More than fifty years ago, then-President John F. Kennedy had Pierre Salinger buy four dozen boxes of the now discontinued H. Upmann petit coronas the night before he signed the Cuban embargo into law, banning the import of Cuban products into the United States and devastating the tobacco tastebuds of an entire generation. In those days there were few acceptable alternatives.
As it happens, I have over the years come to favor coronas and petit coronas, foresaking larger cigars that simply take too long to smoke, particularly now that smokers of any kind are banned from so many temperature controlled environments. Fortunately, the world-wide cigar industry has made great strides toward producing cigars of the quality once found only in Cuba. I principally consume Dominican Arturo Fuente Don Carlos #3s, a 5 1/2" smoke that is spicy and full bodied. It is consistently rated 90 (outstanding) by Cigar Aficionado magazine and many people consider it the best of the entire highly regarded Fuente product line.
The grass, or tobacco in this case, always being greener on the other side of the fence, I recently audited an off-shore tasting of three Cuban petit coronas that are rated with or somewhat better than the Fuentes. Two of them, the Romeo & Julieta Cedro Deluxe #3 and the Montecristo #4 were 5 1/8" long, the standard for the size. The other, a Cohiba Siglo 1, is only 4" long - technically a tres petite corona - but the Siglo 2 that is the proper length could not be found on the appointed day.
The principal ratings differences of any of these cigars from year to year tend to be related to the quality of their construction rather than their flavor, and my colleagues certainly found that to be true this time. The Montecristo emerged as the favorite though not by a wide margin, with my Don Carlos unanimously rated fourth in this completely un-scientific test.
Unlike cigarettes, which are a health nightmare, cigars taken in moderation do not seem to have lasting effects that are as bad for the consumer as, for only one example, Coca Cola. Nonetheless, between politics and the anti-tobacco-in-any-form crowd, I expect the embargo will go on indefinitely, like the century-old California water subsidies that have us paying farmers to grow irrigated rice in the middle of a desert. But that is life.
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8 comments:
I'd agree that chain-smoking cheap, modern cigarettes; chasing a 'hit' that you will not get off wood shavings, salt petre and weak tobacco, is not a very bright idea but there used to be several people who smoked a very few good, old, strong cigarettes a day and they didn't come to much harm either - but even these cigarettes have been 'banned'. 'Banning' pleasurable and relatively harmless activities seems to be a sport of the age. Moreover, it was politics that originally banned Cuban cigars in the USA and now the health debate will keep them out.
There's always Canada . . . ;-)
I have found the Hemingway Short Stories to be the perfect length for a cigar. Enjoy...
That's not 'life' it's deliberate politics.
However, in the days of great old independent hotels I worked as a waiter and later a valet butler to pay for university expenses. There was (and still is) a nice old tobacconist's where I would buy cigars and related accoutrements to sell on to guests and tourists.
I'm actually anti-smoking, with little interest in smoking habits, but at the time I happened to read a copy of the aforementioned Cigar Aficionado at the barber's -in the days when I still needed one - and saw an article about people paying over the odds for cigars in hotels, so I decided to stock up at the tobacconist's for those moments when a chap turns up late at the hotel with a few friends asking for a bottle of fizz and maybe a few cigars.
The cigar industry pulled of a great coup by linking cigars with lifestyle-image marketing and turning cigars into a 'luxury' item. In the cold light of reality these things cause rather unpleasant mouth problems.
of course Hemingway's very famous shortest story would provide a very short smoke indeed:
"For sale: baby shoes, never used."
Roger - if only more anti-smokers would express ''little interest in smoking habits'' and mind their own business! Cigars and pipes can cause tongue bite if they are wrongly smoked (maybe by those gulls and dolts who smoke them as fashion statments, rather than for pleasure). However, used in moderation, cigars and pipes are no more of a danger than city living - and an acquired delight.
There used to be a point of suspecting chaps who don't drink and don't smoke - as though there were something missing. Quite wrong, I am sure!
PS - These security codes are becoming indecipherable and must be a disincentive to commentators!
NJS - I'm interested in it from a societal health point-of-view and I won't mind my business in terms of advertising and lifestyle marketing encouraging people to smoke.
I'm sure smokers feel hard-done-by in a world that has become wiser to the menace of smoking, but now perhaps they feel what I felt for years, standing in the freezing cold and rain in a train station because some smoker sat in the waiting room alone puffing away.
I don't care what people do in their own homes and private spaces. It's up to them if they want to trade in general health for a lifestyle product.
Roger - First, most of the advertising that uses cigars as props has them uncut and unlit, in the hands of epicene youths, who would probably hawk their in'ards out if they dared to smoke a cigar.
Secondly, the trouble with people who have your mindset is that they feel that they are right and everyone needs your guidance because they are too stupid to see through the advertising that you can see through.
Thirdly, many people (men and women) who smoke cigars do so as a very occasional treat, which hardly justifies all the over-reaction to smoking as an activity or the recent case in the UK when a potential, adoptive father, who admitted that he had an occasional cigar, was banned from ever adopting a child on that ground alone.
Of course, you have a natural right to put your own comfort first in public places, and I should regard it as a breach of good manners to smoke in places where others might take exception to it but that is a far cry from the stalinist position which is being adopted around the world: that adults may not combine together to chat and smoke in a private club.
You are perfectly at liberty to regard smoking cigars as just a lifestyle statement but there is in it (and pipe-smoking and snuffing) a world of fantastic enjoyment, which you have denied yourself, and I lament that loss of opportunity. I fear that we are all going to die oneday and the Russians have a good expression: ''If you don't smoke and drink you will die healthy.''
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