September 1st landed on a Tuesday this year, which meant it was time for Episode 64. We’ve been doing this in my garage here in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania for a year now, camera or no camera. The garage hasn’t changed. Neither has the crew. Mark, Eric, Eddie, Bruce, and Jim piled in through the kind of late-summer heat that makes you regret every decision that led you outside. By the end of the night, we’d spent a good chunk of it arguing about a Zino Nicaragua cigar, of all things, and whether three bucks and change was enough to keep it off our list.
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Grievance Corner Starts With the Moonflower
Eddie kicked off the night with a complaint. He doesn’t hate the Crowned Heads Moonflower. He just built it up in his head before he ever lit one, and the cigar couldn’t clear the bar he set for it. He tried the Toro. He tried the Corona Gorda. Neither one grabbed him the way the hype told him it would.
Turns out he wasn’t alone. A few of us agreed the first third and the last third don’t do much. The middle is where it wakes up, with a floral sweetness that’s actually worth chasing. Eric admitted he’d been burned by hype before, back when everyone crowned the My Father Blue “cigar of the year” and it turned out to be a great smoke, just not a legendary one. He said he’s more skeptical now. He doesn’t jump on a bandwagon the second it starts rolling. That’s a fair way to smoke.
Why the Zino Nicaragua Cigar Belongs on the List
Eric brought this one to the table, and he’d already run it by Rob before the show. The question was simple. Does a Zino Nicaragua cigar, something you can buy for around three dollars and sixty cents a stick in a 10-pack, deserve a place on the Smoke and Steel Top 25 Cigars of 2026?
We went back and forth on it. If this were a twelve-dollar boutique release, nobody at the table would call it a Top 25 cigar. It’s solid, not special. But at its actual price, it punches so far above its weight that the math changes. A few of us compared it to the Room101 Johnny Tobacconaut, another cigar we love that’s gotten harder to find. The Zino gets you most of the way there for half the cost.
The counterargument was fair too. Should price even factor into a “best of” list? Jim didn’t think so. A good cigar is a good cigar. But then the room admitted something simpler. We all buy this cigar. Regularly. That has to count for something.
In the end, it went on the list at number 20, right above the Room101 Johnny Tobacconaut. Three swords, across the board, no argument. That leaves five spots open on the Smoke and Steel Top 25 Cigars of 2026 with four months left in the year to fill them. No pressure. If we land at 23 instead of 25, so be it.
New Smokes Worth Watching This Fall
Crowned Heads is bringing back the Décimo Aniversario, the cigar built to mark ten years of the Las Calaveras series. It’s coming back in three new sizes this time. There’s a 6×50 running $15.95, a 5×52 at $14.95, and a 5 and 5/8 x 54 at $16.95. Same Ecuadorian Habano Oscuro wrapper, same Nicaraguan binder and filler grown by the Garcia family. Shipping starts this month.
Chazz Palminteri’s Sonny, the line named for the mob boss he played in A Bronx Tale, is going from a limited run into full production. Drew Estate is putting out a 6×60 Undercrown 10th Anniversary Gordo as a limited release. Camacho has a late-summer Honduran Perfecto coming, and Scandinavian Tobacco Group is rolling their new Diesel Uncaged line into shops. Busy season coming.
Getting Ready for Louisiana
We’re closing in on our October trip down to see the LACC crew. Eddie’s birthday lands about a week and a half before we go, so this trip’s basically doubling as a birthday run as well.
Sean from The Burnable already told us his locker is fair game while we’re down there. He sent a picture of it. I’ve never seen that many cigars packed into one private locker in my life.
Closing Out in the Rain
By the last hour, a real storm rolled through Gilbertsville. Thunder cracked loud enough that Bruce looked like he was praying through it, and Eric ran out twice to check his car windows because he forgot one the first time. We kept smoking anyway. That’s kind of the whole show in one sentence. Something always breaks, the mics glitch, the rain comes in sideways, and we just keep the cigars lit and roll with it.
We wrapped Episode 64 the same way we always do. Grateful for the guys in the garage, grateful for anyone still listening, and already looking forward to whatever grievance gets aired next week.
Stay in the Conversation
If you want to catch these arguments as they happen, the easiest way in is the Stogie Review YouTube channel, where Smoke and Steel drops every week. Got thoughts on whether the Zino Nicaragua deserved that spot at number 20? Bring it to the Stogie Review Discord and argue it out with us directly. And if you want to rep the show while you’re doing it, the Smoke and Steel Merch Store always has something new worth checking out.
