jeebling wrote:Sincere condolences regarding your late wife. It is touching that you would use her name. To me anyway.
Well, Steve, if I may call you that (?), how did you make out with the 9 coolers? What ever happened to Monte Canario by the way? Back then were you pretty much already a collector with many years of smoking cigars under your belt or were you embarking on a pilgrimage to learn about cigars? How long did it take to amass 9 coolers worth? Do you still smoke cigars? I’m curious about your experience with cigars and I think all of this is ok to discuss in this thread w/o fear of hijacking.
My father, born at the turn of the century, was a cigar smoker. He primarily smoked clear habanos; Tampa made cigars of Cuban tobacco. By the time I was 16-years-old, I was swiping cigars from his boxes. Every Friday my father would come home from work with two 25 count boxes of cigars. They'd last one week. He was rarely seen without a cigar. I just assumed that men smoked cigars. The only time in my adult life when I wasn't able to enjoy a good cigar was 1968-1969, when after I graduated university, Uncle Sam "invited" into his army and sent me off to Vietnam for 15 months.
I've been collecting cigars for over 50 years, but I confess that the collection has been almost an obsession. Within the last couple of years, as I saw age 80 creeping up, I came to the realization that I was smoking less and less and still acquiring a lot of cigars. Besides the coolers, I had 24 humidors that needed tending. I found two charities to which I could make major donations of cigars, the one most important to me is Cigars for Warriors. https://cigarsforwarriors.org/
In the last three years, I've sent major donations to C-f-W each year and have instructions in my estate plan for the entire collection to be donated after I die.
I still have several coolers and about a dozen humidors. I find that as age creeps up, I spend more time researching knowledge of tobacco, cigars, and their respective manufacturers. I've been to Cuba, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Mexico, Philippines and domestically observing and learning about the growth of tobacco, its processing, and manufacture into cigars. As I'm sure every premium cigar smoker is aware, the places to socially smoke a cigar have become few and far between.
And, as the price of Cuban cigars has escalated almost beyond belief, for most of us a habano is a rare treat. Fortunately, the quality of non-Cuban, New World cigars has increased and in many cases surpassed the lure of habanos. I still do enjoy an occasional habano, and have one humidor restricted to Cuban custom rolls.
I was a big fan of Pedro Martin's Tropical Tobacco, from his earliest days, and only within the last couple of years finally parted with his Solo Aromas, Lempira, Maya, Cacique and Casanova cigars. (I kept one unopened box of Maya.) I'm sure most of the cigar veterans here recall Martin's Don Juan and V Centennial branding. With Martin's passing Tropical Tobacco was ultimately sold and became Aganorsa, which now is the focus of most of my purchases.
I admit to going against the grain of many long time collectors and have rarely bought a significant amount of Fuente makes. I've always felt that there is created rarity to increase retails. That is not to say that the Fuentes don't make wonderful cigars, but rather that shrewd marketing has created rarity and escalated price points.
I've rambled on...my apology. I do make it a point to try to know who actually is manufacturing the cigars I purchase. As I stated above, many well known and respected brands are contracted to large manufacturers and are not blended by the brand owners. Some are; some aren't.
I used my late wife's name when I re-registered, simply because I knew I'd never forget it. Thank you for the very kind condolences.
Added later: Monte Canario, to the best of my knowledge, became history. I'm actually surprised that another maker didn't acquire the branding. The last Monte Canario cigars I acquired were obviously made for the U.S. market and tasted devoid of Cuban leaf. I'd guess that they were primarily comprised of native brena Canary Islands tobacco. My understanding is that Hacienda del Cura, another Canary Islands leaf became prevalent in the cigars of the Canary Islands.
