The Velvet Cigar

Posted By ironmeden on August 20, 2007

It’s been busy here lately and busy it will stay in the near future.

The Havana Night Cigar Club which i’m the President of, All Hail the President, has kept Joe and I busy with planning on where our next home will be. To keep you updated, Robert’s Cigar Lounge where the cigar club originated from closed in early July. We now have to find a cigar shoppe to host the club. We also have the option of holding at one of the member’s garages’, but this isn’t any garage, its a 1500 square foot car garage with many antique car remnants from years past. It has old gas pumps, oil company signs and many glass globes.

Tomorrow is our first stop on the tour of cigar shoppes that were interested in hosting the club. We venture into Hudson Wisconsin where we will tour the St. Croix Cigar Company. Members are going there to check out the shoppe and smoke a cigar. I’m looking forward to showing the members other places locally that will cater to us cigar smokers after the Minnesota smoking ban goes into affect after October 1st, all Hail the Sycle and Star.

Next I wanna talk about my part time job at the newest cigar shoppe in the Twin Cities area. I’ve recently started working Saturday’s at Burn in Burnville, MN. I completed by 2nd day this past Saturday and I have to say right off the bat how much fun i’m having. This is quite a learning experience.

I have never and I mean never worked retail. I never worked at a McDonalds or a Target like department store. The closest i’ve come to working this type of job was a teller at a bank from ’89 to ’92 and at that position never relied on me selling a product. Most of my working career has been in TV and behind the scenes or in IT performing phone support.

Though being the President of the Havana Nights Cigar Club has given more confidence with interaction with people, I was about to take it a step further. Joel at Burn was generous enough to give me a chance to learn the retail side of my hobby and I can’t thank him enough.

This isn’t like my 9 to 5 job where I answer calls all day and spend most of my time behind a computer. I’m up standing, walking around and greeting customers as they come in. I help them once in the humidor to locate their favorite cigar or to offer opinions on different cigars they may not have tried.

I was nervous the first time walking in and asking somebody if there was anything I could help them with. My experience with this has always been at stores like Best Buy when a young kid comes up to you asking you if you need assistance and I quickly blow them off, well because I probably know more about the products on display then they do. I had that same feeling when asking the customer that same question. “Is this guy going to blow me off like I did that kid”? Thankfully no he didn’t. I pointed him in the direction of his favorite cigar since this was his first trip to Burn. I rang him up and out the door he went. Wow that was fun! It was a natural high!

On my first day Joel offered to buy me a cigar. I looked around and found the cigar I have heard so much about, the La Aurora 100 Anos. Damn if that isn’t one of the best cigars I smoked in a long while. Smooth and easy to smoke, it has a hint of fruitiness to the flavor. I should of saved that one for a review. This past weekend I decided to try a cigar I had when it first came out, which I didn’t enjoy at all, the Rocky Patel Nording. This cigar came about about 2 years ago and it was harsh and wasn’t enjoyable at all. Joel said the cigar has been there for those 2 years so I decided to fire one up. There was a great improvement to this cigar in those 2 years of aging. It smoothed out and wasn’t bitter.

On Saturday Joel gave me the new Gurkha Expidition 1887. He received as a bundle sample from the RTDA. I was really looking forward to smoking anything new from Gurkha. I still have the Crest waiting for me to smoke!

So tonight I decided to light the 1887 up. The construction is solid. It has a deep dark wrapper and it oil shines off its clean wrapper. There are 2 bands, the Gurkha band in the copper color and a smaller band below with the 1887 reference to the name of the cigar.

I first wanted to find out the properties of the cigar so I went to the Gurkha website. Wow what a surprise….No info on the website about this new cigar and nothing even on the Crest. So where did I have to get my info on this cigar…Cigars International. I went to the website and they don’t even up a current picture of this cigar, they have the original Expedition. Who knows if the description of the cigar is the 1887.

I light it up with a cedar band I had from another cigar. It lit nicely and I took my puffs. Yes the Gurkha flavor is there. Its smooth and creamy with hints of coffee throughout. At the 1/4 point of the cigar it was still burning quite even, but there wasn’t anything special about the taste or flavor of the cigar. It was reminding me of the G3. It wasn’t knocking me off my feet.

At the half way point it was still the same, there was no change in flavor or taste, but still smooth and creamy.

As I wait to finish the cigar I wanted to bring up again how important it is that you the cigar smoker keep the pressure on your representatives in the Senate and House in Washington DC. The SCHIP program has to be defeated and it’s our voices that have to sound the alarm on this Communist style tactic some of the representatives are pushing through. I honestly hate calling another American a Communist, but there is no other way to describe what they are doing to the casual cigar smoker. As you can read in my post the other day from my Republican representative, there are people who we thought would protect our rights and are turning against us. I want to continue to have places like Burn, St. Croix Cigar Company, Tobacco Grove and Stogies on Grand to go to and smoke my cigars and to interact with others who enjoy my hobby. But if this bill this bill is passed and signed, those places will disappear. It will almost be cheaper to start smoking Crack and dealing Meth by the time our representatives in Washington get done with their taxing bills. This is the first step in the Government controlling what we as human beings consume. Next up will be your coffee at Starbucks, then your favorite beer will be hit with a large tax, then your fast food restaurant will get hit, there will not be an end point in what they will try to tax and take away from you.

As the 1887 comes to an end I have to give it one positive, its very consistent in the flavor. It didn’t change at all throughout the smoke. It is a good cigar but there wasn’t anything unique about it that I could pick out. It’s an easy smoke and it burned evenly. There wasn’t a part of the cigar that would burn uneven. I drank water with this cigar, but I would recommend a cup of coffee as you smoke this one. I think it would go really well, but don’t ask me what kind of coffee, I don’t drink coffee. Don’t be intimidated by the dark wrapper, this cigar is not full flavored. Its a good cigar to end your day.

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