he makes, a blend of American whiskeys, Bourbon and straight rye. Dietrich also finds balance in the Liga Privada, between its husky Connecticut broadleaf wrapper and inner tobaccos from Nicaragua, Honduras and Brazil. They provide a chocolate note that he always finds pairs well with whiskey. His latest creation is a project called Blackened X Willett Kentucky Straight Rye. The balance there? He and Willett master distiller Drew Kulsveen, another cigar lover, have married high rye and low rye varieties. Another element…

July in Cuba is predictably hot, but this summer something quite unusual arrived with the rising mercury—the passionate fire of civil unrest. The people on the island took to the streets, shouting libertad, Spanish for freedom, and calling for change. The demonstrations began in San Antonio de los Baños, a town about 16 miles southwest of Havana. Video images of the protests quickly spread by cell phone—something roughly half of all Cubans now own. As the word got around the country, the protests spread to other cities and towns, and soon thousands were demonstrating all over Cuba, including in Havana, where immense crowds formed in the city streets. These were the largest protests seen on the island in decades. This type of dissent is rare in Cuba, where communism has…

Last June, Gil Hanse was full on with his restoration of the Lower Course of Baltusrol Golf Club, the storied track in the leafy New Jersey suburbs designed by the iconic A.W. Tillinghast. Hanse called a meeting of the club’s master-plan committee, not in one of the comfy and opulent function rooms of the muscular clubhouse, but at the eighth green. Here he would present his ideas about restoring the green, doing so in the environment in which he is most comfortable: the dirt. “Being outside in the dust and the dirt feels like being alive,” says Hanse. “You are in contact with the dirt. You are in the field with the guys, there is such camaraderie and a bonding. I can’t imagine building golf courses without that feeling.” The…

The ballot of rum drinks may be long, but El Presidente stands apart with distinction. It embraces the implicit sweetness of the base spirit, but appeals with an aromatic that shows off the savory character of a classic cocktail. Once dubbed “the aristocrat of cocktails,” El Presidente is no longer the type of drink you see on every menu. But once you get this elegant cocktail right, it may be voted commander-in-chief of your bar. This is a serious cocktail that gets along very well with a cigar. Born in Cuba around 1915, El Presidente would later become a favorite among vacationing Americans who were dodging Prohibition. The namesake president was surely Mario García Menocal, but the inventor is not as clear. One of the claimants, Eddie Woelke, would tweak…

The Aging Room Quattro Nicaragua brand got considerable fame when the torpedo-sized Maestro was named Cigar of the Year for 2019. In this tasting, the Concerto scored 94 points, showing that many of the rich, wonderous qualities of the torpedo translated well to this Churchill, consistency that can be credited to A.J. Fernandez, the cigarmaker who produces the cigar in Nicaragua for Boutique Blends. Another Nicaraguan cigar scored 94 points, the San Cristobal Quintessence, which was released earlier this year. It’s the latest addition to the cigar line and is made by My Father Cigars for Ashton Distributors Inc. Ernesto Perez-Carrillo, no stranger to our top reviews, turned sentimental when he named a size in the La Historia line after his son. The E-III scored 93 points. 94 NICARAGUA RING…

The Dominican Republic absolutely dominated this tasting of lonsdales, with seven cigars scoring 90 points or higher, and the standout smoke in this series of slender sizes was the La Flor Dominicana Cameroon Cabinet. At 91 points, the cigar is defined by its Cameroon wrapper, a leaf that brand owner Litto Gomez says was taken from the upper primings of the tobacco plant, making this ligero Cameroon darker and more full-bodied than leaves that grow lower on the stalk. Gomez grows the Dominican components on his farm at La Canela. These picturesque acres tend to produce strong tobacco as a result of the area’s hot, dry climate. The final product here is a sweet-and-spicy confluence of three important tobacco terrains: Africa, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. 91 DOMINICAN REPUBLIC RING…

TOP SCORES 95 Oliva Serie V Melanio Figurado Nicaragua • $15.60 • Figurado • Medium 94 Aging Room Quattro Nicaragua Concerto Nicaragua • $11.24 • Churchill • Medium-Full 94 San Cristobal Quintessence Churchill Nicaragua • $9.00 • Churchill • Medium-Full 93 E.P. Carrillo La Historia E-III Dominican Republic • $12.05 • Churchill • Medium-Full 93 H. Upmann No. 2 Cuba • £26.49 • Figurado • Medium-Full 93 Herrera Esteli Habano Robusto Grande Nicaragua • $9.50 • Robusto • Medium-Full 93 La Dueña Petit Lancero No. 7 Nicaragua • $7.85 • Corona • Medium-Full 93 Padrón 1964 Anniversary Series Monarca Nicaragua • $13.00 • Toro • Medium 93 Partagás Salomon Cuba • £33.26 • Figurado • Medium 93 Saint Luis Rey Carenas Toro Honduras • $8.50 • Toro • Medium-Full TOP…

Padrón Serie 1926 No. 35 Maduro Jon Meacham is America’s go to writer when it comes to describing men of power, the author of such books as Destiny and Power (the life of George H.W. Bush), Franklin and Winston (which chronicled the friendship between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill) and American Lion, the story of Andrew Jackson, which won him the Pulitzer Prize. The Nashville, Tennessee, resident has been smoking cigars for many years, and occasionally smokes while he writes. His favorite is a smaller cigar from Padrón, the Padrón Serie 1926 No. 35 Maduro. (The 35 in the name comes from the number of minutes it took company president Jorge Padrón to smoke one of the early prototypes.) Meacham, once the editor-in-chief of Newsweek and a former executive…

Arturo Fuente Hemingway Short Story “Cigars carry a certain level of sophistication,” says former wrestler and holder of the Guinness World Record for the Tallest Actress in a Leading Role Lindsay Kay Hayward. “From the initial smell of stricken match to the first few puffs, there’s nothing quite like lighting a freshly hand-rolled cigar, or—how I like it—a gentleman lighting it for me.” Standing 6' 8 ¼" tall, Hayward was first introduced to the world of cigars at the age of 19 by a friend who lived above a cigar lounge they frequented every Friday night. Eventually, she met humidor-maker Daniel Marshall and they formed a friendship. “We realized we are two of the same—we both wanted to get women involved in cigar culture. I think cigars are inherently intimidating…

Dear Marvin, I’ve been a Patriot fan my whole life (I grew up in New England) and have to admit that I was disappointed with the transition from Tom Brady to Cam Newton. However, after reading “The Total Package” in your July/August issue, I have a whole new appreciation for who Cam Newton is—as a person and a player. I’m once again looking forward to another season with Cam as quarterback and I’ve added to my bucket list one day smoking a cigar with Cam at his Fellaship cigar bar in Atlanta Go Patriots! Bruce GribensNovato, California Dear Marvin, As a decades-long reader, I wanted to let Cam [Newton] know that I agree with his philosophy of smoking the cigar as far down as possible. In fact, I smoke it…

Want to put your personal stamp on any drink with a modicum of expense and zero know-how? Try barrel-aging. The setup is a small wooden barrel, a funnel and whatever ingredients go in your cocktail. The payoff is a savory drink that has the stones to stand up to a cigar. The short soak in wood is miniscule, taking only a few weeks, but affording a noticeable boost, as the barrel melds the ingredients in the cocktail of your choice, while lending its own savor to the concoction. Think of it as the way stew improves as it sits after cooking. Small casks can be purchased on the Internet in a number of different sizes, and some drinks work better than others. Armed with a one-liter barrel kit from The…

“Martial arts develops your human potential. When you get through something really, really difficult. And there is nothing more difficult, outside of war, than agreeing to step into a closed area with another guy who’s a fucking trained killer.” “I DON’T HAVE AN OFF-AIR AND ON-AIR VOICE.” “[Socialism is] just these young people with these idealistic ideas about people that are successful, that somehow you’ve stolen it from other people and you need to give it back to everyone else and we need to have a communist society. Where’s the money coming from? Who’s going to work? What are you going to do? Have you thought this through?” “I LIKE THINGS THAT SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF ME.” “It’s a sport now to get offended by comedy. It seems like…

Cigar smokers looking to pair their tobacco with amicable drinks have been well-supplied in recent years by a boom in spirits, particularly American Bourbon and rye whiskeys. But another category, which has an even longer heritage in the New World, has also added alternatives at a dizzying pace: high-quality, aged rums. If you have been thinking of rum as simply the alcohol delivery system for the insipid cocktails served seaside on a tropical vacation, a world of flavor awaits. It’s time to graduate from clear, unaged and unexciting rums to the many rums that have been carefully and patiently wood-aged, which opens up an unexpected spectrum of sultry flavors that are perfect partners for your favorite robusto. “Aged rum has more complexity. That comes from the barrel,” says Julio Cabrera,…

With the many newer brands of My Father Cigars, it’s easy to forget an older project like La Dueña, but if you’ve put this corona in the back of your humidor, it’s time to light it up. At 93 points, the Petit Lancero No. 7 is the highest-scoring La Dueña in the history of the brand. Translating to “the female owner” in Spanish, La Dueña was made for Janny Garcia of My Father. It’s a broadleaf-heavy blend, as this dark, ripe tobacco serves as the wrapper, one of the two binders and is found in the filler too. Guardian of the Farm Warped Selection Apollo is a collaboration between Kyle Gellis of Warped and Max Fernández of Aganorsa Leaf, the company that not only produces the cigar but grows all…

Made by Drew Estate in Nicaragua, the Herrera Esteli Habano Robusto Grande scored 93 points. The flavorful smoke is named after its blender, the factory location and the wrapper’s seed type. Now on the market for nearly eight years, this was the first brand Willy Herrera created when he joined Drew Estate and the cigars continue to perform well in our tastings. Many sizes in the now consolidated Cuban Bolivar line have come and gone over the decades, but the Royal Corona has proven to be a survivor, and we’re thankful the cigar is still in production, as it scored 92 points. Royal Coronas normally come in standard dress boxes of 25, but these Bolivars came in 10-count boxes, all with their own glossy aluminum tubos. Royal Coronas weren’t offered…

Cohiba Robusto Jimmy Dunne became forever linked with 9/11 for his determined response to the terrorist attack that killed 66 Sandler O’Neill employees who worked for the firm on the 104th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. He focused on the families left behind, paying bonuses, setting up scholarships, keeping Sandler O’Neill alive. He spoke this summer at his alma mater, Notre Dame, introduced by the university’s president, John Jenkins, who said: “Class of 2021, in the past 14 months life has thrown your way trying circumstances and heartbreaking disappointment. I cannot think of a better speaker for this class than Jimmy Dunne, who faced daunting challenges and true heartbreak, and prevailed.” Dunne told the graduates: “If we were not honorable, then…

Fuente Fuente OpusX Golfer Rocco Mediate lights up on the practice range. “I’m a big [Fuente Fuente] OpusX fan,” he says. “I like collecting the different sizes. I also just picked up some [Fuente] Hemingway Between the Lines and Hemingway Rare Pinks.” Not easy stuff to find. He’s a true cigar fan who appreciates a variety of different styles and brands. “I dabble in a lot of cigars. I like Rocky Patel, Padrón, some Cubans, too. Tatuaje, Warped, Viaje—they make fantastic cigars.” Mediate went head-to-head with Tiger Woods during the 2008 U.S. Open. The men tied after four rounds, forcing a Monday playoff, and a sudden death hole, leaving Mediate in second place. He won six times on the PGA Tour, three times on the PGA Champions Tour and was…