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FIVE TO TRY - BOURBON Scotch might be the classic choice, but America’s signature whiskey can be a hell of a pairing for cigars as well. We dove deep into five bourbons you should have in your bar.
30 BUFFALO TRACE / CASA FERNANDEZ MIAMI ANIVERSARIO 32 OLD FORESTER 100 PROOF / CUELLAR BLACK FOREST 34 FOUR ROSES SINGLE BARREL / DAVIDOFF NICARAGUA 36 NEW RIFF SINGLE BARREL / OLIVA SERIE V MELANIO MADURO 38 MICHTER’S US1 BOURBON / PARTICULARES CREMAS
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TOP 25 CIGARS Our annual ranking of the best cigar of the year is here. You won’t want to waste any time finding these at your local tobacconist. Check it out and let us know how it lines up with your favorite cigars of 2019.
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LIMITED EDITIONS
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GIFT GUIDE
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OLIVA
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Q&A – NESTOR ANDRÉS PLASENCIA
Limited-edition releases aren’t eligible for our Top 25 honors, but these three cigars deserved some special recognition.
The hardest thing about picking up each of these gifts will be holding back from buying another for yourself.
Oliva Cigar has reimagined much of the way it goes about making traditional cigars. More than that, though, the team at Oliva might just have changed things for the whole cigar industry.
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features JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2020
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LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER
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FEEDBACK
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WHAT’S BURNIN’
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SMOKING HOT CIGAR SNOB
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RATINGS
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CRA - THEY SAID IT. NOT US.
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TWITTER SCOREBOARD
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EVENT COVERAGE
WORK OF ART FEATURING BELLAS ARTES MADURO
98 SABOR HAVANA’S SMOKE THIS! 100 CIGARS UNDER THE STARS 102 CIGAR HERITAGE FESTIVAL 104 LA ZONA PALOOZA 106 DAVID ORTIZ CELEBRITY GOLF CLASSIC 107 OTAN CIGAR GROUP FIRST SPECIAL EVENT 108 CAVA CIGARS CHRISTMAS PARTY WITH ESPINOSA CIGARS 109 BOTANIKO WITH AVO CIGARS 110 WEIGHT LOSS CHALLENGE DRAG EVENT AT SMOKE INN
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Top 25 season is always a fun time for us at Cigar Snob Magazine — not just because we get to re-smoke the best cigars of the year, but because there’s a ton of excitement around the announcement of the list. The phone in the office starts ringing off the hook, email inboxes get flooded with questions and requests, and the web servers get pushed to their limits. I won’t lie to you; it’s a special feeling to watch the live web analytics as the screen lights up with hits from all around the world as we approach the Cigar of the Year announcement. The excitement I see on the web as well as social media are fun to be sure, but if I’m being honest, nothing comes close to walking into a cigar store and someone who you don’t know asking you, “So who’s going to be No. 1 this year?” Thanks to everyone who, in their own way, gets in on the excitement. You all make the unfathomable amount of hours of tasting, re-tasting, and deliberating worth every minute. Congratulations to the Padrón family and their entire Little Havanaand Estelí-based teams on the Padrón Anniversary Series 1964 Maduro Exclusivo being named Cigar Snob’s No. 1 Cigar of 2019. That particular cigar in that vitola has to go down in history as one of the all-time great smokes. It is a little bittersweet in that I won’t get to deliver the plaque to José Orlando Padrón and have him laugh at the unnecessary formality of it. I also want to congratulate the companies that produce and distribute the cigars that took the other 24 spots that make up our list. The work that you and your teams do to achieve a product with that level of quality is to be commended. While Top 25 takes the lion’s share of attention in this issue, our photo shoot titled Work of Art, starting on p. 68, will give you more than enough reason to flip over and take a look. Thanks to the photo shoot squad led by Ivan Ocampo and to AJ Fernandez Cigars for supplying the Bellas Artes Maduro cigars! Speaking of days that didn’t suck, I spent an entire week drinking high-end bourbon like it was water in order to put together the 5 to Try – Bourbon story starting on p. 29. Thanks to our friends at Total Wine & More (totalwine.com) and especially Pablo Estades for always helping us put that section together. Our senior editor Nicolás Antonio Jiménez and I took a trip down to Nicaragua to attend Oliva Cigar’s re-inauguration of their main factory, TABOLISA (Tabacalera Oliva S.A.). We were both floored by the changes. For me it was perhaps extra special because of my relationship with the Oliva Cigar family. I’ve been visiting that factory for the last 14 years and to see it re-imagined in that way was truly surreal. Check out Nick’s story about Tabacalera Oliva 2.0 starting on p. 57. Finally, while we were in Estelí we took advantage and stopped into Plasencia Cigars to catch up with our old friend Nestor Andrés Plasencia. The resulting Q&A starts on p. 66. Thank you for your time and gracious hospitality Nestor.
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As always, feel free to send over any feedback about the issue, good or bad, to feedback@cigarsnobmag.com. Check out our re-vamped website at cigarsnob.com. We’ve been posting new content almost daily. Of course you should already be subscribed to the Cigar Snob Podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and follow us on social media at @cigarsnobmag on most platforms. Enjoy the issue, try some of the bourbons, and smoke the best cigars you can get your hands on. I hope you, your loved ones, and your close friends have a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2020!
Keep ‘em lit,
Erik Calviño ecalvino@cigarsnobmag.com
C I G A R S O F C H A R AC T E R
THROUGH THE DAY
I N TO T H E N I G H T
WHATEVER THE TASK, WHATEVER THE HOUR, WINSTON CHURCHILL KNEW THE RIGHT CIGAR CAN BE A TRUSTED COMPANION. SO THE CIGARS WHICH CARRY HIS NAME ECHO HIS CHARACTER. FROM «THE ORIGINAL COLLECTION» THROUGH TO «THE LATE HOUR» CIGARS, THEIR QUALITY NEVER SLEEPS.
A M A N A N D A C I G A R FO R A L L T I M E S AVAILABLE AT AUTHORIZED DAVIDOFF DEALERS NATIONWIDE & DAVIDOFF OF GENEVA LOCATIONS NEW YORK
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ATLANTA
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LAS VEGAS
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HOLLYWOOD
BOURBON IF YOU COULD CAPTURE, FERMENT, AND DISTILL WHAT IT MEANS TO BE AMERICAN, THE RESULTING SPIRIT WOULD UNQUESTIONABLY BE KENTUCKY STRAIGHT BOURBON WHISKEY. HERE ARE FIVE ACCESSIBLE, HIGH-QUALITY BOURBONS ALONG WITH CIGARS THAT COMPLEMENT EACH OF THEM.
VALENTINE’S DAY IS AROUND THE CORNER. WE FOUND SOME GREAT GIFTS YOU CAN USE EVERYWHERE FROM YOUR MAN CAVE TO YOUR OFFICE. LEAVE THIS ISSUE OPEN TO THIS PAGE ON YOUR COFFEE TABLE AND HOPE SOMEONE CAN TAKE THE HINT.
GIFT GUIDE
BENCHMADE 1500-191 CIGAR CUTTER benchmade.com
$450 This cutter combines the novelty of totally uncommon design with the reliability and quality of one of the most respected names in knives. People who like blades know Benchmade. If there’s a daily application in which consistently clean cuts matter, isn’t it cigars? METAL ART OF WISCONSIN SPEAKEASY VAULT metalartofwisconsin.com
$220 There’s something inherently cool about hidden storage. So what’s cooler than a home bar? A hidden home bar! We’ve had one of these Speakeasy Vaults — with its steel American Flag — in the office for a while now and it’s caught the eye of every visitor passing through. For added security, there’s an optional RFID fingerprint scanner that can grant access to 20 of your most trustworthy friends.
CIGAR OASIS MAGNA 3.0 cigaroasis.com
$249 If you’re serious about maintaining a large cigar collection, you’ve got to get serious about humidification. The Cigar Oasis Magna 3.0 accurately controls humidity for humidors up to 60 cubic feet. Humidors that size are typically marketed commercially for storing up to 4000 cigars, but if you like to display your boxes (and you have the room in your home) it’s not so farfetched that you’d use this in your man cave. Our office’s cabinet humidor is equipped with a Cigar Oasis Magna 3.0, so we can vouch.
JBUDS AIR EXECUTIVE TRUE WIRELESS EARBUDS jlabaudio.com GRAF VON FABER-CASTELL ROLLERBALL PEN TAMITIO BLACK EDITION graf-von-faber-castell.com
$250 Faber-Castell is probably a familiar brand name to you; Graf von Faber-Castell is the name on this company’s higher-end writing instruments. This all-black rollerball version is more our style, but there are several color and tip variations available. The pen writes beautifully, is built to last, and has enough German heft that you don’t need to treat it too gingerly.
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$69 Admit it. There’s absolutely no good reason for you to have spent $150 to $250 on AirPods. For a fraction of the price, these get you better battery life, an adjustable fit, and a charging case with just as much stored power. Plus, the black earbuds just feel a little more adult appropriate — ”executive,” even — than those white ones.
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Oliva Cigar has undergone a transformation and adopted new technologies that might revolutionize the way premium cigars are made. BY
NICOLà S ANTONIO JIMÉNEZ
featuring
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reaucrat can destroy you?”
Mark Steyn, as Guest Host on The Rush Limbaugh Show “This is a classic example of an Obama era overreach by the regulatory state that Trump actually should be able to roll back and reverse.”
Dr. David Zorn, firm of Mangum Economics and author of the report “The Public Health, Financial and Employment Impacts of Excluding Handmade Cigars from Coverage by FDA’s Final Rule”
They Said It. Not Us. By J. Glynn Loope Executive Director Cigar Rights of America
ver what seems an eternity, yet has only been since the 2016 “Final Rule” was issued by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to regulate cigars, a tremendous body of research, testimony, interviews, commentary and narrative has been generated and issued on this clear case of bureaucratic overreach. National media pundits, members of congress, ambassadors and judges have made note of their disdain, confusion and opposition to the approach being taken by this federal agency. It makes this point in time seem like a unique opportunity to revisit some of the more noteworthy quotes or commentary, which work to tell the story of how one little industry has fallen victim to federal solutions in search of problems.
United States District Judge Amit Mehta, U.S. Federal District Court for the District of Columbia “Requiring the premium cigar industry to incur substantial compliance costs while the agency comprehensively reassesses the wisdom of
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regulation, before the warning requirements go into effect, smacks of basic unfairness. In the court’s view, the prudent course would be for the FDA to stay the warnings requirement as to premium cigars. The court’s displeasure with the FDA’s handling of the status of premium cigars, no doubt, provides little consolation to the industry.”
Joint letter of the Ambassadors to the United States from the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Nicaragua “Some of the regulations that are proposed by the agency would prove disastrous to the centuries old cigar industry that provides over 300,000 jobs among our three nations, and represents millions of dollars in export revenue. No regulatory measure should threaten such jobs, and hence raise the specter of political and economic consequences within our region.”
Tucker Carlson, Host of Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News “The FDA admits that these (cigar) regulations will destroy companies and jobs…The terrifying thing about this is, what are you going to do if you’re a business and you learn that some regulation written by an unelected bu-
“Compliance with the regulation will be so difficult and costly that it threatens to put almost all U.S. handmade cigar manufacturers and importers out of business. Using FDA’s own cost estimates, the regulation will cause 85-90 percent of domestic cigar manufacturers and importers (320-338 small businesses) to go out of business, leading to the loss of 5,300 U.S. manufacturing and importing jobs. Because handmade cigars have the highest cost of compliance per cigar, almost all of the cigar manufacturers and importers that go out of business because of this rule will be manufacturers and importers of handmade cigars.”
Dr. Brad Rodu, University of Louisville, in testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship “All tobacco consumers in the United States deserve truthful information and guidance. The sweeping FDA indictment ignores scientific evidence and misleads cigar smokers.”
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio “The FDA, in conjunction with the National Institute of Health, conducted a comprehensive study of tobacco use. The FDA’s own research concluded that premium cigar smokers account for 0.7 percent of all adult tobacco users and the median age of the first regular use is 24.5 years old. The FDA-NIH research was also unable to provide any data on youth that consume traditional cigars frequently or daily. This is because premium cigars are not made for children, marketed to children or consumed by children. This begs the question of why premium cigars are wrongly being regulated under a law aimed to reduce youth consumption of tobacco.”
U.S. Congresswoman Donna Shalala, former U.S.
Secretary of Health & Human Services for President Bill Clinton “Hand-rolled cigars constitute an important part of south Florida culture. While I am working to reduce nicotine addiction in the United States, I agree that premium cigars do not contribute to widespread addiction or youth usage in the same way that other tobacco products do.”
Testimony of Charles Maresca, Director of Interagency Affairs, for the U.S. Small Business Administration, to the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business & Entrepreneurship “For a small business cigar manufacturer, FDA estimates compliance costs to be $278,000 to $397,000 in the first year, $292,000 to $411,000 in the second year, and $235,000 to $257,000 in the third year. Although many small businesses have argued that the costs will be much higher than FDA’s estimates, the agency’s own numbers will prove to be too much for most small businesses to pay to continue to manufacturer premium cigars.”
Former U.S. Congressman Lou Barletta “You can argue that this (cigar regulation) is a national security issue, because when economies collapse in some of these countries, what usually fills that void is not anything that will be good for America.”
These statements represent only a fraction of the commentary and filings that have been made in defense of the premium cigar industry. Collectively Cigar Rights of America, Cigar Association of America, and the Premium Cigar Association have filed over a thousand pages of public comment to the FDA, in 2019 alone. This includes definitive analysis on the demographic profile, public health issues, usage patterns, and implications of regulation. Thousands of pages have been filed in federal court explaining how this represents a clear case of bureaucratic overreach, including dozens of presentations to executive branch agencies, and hundreds of congressional office briefings. This has resulted in the full U.S. House of Representatives passing a proposed exemption for premium cigars from FDA oversight. The same language has been adopted numerous times in committee. The platform for this message has been the legislative agenda pursued by the premium cigar industry since 2011. Between April 15, 2011 and today, 333 bipartisan members of the U.S. House of Representatives and 33 members of the U.S. Senate have signed onto premium cigar exemption legislation, representing consumers of premium cigars from 45 states. Individual and joint congressional letters to both the Obama and Trump Administrations have included the signatures of over 100 legislators. So what does this mean as we enter yet another Presidential Election year? We have sent the message to both ends of PennsylJ. GLYNN LOOPE IS THE EXvania Avenue, and ECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF CIGAR the courthouse that RIGHTS OF AMERICA (CRA), sits between them. WHICH IS DEDICATED TO It’s time for the buPROTECTING THE RIGHTS OF reaucratic cloud THE GROWERS, MANUFACthat looms over this TURERS, RETAILERS, AND artisan industry to CONSUMERS OF PREMIUM be removed before CIGARS. yet another uncertain November.
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EVENTS SABOR HAVANA’S SMOKE THIS! Doral, Fla.
Doral’s premier tobacconist hosted its annual Smoke This! event on Dec. 7. It featured wine, spirits, and food from Sushi Sake, Divieto Italian Cuisine, Christy’s Coral Gables, Ruth’s Chris Steak House Coral Gables, Diced, Chef Paella, Mega Wine & Spirits, Breakthru, Brown-Forman, Republic National Distributors, Zafra Rum and many others. A slew of cigar makers and brands were represented and attendees went home with loads of cigar loot.
Alma and Jorge Valdés, Juan Carlos Bermúdez (Mayor of Doral), Ed Hudak (Coral Gables Chief of Police) and Aquiles Legra
Belkys Sánchez and Liz López
Billy Kiod, Noel Rodríguez, Mario and Willy Knapp, Ileana Galindo and Arnold Palmer
Carlos Llaca, Armando Lapido, José Morel and Mike Denys
Billy and Nick Perdomo, Ralph Valdés and Nestor García
Ana Isabel and Reinier Lorenzo
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Rafael Nodal, Jill Meyers, Candela Díaz and Ernesto Kranwinkel, photo bomb by José Morel
Yanay Jordan, Javier Rosario and Angela Lewk
Johel Orta, Charlie López, Starky Arias and Pierre Jebian
Ray Muralez and Moe Idraquez
Omar Fernández, Adriana Ortega, Frank Santos and Albert Tamargo
Félix Mesa and Manny Iriarte
Yula Miranda, Osmani Díaz and Ahmed Fernández
Massiel Prieto, Joaquin Saladrigas, Richie Rodenhaus and William Saladrigas
José R. and Juan Pérez and Manny García
Mike Reyes and Jeff Wolach
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