It was good to have Eric back in his chair. He showed up late to the party five weeks straight, and Tuesday night finally felt normal again with him in his usual spot. Smoke and Steel records every week out of my garage in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania. The crew has been getting together to smoke cigars and talk for years. We just started filming it a while back. Nothing else changed. Episode 054 turned into one of those nights where the best story of the show came from the last place anyone expected it, a vape shop with a stash of Plasencia Alma Fuerte sitting way under what it’s actually worth.
Table of Contents
Killer Bee, Black Label, and a New Johnny Tobacconaut Maduro
We started the way we always do, going around the table. Killer Bee, a Bishop Blend chaser, Don Lino Africa, and a couple of us lighting up the brand new Johnny Tobacconaut Robusto Maduro for the first time. It’s a completely different cigar than the original. Different wrapper. Different filler. More pepper up front and more of that Maduro character running through it. Nobody was comparing it to the OG blend by the end. It stands on its own.
I lit my Aging Room Nicaragua and made my usual case for that brand. Aging Room gets written off as a cheaper option sometimes, but I have never had a bad stick from them. The Rare Blend and the Concerto are both worth tracking down.
The Plasencia Alma Fuerte Nobody Saw Coming
Eddie stopped into a small vape shop just to see if they carried any cigars. They had a little humidor tucked in the back. Inside were some old, faded Plasencia short fillers that looked like they’d been sitting there since the late nineties. Nobody could pin down an exact year, just that they were old. But the real find was sitting right next to them. Plasencia Alma Fuerte hexagons, three packs, priced at $25.99. That’s a modern, premium line going for pennies on the dollar. Eddie asked the kid behind the counter to double check with the owner. The owner confirmed the price. Eddie bought every single one they had, 11 cigars total, and told them to call him if more ever showed up.
By the time we recorded this, the shop had already bumped the price to $29 a stick. Eddie got there right before they figured out what they had.
A $1,200 Humidor That Spins
Rob wasn’t feeling well tonight, so Eric told the story for him. Rob’s buddy Jay works for a cigar company and showed up on Rob’s porch with a bag and a grin. He pulled out a red cylinder with silver accents, hit a button, and the whole thing spun open like something out of a movie. It was a Cohiba Spectre humidor. Ten cigars fused together in the middle, retailing for $1,200. Rob and Jay both lit up right there on the porch. Eric said it was incredible, and honestly, for $120 a cigar, it should be.
Who Would Blend Our Cigar If We Ever Made One
We got into the hypothetical again, who would we pick to blend a Smoke and Steel cigar if we ever made one. Crown Heads came up first and fastest. Between La Imperiosa and Blood Medicine, it’s hard to find a bad release in that lineup. LFD got votes too. I brought up AJ Fernandez, but he’s involved in so many brands that it’s hit or miss depending on which one you land on.
I actually got approached about something like this years ago for Stogie Review. The minimum order was 1,000 cigars, which would have run at least five grand out of pocket with no guarantee we’d sell any of it. We talked it through and landed where we always land. It’s a fun idea. Nobody’s actually doing it.
Why a $2 Cigar Can Sell for $20
I brought up something Skip from RomaCraft said in a Facebook thread a while back. Most cigars cost a couple of dollars to actually produce. The price on the label gets built around the story you’re selling, not the tobacco. That stuck with me. Opus X came up as the obvious example, a cigar that retails for $20 and gets flipped online for $60 because of the name behind it. Whether that markup helps or hurts a brand depends on who you ask. Some of us think it’s a badge of honor for the manufacturer. Others think it’s a middleman pocketing money that should stay with the guys actually growing and rolling the tobacco.
Boxes vs. Five-Packs: The Great Divide
We got into how we all actually buy cigars, and it split the table. Eric is the variety guy. Five packs, ten packs, never locked into smoking the same thing 24 times in a row. I’m a little different. I don’t mind finding a groove I enjoy and staying in it for a while if the cigar keeps performing.
Jim’s been smoking cigars for fifty years, and he told us how it used to work when he was starting out. Shops sold singles or they sold boxes, and that was it. Five packs and ten packs didn’t exist yet. If you wanted a variety, you bought singles one at a time. If you found something you liked, you bought the box and that was your cigar for a while.
Stay in the Conversation
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