Episode 67 felt different before anyone even lit a cigar. Mark wasn’t in the chair for the first time in longer than any of us could remember. The garage felt a little off without him needling somebody in the first thirty seconds. We’ve been doing this the same way for years now, sitting around this garage in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania smoking and talking long before we ever turned a camera on. Even short-staffed, that part never changes. Altadis USA sent us their new Golden Four sampler for the night, four event-only cigars in one tube.

The Golden Four Nobody Expected to Love

Altadis sent us the Golden Four, an event-only assortment pulled from four of their biggest brands. One Aging Room, one H. Upmann, one Montecristo, one Romeo y Julieta, all in a single tube. Rafael Nodal, the blender behind Aging Room, had a hand in the lineup too. Each of us grabbed a different stick so we could cover all four in one sitting. I lit up something else entirely, a RoMa Craft Intemperance EC XVIII Brotherly Kindness I’d been pregaming with before everyone got settled.

Eric had the Aging Room and called it sneaky good. Rob had the H. Upmann and liked it enough that he’s already looking at buying more. Eric Gergel had the Montecristo. It had been years since he’d smoked one, but he said it made a nice cigar. Jim had the Romeo y Julieta and called it mild but worked well with his evening coffee.

None of us would have picked up a sampler like this off a shelf. These are the mega brands you walk past because you already think you know what you’re getting. That’s exactly why the Golden Four worked. It gave us a reason to slow down and actually taste what these brands are still capable of.

The Friend Who Walked Away From Opus X

Rob told us about a Rocky Patel Year of the Horse he’d smoked down the shore, handed to him by Jay, a longtime friend of the crew who’s never been on the show but has been smoking with these guys for years. It was a good smoke, consistent all the way through, no surprises in the burn or the flavor. That’s exactly why guys reach for Rocky Patel in the first place. But Rob said he wouldn’t have paid the twenty-some dollars for it himself. That’s what got us into where Jay’s head has been lately.

Jay used to be right there with us chasing boxes of Opus X and every other high-dollar release that came through. Not anymore. Rob told us Jay said it straight. He’s not paying for that stuff again. There are too many good affordable cigars out there to justify it. On the crew’s golf trips, Jay used to bring a couple boxes of the expensive stuff to share. Now he shows up with duffel bags packed with everything and anything, just so the group can work through cigars none of them have ever tried. Rob said he likes it better this way. So do we, honestly. That’s how we end up smoking things we never would have picked off a shelf ourselves.

The Case for the Seven Dollar Cigar

Jay’s shift got us talking about how much room there is between a six dollar cigar and a sixty dollar one. A Cohiba Rubicon runs about seven bucks and holds its own against sticks three times the price. Some of us admitted we still hesitate on the big legacy names, Montecristo, Cohiba, brands like that, and reach for boutiques instead, even when the boutique costs more for the same quality.

Part of that comes down to how these companies are built. A lot of the boutique brands we love get contracted out to a factory, which adds a middleman and a markup. The bigger companies mostly make their own cigars. That markup disappears, and the savings get passed down. You can find something as good as a boutique release, sometimes better, for a lot less money. And it’ll usually still be sitting on the shelf two or three years later even if you’re not first in line for it.

We got a real-world version of this from Will at Chartwell. We were down there talking about the Zino Nicaragua line he’d been asked to bring in. He told us straight that he can’t compete with online pricing on certain sticks. His cost is close to what we’d pay buying online ourselves, and he doesn’t mark everything up the same across the board. Sometimes he’ll skip stocking a stick entirely rather than charge more for it than it’s worth to guys who already know what it should cost. That kind of honesty is part of why we keep making the drive out there.

A New Shop in Boyertown, and Why We’re Sticking with Chartwell

My wife texted me a picture of a new shop that had opened up in Boyertown. It just so happens that Eric was already in to check it out. It’s mostly a vape store, glass everywhere, with the cigars tucked behind a side door in an unfinished garage space they’re planning to turn into a lounge eventually. The selection was mostly baseline stuff with a few overpriced high-end sticks thrown in. Nothing that really stood out. The kid working the counter was honest about it too. He told Eric straight up that cigars weren’t his department, vape was more his speed.

Kyle Picked Up the Phone

I had a payment issue with my LA Cigar Collective subscription a couple months back. I got an automated email saying my card couldn’t be processed, which was strange since I hadn’t had a problem in the eight or so months I’d been a member. I tried reprocessing. I tried a different card. Same result both times. So I reached out to Kyle directly, mostly just hoping to make sure I wouldn’t miss that month’s box since it was shipping that same day.

Within five minutes, Kyle called me himself and walked me through the fix. Turned out I wasn’t the only member who’d run into the same glitch. He had me unsubscribe and resubscribe, which cleared it right up, and he made sure I didn’t lose that month’s shipment in the process. He wasn’t even at the shop when he called. He was handling it from his phone. That’s not customer service you run into much anymore, and it’s a big part of why this crew sticks with LACC.

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Stay in the Conversation

That’s episode 67 in the books. No Mark, a Golden Four sampler that earned more respect than we expected, and a reminder that the good stuff doesn’t need a big price tag attached to it. If you want to see the whole night play out, including the parts that didn’t make it into this post, subscribe to the Stogie Review YouTube channel, where the full episode goes up every week.

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