I haven't really smoked enough of Pages' stuff (that I know of) to form an opinion on him, but AJF is a master of his craft and I'm sure Raymond learned a great deal from him.

Pages Tabacalera is now known as Tabacalera Pages and over the past year has pumped out innumerable cigars with both new and resurrected branding. It's become irritatingly clear that Pages' cigars are primarily proprietary to one internet vendor and as his production has increased, the sameness of every cigar is pretty constant, and in my opinion rather boring. Every cigar coming out of Pages' factory, to me, is picture perfect, but the filler is either improperly fermented or insufficiently aged. I was quite enamored with Pages initial production, but during the past year, I purged everything in my collection that originated in the Pages factory.

I cant speak for all gurkhas, but i saw how inexpensive the park avenue's were/are and took the risk. I am happy with the park avenue...for the price, it is great. Great yard gar and great to hand out when the freeloaders come around. To be fair, this is the only gurkha i have tried. Have always had good construction, draw, burn and really nice flavor, for most of the stick anyway.

Still have a few left but not enough for another fest, and some are the few good ones they made.

Mebbe instead of a “fest,” you can do a “fair” and smoke a smaller amount? CBid just hasn’t been the same since you put a pause on the Gurkfest. ☹️

Fair might be considered dishonest.

Maybe a Gurkha soiree?

Before this discussion closes, I do want to emphasize that frontmarks/branding is very deceptive. The same identical cigar may bear the branding of a favored cigar, as well as a cigar you might claim is trash. Contract manufacturers try to keep most production on the down low, because they know that the same cigar they're making for two distinct brands may retail at very different price points. After you take several factory tours and are excluded from certain areas, you realize that one of the producers' secrets is that they're making the same cigar under multiple frontmarks. Plus, you have to be aware that a brand you love, if not vertical, in its various iterations, may come out of several factories. I have non-Cuban Montecristoes from factories in the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Nicaragua.
I think most cigar smokers, even very experienced ones, would be surprised at how many identical cigars are sold with different branding.

Gurkha did not have a factory of its own until a couple of years ago, so their cigars were made in other factories. I assume they changed factories as their good cigars kept getting worse every year. This accounts for the deserved disrespect for their offerings.

Last night I dug into a humidor, that I rarely open, except to add distilled water to a container of water-sorb polymer crystals, I found a Gurkha Grand Age torpedo. My notes indicate that I bought it in the fall of 2003, not quite 23 years ago. This was long before brand owner, Kaizad Hansotia, was forced (in name only) to resign his title as owner/president of Gurkha Cigars. I decided to smoke it and see how it compares to the cigars I'm currently smoking.
I was very surprised to see that it was "interesting." I was pretty certain, from how it looked and the first few draws that the Grand Age had a quality Cameroon wrapper. I do enjoy Cameroon wrapped cigars and have hoarded a substantial number of Montecristo Afriques and La Aurora Preferidos in Cameroon. Usually, unless meticulously cared for, Cameroon doesn't age well.
I smoke very slowly and the Gurkha Grand Age torpedo was an hour, 15 minute smoke. I accompanied the cigar with an enormous cup of Cafe Aroma decaf espresso. After I smoked the cigar, I wanted to know more about it and spent a couple of frustrating hours trying to find out where it was manufactured, the actual blend, and who did the blending.
I had to sift through a lot of information about the Gurkha Grand Age II, which is a totally different cigar. The Grand Age II was rolled in Nicaragua at Tabacalera Las Villas and blended by Guillermo Pena.
And, then came a surprise.
The original Gurkha Grand Age was a one-off, one release and then gone. As was the modus operandi of Kaizad Hansotia, packaging was equally as important as the cigars, themselves. The Grand Age was packaged in an elaborate box and marketed as a $500 luxury cigar purchase.
Fortunately for Hansotia, and purchasers of the cigars, both the blender and manufacturer were intent on creating a memorable cigar. I was very surprised that Philip Wynne aka Felipe Gregorio blended the cigar and it was rolled at the Torano factory in Danlí, Honduras, under Carlos Torano's supervision. (This was eleven years before the Torano factory and brands were sold to STG.)
As I thought, the wrapper is Cameroon, reportedly from a rare 1996 crop. There are two binders, one Nicaraguan, the other Peruvian, and the filler is exclusively aged Dominican long filler.
The Gurkha Grand Age is an interesting cigar, and what's really interesting is the apparent fact that 23 years later, an existing inventory has entered the marketplace, obviously discovered in the storage bowels of the old Torano factory. I found some at auction, here, at C.Bid and at the home base.

Steve*R, Cbid poster since 2001