I’ve usually never liked much from the Romeo y Julieta line from Cuba except the churchills. Their flavor profiles just wasn’t something I cared for. In 2016, I bought a box of Cazadores on a flash sale for a great price, so I figured I’d give them another try as the Cazadores is a very […]
Romeo Y Julieta Short Churchill
Romeo y Julieta is a Cuban cigar brand that I’ve never really taken too. The only one I’ve ever really enjoyed was the Churchill. Even the Edicion Limitadas didn’t really appeal to me. Romeo y Julieta also has never had a robusto in their regular line up until the Short Churchill was introduced in 2006. […]
IPCPR 2017: Twin Engine Coffee
We dropped by the Twin Engine Coffee booth at IPCPR 2017 just in time to prevent an almost certain coma. As we raised our caffeine levels Colin Ganley told us about developments in the Nicaraguan coffee world. But also in some news about coffee from Cuba. One of those developments is a K-Cup assembly line […]
Brian’s The Week In Smoke, Issue 105
So I was working on the last Week in Smoke and it occurred to me, I smoked a lot of cigars on vacation. Like two weeks worth of interesting cigars. Which does check out, since I was gone for two weeks. And after a brief, sitcom-esque flashback to me smoking cigars in a much warmer […]
Brian’s The Week In Smoke, Issue 104
It’s good to be back. If you follow me on social media, you’ve probably seen a lot of pictures of exotic locales interspersed with pictures of cigars that rarely show up in one of my Weeks in Smoke. I was on vacation in Southeast Asia (Malaysia and Bali) and I made a point to browse […]
H. Upmann Magnum 48 2009 Edicion Limitada
While in Belgium in October 2015 for the Royal Agio factory tour and InterTabac, we visited a Casa del Habano store in Antwerp. While there I picked up several regional exclusives and edicion limitada cigars. To my surprise, several of the earlier edicion limitada cigars were still available. Each year, Habanos SA releases edicion limitada […]
H. Upmann Connoisseur No. 1
The H. Upmann Connoisseur No. 1 is probably one of the most forgotten robustos in all the lines from Cuba. It’s in a very crowded group with the likes of the Cohiba robusto, Partagas Serie D No. 4, Montecristo Edmundo, Ramon Allones Specially Selected, etc. It’s a shame because this cigar is one of the best […]
Exploring InterTabac 2015
Thanks to the generousity of Royal Agio Cigars and Drew Estate, Ben Lee and I had the opportunity to attend InterTabac 2015 last week. InterTabac posed an interesting challenge for us in terms of coverage for Stogie Review. It’s bigger than IPCPR spread out over five convention center halls. (Yes, five.) It has a greater […]
2013 Bolivar Belicoso Finos
The Bolivar belicoso finos has been one of the best selling Cuban cigars to date and for good reason. Even when young, its a good smoking cigar. Considered one of the more powerful cigars out of the Cuban brands, these age quite well and mellow out with age. I’ve had several of these over the […]
Brian’s The Week In Smoke, Issue 64
It’s once time again for another issue of Brian’s The Week In Smoke. In case this is your first Week in Smoke, be advised that it covers many (though not necessarily all) of the cigars I’ve smoked in the past week (or the past month, or however long it has been since the last issue), […]