Many posts ago I mentioned that I had an uncle that lived in Victoria on Vancouver Island and that he is an old cigar smoker that has a very nicely stocked humidor.  We spent some time visiting him over the holidays and, as usual, we spent time smoking a few together with very nice Scotch and some very old port.  Talk about perfect pairings in both cases.

I thought I’d steer away from the very old Cohiba Lanceros since the last time I was there I was allowed to take one.  You can only go so far, if you know what I mean.  One Cohiba box that caught my eye on this visit was a box of Robustos with a date stamped on the bottom that read early 2000.  My heart really starts to beat whenever I know that I can smoke a Cohiba with at least 10 years on it.  Wow!!

I’ve tasted Cohiba Robustos that have been young, fresh and full of nicotine and I have to say that I don’t mind them at all.  They can be sweet, grassy and pack a pretty good punch but this 2000 stick had a few extras that I don’t get to taste very often.  This cigar was quite woody and had no shortage of that beautiful Cohiba herbal profile but the dark chocolates in the flavor profile were what really thrilled me.  Port and a cigar like that really DO go together well and one enhanced the beauty of the other in such a big way.

I don’t see my uncle often enough !!!!

Against my better judgement I’ll be hitting the links tomorrow with a Cohiba Robusto.  Yeah yeah, I know what you’re thinking… What could be so wrong with both of thoseideas on the same day.. Well, I’m in the middle of a big job that has to be finished very soon and I’ll be golfing instead of working.. Plus… I’ll be taking out a very special cigar to smoke when it’ll only be 5 degrees Centigrade at the warmest part of the day!

Well, I believe that you have to be a rebel from time to time and I’ll be with some very special friends that all smoke very nice cigars in any weather.  Yup, I guess I have some very crazy friends!!!  That’s not the point.. We will be in for some harsh winter conditions by Vancouver standards for, what the weatherman says, a considerable length of time this winter.  No matter, you have to make hay when the sun shines and we WILL be seeing sunshine tomorrow.. And it COULD be one of the last do-able days of the year for golf… So So who’s the crazy person after all??!!!!

I’ve found a box of Cohiba Robustos that have a few years on them and these taste particularly fine.  The Robusto from Cohiba can present varied flavors depending on the age and the batch.. Sure, they are very consistent but I’ve had some that are very sweet and then at other times I’ve smoked very grassy and spicy Robustos from Cohiba.  My personal favorite are the Robustos that lean toward to sweeter notes and in the past few years these tend to be a bit younger….  Goes to show you that aging cigars does eliminate the ammonia that occurs as the cigar is young but will also eliminate some of the sweeter flavors that have been showing up in Cuban cigars in the last 10 years or so….

Oh yes, there is one more thing I forgot to mention…. The golf course is closed to the public and I believe that we will be the only foursome allowed out tomorrow….  Now THAT is special treatment !!! Warm clothing and prayers for low to no wind will be in my horizon.. Should be fun!

I’m always poking around the internet and looking for good cigar deals on some of the sites that the public use to sell items and for some reason Vancouver is seeing a lot of ads from people who have just returned from Cuba with cigars to sell.  The last few days have seen more activity than usual and it gives me an opportunity to make a deal or two.

I’m not going to buy the first Esplendidos that come around.. ( I’ve done that a few years back )…. NOTHING is more annoying than getting a box of cigars for a great price, taking them home and after a few terrible sticks, you realize that you’ve been duped.  Well, let the buyer beware, I always say.. I’ve spent good money on counterfeit cigars and I won’t be doing that again.

After looking around the internet this morning I was, once again, amazed at the amount of information available to people who want to learn about Cuban cigars… It is actually mind boggling!  I believe that there are many many informed compassionate cigar smokers that  are more than willing, for no reason other than to help out, to share their experiences and knowledge with anyone who cares to read their pages.

The Habanos site is one of the greatest aides in checking to see if cigars for sale are actually authentic.  Go to their site and on the top of their home page there is an authenticity check that helps you identify cigars by the bar codes that are now on the green seals folded around the left hand side of the box.. No bar code= FAKES..  Of course there are always aged cigars without the bar code but its getting harder to find aged cigars in Cuba and the ones that people are buying are usually going home with them and smoked with extreme enjoyment.

I have nothing against the people who actually don’t know anything about Cuban cigars, my beef is with the people who sell the counterfeits in the first place.  Cohiba Esplendidos, Robustos, Montecristo No. 2 and 4 seem to be the cigars that get copied and sold the most because of the quality of the real thing so these are usually the first to be offered on the local buy and sell pages.

I guess it will only be a matter of time until we start to see the Behike copied and sold but that band is going to be either stolen from the factories ( good luck trying to copy that one ) and the boxes are going to be expensive to mass produce with any believable results.   Anyone who has had the good fortune to smoke a Behike or two has probably noticed the immense quality of construction and I’ve NEVER seen very many Cuban cigars that can come close, let alone a counterfeit.

Do a bit of research before blindly diving into the market of cigars from private sellers and you may just be able to pick up a good cigar at a good price.

The best cigar I smoked last week was a Cohiba Robusto that I lit up just before the Canadian Country Music Awards.  I was standing around outside the Rexall Centre in Edmonton, the weather was warm, not much wind and I was reminded once again as to why this could be my favorite cigar, smooth, a bit herbal and very balanced.

I had a great time sharing my cigar with a few friends as I did my best to introduce cigar smoking to the many cigarette smokers that were part of the entertainment and crew who waited for the show to begin.  I have some friends in a successful Canadian country band called “Doc Walker”, who love smoking cigars and they gave me 3 Romeo y Julieta No. 1′s in aluminum tubes.  I smoked one of these on the drive back to Vancouver the next day and I was very impressed with the quality of that cigar.  These are good ol’ Canadian cowboys who love to have a good time and always put on a terrific show.

The Awards show itself was great to see live and I believe the highlight of the night was when “One More Girl” hit the stage.  They had a 9 piece band that played live and sounded great while the girls, Britt and Carley, sang impeccably.  The girls won their first award in the “Rising Star” category which once again reminded me that they will have a bright and long career.  But I always knew that.

More cigars were smoked after the show with a few different singers at some of the late night jams that always take place during that week of industry festivities.  Hearing Canada’s finest musicians play off the cuff with members of other groups is always a big treat and always delivers some of the finest performances of the week.

Next year the Canadian Country Music Association will be holding it’s awards show in  Hamilton, Ontario and anyone wanting to have a great week should buy some boots, maybe a hat and a clean shirt and get ready to have the time of your life.

Here I sit in Vancouver on my last day in the Pacific North-west typing and puffing away on a Cuban as I try to imagine what will be revealed in this week-end’s Canadian Country Music week in Edmonton, Alberta, the host city for this year’s Canadian Country Music awards Show on Sunday night.  I love attending this event and as years go by I see a ton of familiar faces, hear some great late-night jam sessions with Canada’s premier players and smoke beautiful Cuban cigars with more and more friends that I’m trying to convert into full-on wild eyed cigar smokers.

The weather in Edmonton will be rather OK for cigar smoking outside some of that city’s country music venues so I’m not afraid to load up my humidor with some of my better Cubans as I know I’m going to have a lot of opportunities to smoke, listen, drink in almost perfect conditions that just may NOT require long johns and down filled jackets. The city has some very well stocked stores but before I leave I’ll probably drop down to “The Vancouver Cigar Company” and see what Cuban favorites I can take to Alberta.

The country music industry has contributed some very big participants, through the years, in North America’s country music scene and this year I know I’ll be seeing and listening to some of Canada’s singers, home from their new neighborhoods in Nashville to entertain, compete and talk to the rest of us who support this industry.  Names like Shania ( only one name needed ), Anne Murray, Hank Snow, Terry Clark, Derick Ruttan have represented our country very proudly and contribute loads to the genre of music that more and more people listen to these days..  Hey, let’s face it, country music these days is nothing more to Def Leopard with fiddles.  Something huge happened to country music when rap came out, people switched their radio stations over to Country music stations and the industry adjusted to these new listeners.

Now lets get back to the cigars for a moment…… There are still a ton of cigarette smokers out there who are very open minded about having smoke in their systems but still don’t have a clue as to how great Cuban cigars taste.  My passion here is to mill around the different smoking areas at this annual event and stick the odd cigar in someone’s face that really need it.  This is something that we should all do to improve the health, enjoyment and well being of our friends out there.  I will probably take my supply of Cohiba Robustos, Esplendidos and Silgo I’s ( for those short windows of opportunity for smoking ) and enjoy them with some of Canada’s movers and shakers, VJ’s, promoters, agents and general yahoos…….

Wish me ( and my liver) luck!

Oh yeah, where was I ???? So the last thing that happened was my power went out but I guess I neglected to tell you about what happened after…..

Vancouver is a bit of a world center for devil weed grow-op production, in fact so much so that there could be as many as 20,000 grow-ops in the lower mainland at any given point in time… This is what I read in the paper but I’m a cigar guy… I tried that stuff when I was a kid and like Clinton, I didn’t inhale!!! ( much )……

So the power goes out and then I hear sirens…. Well, I wasn’t sure why but then again this IS Vancouver and anything is possible… Turns out I have a neighbor 3 doors down in the “Biz”, as it were, and he was also stealing electricity to keep the operation costs down. This is something that happens a lot and quite often you get caught because the electric company matches the amount of use on a grid with the amount of revenue coming in…. Things don’t match up and then the giant microscope comes out….

The Cohiba Robusto was into the final third and tasting rich and fruity when our neighborhood went black but I’ve learned to stay quiet and stay in the shadows when things like this happen and most of the time it all blows over….. Most of the time…… Then I heard a rustling in my bushes…

We have a lot of animals ( cats, dogs, raccoons, the odd black bear and deer ) who drop into our yard at night, so I shouldn’t have been concerned but I thought I heard this one humming or something weird…. I set the Robusto down and went for my flashlight and when I came back there was a kid, maybe 17 or 18 standing on my back deck in handcuffs….. The lights then went back on and I could see that he looked terrified and it brought back memories of the few times when I was younger and felt the cold steel on my wrists.. These days I like staying within the parameters of society’s rules and I made a promise to myself that I’m permanently going to be keeping it that way…… Then a German shepherd ran on the to back deck and pulled the kid down…… All Hell broke loose after that….

The next thing I know is that there are 5 cops on my back deck shouting orders to the kid, the dog and yelling at me to put my cigar out….. This was when I had had enough….. I don’t care if you have to conduct your business on my back deck but there was still about 2 inches of Cohiba’s best burning in my hand and I wasn’t about to be pushed around on my own property so with my elbow I reached behind me and turned out the lights on the deck……. Things got a little noisy after that !! The dog went crazy, the cops started yelling and the kid ran off …..  In a second they were gone, all was quiet and I was alone again…

I don’t think the kid made it very far with handcuffs on and a German Shepherd on his tail but I didn’t care much…. I went into the kitchen, poured another shot of port and went back to the deck to finish one of the best Cohiba Robustos I had yet this year!

One hot afternoon in Havana last year my wife and I sat under an umbrella at a table in Cathedral Square and drank too much rum and beer as we ate lunch.  Havana is full of great musicians playing everywhere and that particular day we watched a latin jazz band whip up the crowd that sat around eating and drinking.  At one point during our meal a young man walked around with a tray of various cigars, I picked a perfectly rolled Cohiba Robusto and marveled at the taste as we waited for our bill.

We strolled back to our hotel and along the way, posed and took a few pics with a few colorful locals, then walked into our hotel lobby.  Our hotel usually had live entertainment in the lobby and this afternoon we listened to a trio of fine fine singers, two of which played nylon string guitars and one bongo player.  Since we had met them and spoke to them a few times in the 3 days we stayed there, they wanted to introduce us to a man in the audience who was planning on putting up some money for their next CD.. Needless to say, they were ” on ” that day….

In Cuba you’ll hear a lot of the same songs being played by street musicians but this trio played a lot of different music we hadn’t heard before, which was very refreshing.  We sat down and an ashtray was brought over to me which made me love the country even more… Wow, you can smoke cigars almost everywhere… What a civilized place, and the Robusto was taking me on a journey of fantastic flavors. At one point in the trio’s set the man with the $$$ requested a song called La Malaguena and it was met with a hush in the crowd that is usually reserved for the type of moment you run into when someone orders a type of fish at a sushi restaurant that will kill you if it isn’t prepared properly. The stage was set for something exciting, it was hot and tropical, we were a bit on the drunk side in a country where we couldn’t understand the language… Sounds kind of exotic doesn’t it..

Listen to THIS:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuT7pYKS4E4&feature=fvw

Have you ever thought about giving Cohiba cigars as a gift? Of course you have, but I know you would rather smoke them yourselves – but seriously, due to the recession, a lot of people are going through some tough times. So I decided to lighten things up and spread some positive energy around my office. I thought why not hand out a Cohiba cigar (Cohiba Robusto to be exact) in my meetings with potential new business partners?  Everyone loves a free gift and who can say no to a real Cuban cigar right? So about three weeks ago, I started handing out a Cuban cigar at the end of all my

business meetings and frankly, I don’t think I will ever stop again. The connection that you make with your potential business partner is much stronger with this simple gift. It is absolutely unbelievable how this gesture totally changes the energy in the room. I think it’s because as men, we all have a few  things that we can find common ground on (Such as women, sports, cars) and Cuban cigars is definitely one of them. I feel that after my potential partners touch the Cohiba cigar, they automatically become my buddies, and it usually leads to a fun conversation about Cuban cigars and stories begin to exchange between all parties. That little Cuban cigar give away leads to really getting to know your potential business partner as a person, rather than just some ‘Business Zombie’. Overall, it had led me to some amazing friendships and fruitful business partnerships. Almost all the guys I gave Cubans to are now also my regular drinking buddies (You know how I love scotch and Cohiba cigars right?).

So next time you have meeting with your potential partner or client, try the Cohiba cigar give away, I guarantee you will build a very long lasting and fruitful relationship. I think what I’ve learned from this recession is you can always add more value to people’s lives even when things are looking down. Regardless, I think we should all try to give more value each and every day because it will make you feel good, and whatever you give, you get.

It their is one cigar that always does it for me, that would be the Cohiba Robusto. Cohiba is hands down the most popular Cuban cigar brand right after the Montecristo. I always enjoyed pretty much all Cohiba cigars – even the little sizes such as the Siglo 6 (Or as I like to call it, “The on the run cohiba”).

When I’m holding a Cohiba Robusto however, it just feels like so natural . . . like it was made just for me. Honestly, for me I think the Robusto is the perfect size. It takes about 45 mintues to enjoy which I think is the proper amount of time that you should be spending when smoking a cuban cigar.

Anyways, I was really happy when I found this very informative article on the Cohiba Robusto. It shows that it’s not just me that truly appreciates the Cohiba Robusto.

The Vancouver Cigar Company has produced a straight forward (and more importantly free) e-book called Cohiba 101 (Cohiba 101 Download).  I downloaded it tonight and gave it a bit of a look over and was surprised about two things: #1) It was relatively pitch free (just good information) #2) I learned a couple of things about the Cohiba.  Also it seems that they actually used some of my reviews that I sent them (Bonus!).

This 101 e-book thing would have been great when I first started smoking cigars.

Cohiba Cigar Blog Entry By Shane