Tabla de contenidos para March/April 2020 en Cigar Aficionado

It’s an impressive issue brimming with high scores from six cigar-producing countries, though all these fantastic cigars may seem overshadowed by the Padrón Family Reserve No. 44, which dominated the entire tasting section. At 95 points, it’s a classic smoke and an unforgettable blockbuster, each puff more richly detailed than the last. NICARAGUA TOP FIGURADO PADRÓN FAMILY RESERVE NO. 44 MADURO This famous Padrón, made with some of the company’s oldest tobaccos, was a stunning classic, so rich and sophisticated it’s in a class of its own. 95 NICARAGUA TOP CHURCHILL PADRÓN SERIE 1926 NO. 1 MADURO It’s not only the biggest cigar in the Padrón Serie 1926 line but also the highest scoring Churchill of the category. 93 CUBA TOP PETIT CORONA COHIBA SIGLO I At only 4 inches…

Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak sport watch fairly rocked the watch industry in 1972 with an integrated bracelet that seamlessly flowed from its case. In 1976, the designer, Gérald Genta, followed his revolutionary vision with the Nautilus for Patek Philippe. Nearly 50 years later, they may be seldom sighted unicorns, but the stainlesssteel, sport-watch market is so hot that other brands are jumping in with novel interpretations. Chopard went retro with last fall’s Alpine Eagle (starting at $10,100). A bezel secured with four pairs of screws is a nod to its predecessor, the 1980 St. Moritz, the first piece designed by current copresident Karl-Friedrich Scheufele at age 22. Lucent Steel A223, a Chopard exclusive, is resmelted to make it robust and light-reflective. The slightly tapered integrated bracelet is composed of ingot-shaped…

Your lasting image of Charles Barkley should go something like this: he grabs a defensive rebound and starts up court, puts the ball behind his back to evade a defender, and tears for the basket like it was a fast-food joint that might close in four seconds. He finishes with fierce elevation and a slam. Fans marveled what a man listed at 6'6" (but who really played at a rotund 6'4") could do against taller competitors. “People thought he was too small to play forward and didn’t shoot well enough to play guard. There was no way for him to hold up,” says former broadcaster Matt Guokas, who was an assistant in Philadelphia when Barkley joined the franchise in 1984. He laughs at the recollection. A lot of analysts ate…

Most every successful person has an ah-ha moment, an epiphany that alters the trajectory of what he does and changes his life for the better. Colin Jones, now 39, experienced his lightning-burst of inspiration about 15 years ago at a blackjack table in a casino in Las Vegas. He was already an adept card counter and played on a team with other sharp advantage players. Like most people in the game, they highly valued their ability to ply their trade without getting booted by casinos that hate the idea of people playing any game at an advantage. In order to maintain that, they played cautiously in Vegas with what is known as cover: small gambits designed to keep casino personnel from realizing that the guy with a big pile of…

It wasn’t too long ago when a cigar with a 60 ring gauge was considered a novelty. Now, it’s become a standard size in the premium cigar world, and about as polarizing a topic as a presidential impeachment trial. People either love them or hate them. But a cigar like the Casa Turrent Serie 1942 Gran Toro, which scored 92 points, doesn’t really give us much to argue about. Yes, it’s gargantuan, but it’s loaded with leaf after leaf of tasty Mexican tobacco grown by the Turrent family, which produces the cigar as well. Tied for top position, The Oscar Habano Sixty also scored 92 points. The weighty smoke is made in Honduras by Oscar Valladares, a relative newcomer to the industry who’s helping to keep the oft-forgotten region of…

As the name implies, the Herrera Esteli Miami Short Corona, which scored 93 points, is one of the few cigars in this issue made stateside. It’s rolled at a small factory called El Titan de Bronze located in Miami’s Little Havana section, and was blended by Willy Herrera, who works for Drew Estate. ▪ Once a regional cigar brand made in Cuba primarily for France, Quai d’Orsay is now global, and the 91-point Senadores marks the first time that a Quai d’Orsay was ever released as an Edición Limitada. The Alec & Bradley Gatekeeper scored 90 points and is a collaboration between Alec and Bradely Rubin (sons of Alan Rubin) and cigarmaker Ernesto Perez-Carrillo. The Nicaraguan tobacco from Ometepe in the 90-point Avo Syncro Nicaragua is what ultimately defines this…

In cigar shops all across America, men and women are faced with a problem. They stare at the shelves in walk-in humidors and glass display cases with furrowed brows, puzzled expressions on their faces. They can’t decide what to smoke. We’ve all been there. Faced with walls of brightly colored boxes from around the world, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with choices. And nobody wants to make the wrong choice. Smoking a bad cigar is not only a waste of precious time—it’s a waste of hard-earned money. That’s where we come in. Last year, between Cigar Aficionado magazine and the newsletter Cigar Insider, we reviewed 648 cigars in blind taste tests. (Curious about how a blind tasting works? See our sidebar below.) That’s an enormous number of smokes rated and…

There have been two recent and major developments in the war on cigars, one of them quite good and the other mixed. Let’s begin with the good. On February 3, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta handed a big victory to the handmade cigar industry by striking down the FDA’s plan to slap large warning labels on cigar packaging. This was a direct rebuke of the FDA, which wanted warning labels that would have taken up 30 percent of cigar boxes, obscuring the beautiful art we have come to admire and rendering cigar packaging worthless. “In support of both arguments, commenters to the Proposed Rule presented evidence supporting that premium cigars have different usage patterns than other cigar and tobacco products,” wrote Judge Mehta in his ruling. “They are almost…

Remember the colossal golf bag Rodney Dangerfield sports in Caddyshack, the one with the functioning beer tap, a (very) loud music system and a belly fat enough to swallow four full sets of clubs? Along with the glitz, comes one big drawback that is evident when his caddie groans, “What do you got in here, rocks?” If you like to walk the course (or you take pity on your caddie’s spinal health) it’s time to streamline your bag. Modern materials and new designs mean that slimmer, sleeker bags can do a job once reserved for much bigger, bulkier bags. The Titleist Players 4 Carbon Stand Bag ($245, far right), for example, weighs a mere 3.8 pounds, but its four, full-length dividers make it easy to store a full set. There’s…

I don’t do social media. I don’t want to open up myself to deal with assholes. Listen, if you’re going to make 30 or 40 million dollars a year, you better fucking sign autographs and take pictures. Both parties are full of shit. I mean, they just disagree on every subject and that’s impossible. I tell people I can get together with guys from the Ku Klux Klan and I guarantee that we wouldn’t disagree on every subject. I don’t feel the need to work until the day I die. That’s just stupid. The last time I was at the White House, I spent 30 minutes staring at Paul McCartney. I’m like, shit, he’s Paul McCartney: he might not want to be bothered… Finally I said hey, this is once-in-a-lifetime,…

Nancy Fraley has an outstanding olfactory sense, an ability so sharp that she is able to distinguish hundreds of scents where most of us would vaguely identify only a few. For this she is in great demand, but while she could easily work as a perfumer, this woman known as “the nose” has chosen to use her talent as a whiskey blender—particularly in Bourbon making. Furthermore, she has combined her gift to create a spirit to go with her love of cigar smoking. Dozens of clients in the craft distilling industry turn to Fraley to not only help them blend, but also sniff out problems that are waiting to happen along the way in the fermenting, distilling and aging stages. Humble about her gift, she considers that her ability is…

The big Padrón No. 1 is the largest size in the Serie 1926 and the highest score of the category with 93 points. It was created to honor the birth year of the late José Orlando Padrón, who founded Padrón Cigars back in 1964. The cigar has all the richness, body and natural cocoa qualities that have come to be expected of Padrón’s top-tier blends. ▪ You’d be forgiven if you lost track of the number of Montecristo brands currently in the cigar market, but the Montecristo Nicaragua Series is one of the more memorable versions, and the Churchill scored 91 points. Made by A.J. Fernandez in Nicaragua for Altadis U.S.A., the line first got our attention when it was released in the summer of 2018, eventually earning a spot…

Hype can often lead to unrealistic expectations, and no cigar brand in the world is more hyped than the Cuban Cohiba, which is positioned as a global luxury brand. In this case, the petit Cohiba Siglo I lived up to its reputation with a big score of 93 points, one of the highest in the entire issue. If you calculate value by volume, it’s not a lot of cigar for your money. But if your equation is quality based, the opulent Siglo I pays off in a few puffs. The Fuente Fuente OpusX PerfecXion No. 5 is a spicy little 91-point smoke made by the Fuente family in the Dominican Republic. Because of its slender size, the Cuban-seed, Dominican-grown wrapper plays a major part in the character of this cigar.…

TOP SCORES 95 Padrón Family Reserve No. 44 Maduro Nicaragua • $32.50 • Figurado • Medium-Full 93 Cohiba Siglo I Cuba • £17.10 • Petit Corona • Medium-Full 93 Herrera Esteli Miami Short Corona Gorda U.S.A. • $9.80 • Toro • Medium-Full 93 Padrón 1926 No. 1 Maduro Nicaragua • $22.40 • Churchill • Medium 92 Casa Turrent Serie 1942 Gran Toro Mexico • $10.00 • Grande • Medium 92 Don Pepin Garcia Original Invictos U.S.A. • $8.10 • Robusto • Medium-Full 92 Montecristo Petit No. 2 Cuba • £22.60 • Figurado • Medium 92 The Oscar Habano Sixty Honduras • $12.50 • Grande • Medium TOP VALUES 90 7-20-4 Hustler Series Dog Walker Honduras • $6.50 • Petit Corona • Medium-Full 90 La Galera Connecticut Cepo Dominican Republic •…

THE CIGAR OF THE BAMBINO Baseball’s original home run king loved cigars so much he even had his own brand. A svelte Babe Ruth hands out samples of five-cent cigars bearing his name in Boston in February of 1920, two months after being traded from the Red Sox to New York. He hit a league-leading 29 homers in 1919, and would go on to set record after record. Dumping such a talent—and Boston’s 86-year championship drought that followed—was dubbed “The Curse of the Bambino.” Follow us on Instagram for more great cigar photos /CigarAficionado…

Dear Marvin, I’ve been reading Cigar Aficionado on and off since my brother got me into cigars back in the early 1990s. Reading the highlights (best cigars by size), I always wondered why a cigar company doesn’t make all of its sizes of cigars using the same tobacco: wrapper, binder and filler. Do they grow certain tobacco for different sizes? Do companies make a certain amount of cigars, say 10,000, with filler, and then use the remainder tobacco as binder on another size and wrapper on yet another size? Thank you for your insight on this question. Pat Trunda Cary, Illinois Editors’ Response: The short answer to your question is no. For the long answer, there’s a big difference between filler and other kinds of tobacco, and less of a…

Refinement. We seek it everywhere. The occasions when it is found come with a satisfaction, a quiet contentment knowing your efforts have paid off. It comes when you tighten your fingers around a new, leather wrapped steering wheel, or when finally examining a previously elusive Toro in your hand after taking that first draw. It comes when the taste of an aged single malt warms your tongue, or feeling the balance of a fine firearm given to it centuries ago from a master craftsman. This satisfaction is to be savored. Enjoyed. Remembered. It is no small coincidence that when one chooses to acknowledge their own successes and extra efforts realized, they seek those kindred spirits also imbued with the respect not just for a job well done, but for refinement.…

A truly classic cigar only appears in our regular tasting section every once in a great while, and in this issue, we’ve found one. At an astonishing 95 points, the Padrón Family Reserve No. 44 might just be the most perfect pirámide on the market. It began as a special-events cigar before it became commercially available. As the name suggests, this cigar was only unboxed at Padrón events when a member of the family was present. Ten years ago, the family decided it was time to share this tobacco treasure with the rest of the world. ▪ In 2013, Cuban cigar distributor Habanos S.A. had a brilliant idea: Take an iconic cigar like the Montecristo No. 2 and make it shorter. The result was the Petit No. 2, which scored…

Made in Miami, the Don Pepin Garcia Original Invictos scored 92 points. This intriguing robusto is rolled at the modest El Rey de Los Habanos factory which used to be located in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, but now resides at the My Father Cigars headquarters in Doral. It’s a small set-up obviously capable of making great cigars. The brand is named for company patriarch José “Pepín” Garcia. The Diesel Whiskey Row Sherry Cask Robusto scored 91 points, owing much of its personality to the Brazilian binder—the only leaf aged in a sherry cask. The cigar is made in Nicaragua by A.J. Fernandez for General Cigar. It tied with the Joya Black Doble Robusto, a powerful, richly layered cigar made by Joya de Nicaragua, the oldest premium cigar factory in Nicaragua.…

96 PUNCH PUNCH (1991) Wide and majestic cabinets of 50 cigars are becoming a rare sight in humidors, and that’s unfortunate. There’s a regal air to these boxes, which have a beauty in their plain nature, the cigars unbanded, the boxes devoid of color, the only flair a ribbon around the smokes inside. These 29-year-old corona gordas have aged beautifully. There’s a slight herbal note at first that soon fades, giving way to notes of honeyed tea, dusty almonds and light baking spices, buttressed by a bit of wood, with a pleasantly nutty finish. Easygoing, mellow and exceptionally tasty. —David Savona 99 COHIBA SIGLO VI GRAN RESERVA COSECHA 2003 (2009) Beautiful to behold, it has perfect construction and smoking performance. And as the intact ash burned more than halfway down,…