Innehållsförteckning för January/February 2025 från Cigar Aficionado

The precision chronograph specialist Breitling is celebrating the anniversary of its 1884 founding with watches that needn’t be reset for date until the year 2100. Among the birthday debuts are its first perpetual calendar chronographs. Perpetual calendars automatically adjust for months of varying lengths even on leap years. Theoretically, they can run without correction for a century. The milestone Caliber B19 movement combines a column-wheel chronograph with a full calendar and moon phase. It also delivers an impressive power reserve of approximately 96 hours. Its solid-gold winding rotor is decorated with an engraving of Breitling’s historic factory in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, the manufacturer for more than 80 years. Given the significance of the technical achievement, Breitling didn’t limit it to one model. It launched a trio of 140th anniversary limited…

Even by Caribbean standards, St. Barths is an amazingly cigar-friendly destination. By global standards, it’s one of the top luxury vacation spots on earth, home to high-end resorts, villas and fine dining. The island’s touchstone location is the Eden Rock, which opened as the island’s very first hotel in 1957. Almost seven decades later, it’s the only hotel on earth where the standard check-in gift is a bottle of Krug Champagne. Its colorful and pioneering founder, Rémy de Haenen, chose the island’s best location, a dramatic peninsula of boulders jutting into the Caribbean from a crescent beach. From the start, such celebrity guests as Greta Garbo and Howard Hughes set the tone. A recent renovation added more luxury in the form of super suites, bringing the intimate total to just…

Rob Gronkowski is in pain. The four-time Super Bowl champ, a bruising tight end who once mowed down opponents with ease and charmed fans with his enthusiasm and energy, is not feeling well on this chilly evening in Los Angeles. The agony has nothing to do with football. It’s his ears: One of his eardrums is severely inflamed, the other has actually ruptured, victims of abrupt pressure changes on a recent flight. He’s been hurting for hours but there’s work to be done. Tomorrow morning he’ll be on the air, talking football for Fox. Right now he’s sitting with a smile on his face, patiently sharing stories about his life. Gronk is a man who knows how to endure discomfort. “It’s nothing new. I was playing with ruptured lungs and…

The eternal Bucket List question for golf travelers is: Scotland or Ireland? Both are chock full of fantastic courses and worthy of pilgrimage, but they are also geographically spread out, logistically cumbersome and, since the pandemic, victims of their own success with advance tee times scarce and very hard to come by. England, on the other hand, offers one of the simplest and most convenient epic golf vacations you can imagine, with no less than 14 exceptional courses on a very manageable 50-mile stretch of coastline on its west, including the country’s highest ranked layout, and three of its top five. It is home to courses that have hosted 34 Open Championships, a slew of Ryder Cups, Women’s Opens, Senior Opens and British Amateurs and have seen the Claret Jug…

It was a lively, cigar-filled weekend at the Paris Hotel and Casino for the 28th Big Smoke Las Vegas weekend. Cigar Aficionado last held the Big Smoke at the famous venue in 2005. It was quite the star-studded return, with appearances by Mark Wahlberg and Guy Fieri on Saturday and sightings of Michael Cudlitz and Ray Parker Jr. in the crowd over the two-day event. The stars were joined by industry luminaries and more than 3,000 aficionados from all corners of the country and beyond to celebrate cigars and fine spirits in the entertainment capital of the world. The Big Smoke Las Vegas weekend started Friday afternoon at a small, exclusive party reserved for the All-Access attendees. Angel’s Envy poured drinks while Agua Caliente Casino/Pívat Cigar Lounge and J.C. Newman…

As it enters its 35th year in the luxury market, Infiniti is a brand in search of a path to stand out from competitors like Lexus, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. The 2025 Infiniti QX80 may be just what’s needed. The three-row SUV boasts distinctive styling, plenty of room, lavish details, gobs of power and an array of impressive high-tech features. Infiniti represents the upscale arm of Nissan, and the new QX80 shares its body-on-frame platform with the next-generation Nissan Armada, which also gets a complete makeover for 2025. The Infiniti package has its own welcome upgrades, such as its electronically adjustable air suspension, more power and a more elegantly appointed interior. The concept is described in Japanese as miyabi, a layered, flowing approach that melds into a harmonious whole. Along with…

TOP 25 2024 CIGAR OF THE YEAR All information can be prejudicial. Everything from the price of a cigar to the brand to its country of origin will inevitably produce expectations, negative or positive, that will affect a score. That’s why Cigar Aficionado rates its cigars blind. And that’s why blind tasting is especially important when we determine our Top 25 list and, ultimately, the Cigar of the Year, the industry’s highest accolade. It’s a separate evaluation where our tasting coordinator assembles the top-scoring cigars of the calendar year and puts them through the blind-tasting process all over again. The tournament begins with dozens of cigars, but not every smoke makes it through our elimination rounds. Only those that could consistently perform at the highest level are the cigars that…

GETTING THERE You can fly non-stop to Manchester from New York, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Toronto or Orlando, and one-stop on many major carriers. Liverpool airport is a bit closer but only Aer Lingus (via Dublin) and a handful of cut-rate U.K. carriers serve it. Direct trains connect Liverpool and London. SEASON Golf is played here year-round, and in general the weather is a bit milder then the courses of Scotland, but few foreigners visit in the winter. Prime season is mid-April to mid-October. LOGISTICS The standout courses of England’s Golf Coast are appreciably easier to book and less expensive than their peers in Ireland and Scotland, but it is still a logistically complex puzzle, especially since they host a lot of club events and many of the top clubs do…

Kix Brooks COUNTRY MUSIC STAR Arturo Fuente 8-5-8 “I grew up in a freaking cloud of smoke,” says Kix Brooks. His father loved 25-cent cigars and smoked them continuously. “He always had a cigar in his hand [and smoked] between 10 and 15, 10 on a slow day. He never stopped smoking cigars.” Brooks, 69, is half of Brooks & Dunn, the country duo that has sold more than 30 million albums and won 30 Academy of Country Music Awards, plus two Grammys. He started smoking cheap cigars in high school, then moved to finer smokes when he got a little older. He encouraged his dad to smoke the better stuff too. One of Brooks’ regular cigars is the final one his father enjoyed. “He died smoking an [Arturo Fuente]…

When you’re smoking, ashtrays serve two functions: they catch ash and hold burning cigars. Protetta, the New York City designer of elegant catch-all trays, realized that its product could do all that while still acting as a handsome piece of home decor. So they added clip-on cigar rests as part of the product line, enabling their porcelain dishes to perform double duty. After they attend to your smoking needs, the rests detach and you have a place to display accessories and watches. Inspired by classic Italian artwork, Protetta emblazons its trays with floral swirls, birds in flight and intricate geometric patterns. The eye-catching pieces are meant to be displayed around your home or office as functional decor. On your desk or in your foyer, they are places to lay your…

Super Bowl Sunday is America’s unofficial holiday and like any holiday, certain traditions are peculiar to it: grown men tackling each other, overproduced commercials vying for the spotlight, music provided by a pop star at halftime and a dish that is emblematic of the festivities—the Big Sandwich. It’s a show-stopping mound of bread, cold cuts, cheese and vegetables that may stretch the length of the dining room table and only gets better as the game marches on. But the well-executed Big Sandwich is about more than just size. It strikes the right balance between the familiar and the inventive, a shareable handheld feast. Chef Thomas Kalb, whose childhood in Iowa informs the Midwestern-influenced menu at his Pasadena restaurant Agnes, suggests making the kind of Scooby Doo sandwich that people can…

With the cigar industry still in the midst of the post-pandemic cigar boom, there have been many new and interesting releases, but possibly the most noteworthy are cigars that retail for $100 apiece or more. While this trend is a symbol of ultra-premium luxury, few cigar smokers would ever consider such a product to be their daily smoke. The search for budget-friendly smokes continues, and values seem harder to find than ever before. As 2024 came to a close, we sifted through 12 months of entries for the best deals of the year. Our research yielded 21 handmade cigars with suggested retail prices of $7 or less (before taxes), each of which scored between 87 and 93 points in one of our blind tastings. As to be expected, smaller sizes…

Whenever a notable New York restaurant opens a location in Las Vegas, the first question that comes to mind is nearly universal: Is it as good as the original? The answer is usually no. Peter Luger is a rare exception. The new Las Vegas Peter Luger Steak House in Caesars Palace is not only as good as its Brooklyn progenitor, it’s actually better. There. We said it. As a New York-based publication, it pains us to admit it, but it had to be said, and the reason is quite simple: the Brooklyn original has been resting on its laurels for entirely too long, whereas the new Vegas outpost puts on a prime performance with something to prove. And the new Luger team is certainly proving it. It’s almost become a…

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