At first the two weren’t marrying at all but then I thought that having a glass of water with the cigar and wine and everything started working out just fine.  There’s something about keeping your palate clear when smoking a cigar that, more often than not, requires something clear and refreshing and, in my experience, water always does the trick.  The first few draws from this Cohiba revealed, as usual, a bit of a testy, rather powerful toasted tobacco and then it became a rich creamy smoke that started to reveal slight bean flavors.  This isn’t your average Cohiba, I believe that the creamy coffee you get from this cigar is considerably milder and takes a bit of concentration to detect the subtle nuances this one has to offer.

After the first third of the Siglo I decided to take the wine I had left and drink it all in one gulp.. Maybe the water was all I needed to be able to detect all that this cigar had to offer. As I entered into the second third I was really quite pleased to find that it became a bit more powerful and developed into a very satisfying experience I was hoping to find when I bought them today.

I always say to myself, whenever I buy cigars,  that they are going to sit in my humidor for a year or two and that I’ll get to them when the time is right but, alas, I think that I know myself better than that and I’ll probably keep going back and picking these Siglos and continuing my search for that ideal moment of smoking perfection…. Sometimes I hit it right… Sometimes not……. Hey, I gotta keep trying!

We played on a course by the Fraser River on the south side of Vancouver where the drainage is taken very seriously and ended up having a day of relatively mud free golf.  Mud is something you get used to in our city, especially in the winter, and when the rest of you are shoveling snow out of the driveway, we’re working on our short game.  Hey, thats one of the rewards we get for paying so much to live here….. Wanna have some fun?? Check out the real estate prices in Vancouver and compare it to the price of a home in Flint, Michigan….. BIG difference.

The greens were a bit slow, weather was comfortable enough and the pace on the course wasn’t too bad but one thing we kept seeing was a lot of geese on the course.  Canada geese are big and beautiful but they can make a real mess of a golf course in the winter.  The good thing is that they are usually unconcerned about golfers and at one point in yesterday’s round I wondered how Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “The Birds” would have turned out if it would have been thousands of Canada Geese attacking Tippi Hedren.  Not pretty…. Nope, not pretty at all!!!

After having a bit of a snack after the front nine we decided it was time to light up the 4 Maduro 5’s I brought along.  With just over 4 inches and a 40 ring gauge, these were a perfect cigar for golf ( I hear that said a lot though, maybe all cigars are the perfect golf cigar)….   These have a very well balanced chocolate, almost mocha flavor and were a real treat with the heavy peaty Scotch.  I was just grateful that there wasn’t any wind…… I don’t mind golfing on a cool windy day but I hate to see a good cigar go to waste in the wind…. It just doesn’t work!!!!!

The 14th hole was a beautiful par 4 dogleg left that wraps around a rather large pond, leading to a well guarded green.  The first three up all had fairly decent drives but trouble started when I stepped on to the tee box and topped my ball and watched it fly through the air at about 3 feet off the ground and into the neck of a Canada goose that was part of a small flock walking across the fairway 50 yards away.  This poor thing didn’t fare well and started beating it’s wings against the ground but couldn’t get air bound.  We didn’t think it was going to make it and so we decided to pull forward and put it out of it’s misery with a sand-wedge.  That wasn’t going to be necessary……. A bald eagle came out of nowhere and pounced down on the poor struggling goose

We have a large number of bald eagles in Vancouver all year round.  The late autumn, early winter is usually the time when you see the most because of the dying salmon that carpet the riverbanks after spawning.. A real banquet for scavengers… When I come back to this earth I want to be a bald eagle…. or….. maybe a cockroach… I’d hide behind the stove and food the size of volkswagens will come falling out of the sky.

The eagle had the goose by the neck with one of it’s talons and wasn’t making a move as I approached with my wedge ( I was voted to be the goose exterminator )…. Nice……. Bald eagles are a lot bigger and meaner looking when they’re up close than when you see them soaring overhead or perched high up in a tree… This one was giving me the ” One more step and I’ll tear out your liver” kind of look so I had to rethink my plan for a humane end to the goose’s life.. Maybe there wasn’t going to be one… This was getting to be a terrifying experience and what made matters worse was that the Albertans thought this was the funniest thing they had ever seen..  I didn’t see any of them get out of the golf carts….I didn’t think this was going to be as much of a problem as it turned out to be..  I had 3 issues to deal with..

1…… this Eagle wasn’t budging an inch as I crept closer….

2…… my cigar was going out in the golf cart…..

3…….That was a brand new Pro V 1 sitting about 4 feet away from the 2 big birds…

You can now see the predicament I was in……. The other three thought it would be best to leave the big noble black and white bird with his lunch but I wanted my new ball……… I lost the vote..We drove away…….

I was now lying 3……………………

Limited editions will be released this year in many countries and I believe that there is a growing wave of cigar smokers that are showing their preference for sizes that are leading the suppliers of these amazing cigars to give the buyers what they want.  Looking at the cigar deletions Cuba has planned for 2010 pretty much convinces me that what I’m saying here is true.  Many petit coronas and panetelas are on the chopping block as far as production goes… I guess they just don’t sell as well as something in a 50 ring gauge.  If they did, we’d be seeing newer, smaller cigars being introduced.  A few are being introduced but only a few.

All you have to do is take a look at a Robusto and think about rolling one with long leaf tobacco and you’d probably be able to tell that construction problems are fewer and farther between compared to a long panetela or lancero.. The taste of a robusto is simply superior in my opinion because of more filler and a cooler burn…. Anyway, here I sit….. staring out the window…. waiting for the Behike to arrive…….

This year enthusiastic cigar aficionados were able to sample the new line from Cohiba and all reports reveal that this will be a very full bodied cigar that is not only very smokable right now but will become prized possessions aging in many humidors around the world.

This year’s total for all auctions that night brought 805,000 Euros to Cuba’s health care system. The only question I have regarding a purchase of that size is the restrictions different countries have in bringing home that many cigars.  Canada only allows an individual to return home with 50 so there will have to be some pretty imaginative import plans the lucky winner of this year’s humidor will implement.  Whichever country the buyer lives in should ease any restrictions due to the philanthropic nature of the act.

There are a few pictures of the new Behike online and if you do some looking around you’ll see perhaps the most beautiful cigar band Cohiba has ever designed..

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

A few tables over I could see a table of suits finishing their dinner and ordering snifters of some sort of golden fluid while the kids at our table complained to our server about the lack of milkshakes on the menu.  I thought that since I didn’t have to see the bill, I’d also order some brandy to go with the creme brulee I’d soon be digging into.  Thats when I overheard a woman at a table next to the suits comment on how terrible the suits’ cigars smelled.  Cigars?? I turned my head quickly and saw that the suits hadn’t even lit their cigars and this woman had issues with aromas… Ha ha, this was going to be good!

This was a few years back when we could smoke in restaurants and we were in the smoking section of this private club restaurant, in fact, this was the only thing about this place that the punkers liked and they chain-smoked through our entire service.  Didn’t bother me.. So now the suits light up 2 of these cigars with that very distinct yellow and black band that we all know about and the fun began.  The woman one table over, in a very loud and annoying voice announced that she strongly suggested that the cigars be exterminated immediately.  The suits ignored her which made her repeat herself a bit louder.  The punkers started cheering up a bit. This was when I discovered I had a whole new respect for the punk movement.

One of the young musicians at our table got up, walked over to the woman and told her to shut her gob.  Gob???  I had a lot to learn.  Her husband told the young man to return to his seat and thats when the young British gentleman ( I started liking him more and more ) took his cigarette and flicked it’s ash into the woman’s hair.  Her husband quickly stood up and the young chain-smoking gentleman clad in black leather told him to sit back down or he’d give him some aggro…. Aggro?????  Is there supposed to be a “vation” attached to the end of that word????? I didn’t care, I just wanted to see what would happen next..

The second young spiky haired chain-smoking black leather clad British musician we were sitting with somehow sneaked behind the husband who was now nose to nose with the first ash flicking musician and got on all fours directly behind him.  Thats when ol’ ash flicker gave the husband a bit of a push and down he went.  My friend asked for our bill and announced to our server that we had to catch a plane.  I didn’t want to go anywhere but, oh well, what could I do??  The manager ran over to the commotion and begged everyone to quiet down and please return to your tables.  This is when I thought I could see a bit of smoke coming out of the top of the woman’s hairdo, which she obviously couldn’t feel or smell.. I remember thinking that it was the best day of my life when the husband got back up reached over and removed his wife’s hair (wig), threw it to the floor and then doused the smoldering furry mass with a glass of red wine.

The nearly bald woman screamed, got up, flew out of the dining room.  Our bill arrived.  Now the thing that I think I’ll never forget was how cool and calm the suits were as all of the drama was taking place.  These must have been very confident, successful individuals who knew how to enjoy life to its fullest without ever getting too worked up.  I asked my friend if he thought it would be OK to call our server back and buy a round for the suits on the company card.  All at our table agreed that it was the right thing to do.

I haven’t been to Toronto since that night and I’ve learned that my friend now works for an American record label in New york.  I’ll have to fly down to the Big Apple some day and find out when if and when he’ll be entertaining the next British Invasion.. I want to be there..

The first principle, he called, was, “The selection of the selection”.. Cohiba had it’s choice of the finest tobacco leaves from the top 10 fertile valleys in the Vuelta Abajo.  Lara would then pick the five best for his wrappers, binders, secos, volados and ligeros.

The next principle would be the third fermentation, which is unique among Havana brands.  THis is applied to just 2 of the leaf types- Ligero and Seco.  Moisture is added to the leaves as they age in barrels to ferment out any trace of harshness.

The third and final principle is applied to the quality control over the rollers at the factory.  El Laguito is a difficult factory for anyone to get into without permission but word has it that all rollers today are female.

A lot of people would argue that by helping them out and giving them a buck or two, they would be able to survive, live another day and maybe get their lives in order. I, for one, think that we all are in charge of our own lives and are responsible for our own actions.  I work hard for every cent I earn and the last thing I want to see is my spare change going into someone’s crack pipe…. Well, enough about that rant!!!!  Yesterday’s meeting with an unusual elderly lady in front of the store floored me, to say the least.

I pulled up to the store, got out of the car, made sure it was locked ( not the safest of neighborhoods) and sure enough I hear, “Got any spare change?”  I looked up and a woman, who appeared to be in her 60’s, asked me that question and the most wonderful aroma wafted up to me.  There she was, smoking a Cohiba…. Of all things!!!! Wow…. I walked into the store, picked up a paper, cream for coffee at home and got my change and left the store.  As I walked to the car I felt the need to walk back and inquire what cigar she was smoking..  She told me that it was a Siglo II and that, although she is a fan of the Lanceros and Esplendidos, she bought it because the wrapper was a bit broken and she got it at a discount. What????  I asked her why she was on the streets and she said that she had a problem with alcohol and cigars.  I couldn’t believe it!!!

I didn’t feel the need to give her any money but I had a Montecristo in my shirt pocket and offered it to her.  She politely refused and said that she preferred cigars from the Cohiba brand.  Wow!!!!! Turning down my free cigar !!!  I drove home in amazement and wondered how long she had been smoking Cohibas… Had she ever smoked anything else??  How could she afford to be so choosy???

We live in a beautiful city and there is an interesting story around every corner.

A few details are now being released about these larger size Cohibas.  The factory names for them will be Laguito No. 4, ( 4 11/16ths in length,52 ring gauge)….. Laguito No 5, (5 2/3 inches in length,54 ring gauge)….. Laguito No 6, (6 1/2 inches,56 ring gauge)….

One more bit of information released will be that the price of these new cigars from Cohiba are expected to be as much as 40% higher than what existing Cohiba cigars cost.  The addition of the pair of sun drenched  upper leaves from the tobacco plant (medio tiempo) will probably give added strength to to these cigars.  I can’t wait!!!!!

The stage was set for a relaxing morning with a cappuccino and a Cohiba Lanceros.  I stopped into a local coffee haven for folks from North Van and picked up a double espresso and chose a chair well away from mothers, children and the “pain in the butt” non-smokers.  When I went to my humidor this morning I found a Lanceros with a silky claro wrapper and knew that the choice would be perfect for what I had in store… But….. I had no idea that events would unfold that would almost cause me to forget that I was smoking one of the most popular Cuban cigars ever rolled.

The first sign of trouble was a sign reading “Free Pizza” that hung proudly in the middle of this closed off open air area in front of a few shops.  Usually anything free will attract more than your usual passers by but the crowd that started lining up for the breakfast treat was anything but polite and patient and the sizable  german shepherd tied to a bicycle a few feet from the lineup was about to lead the charge in the rude department.  A few pre light draws revealed easy air movement , which gave me a bit of relief since these cigars can have the odd construction issue due to their thinner format.  I haven’t run into big problems as a rule but now and then slight issues appear.  Everything was going well when I clipped the cap off my cigar and applied my torch to the foot, the first few puffs told me that I should take my time because this is the time that cigars are a tad harsh.  We all know that they need a moment or two to get into their stride.  The pizza line was moving smoothly as well but the trouble started when someone dropped their free slice.  The German Shepherd made a dash for HIS free snack, dragging the bike, which caused quite a lovely metallic scraping sound on the pavement.  Someone thought it would be a good idea to pull the dog away from the lineup by the bike which caused a yelp to erupt from the canine and the dog and bike’s owner appeared.

The cigar was revealing a strong Cohiba grassy taste combined with a subtle bean flavor that, I knew, would strengthen as well into the first third. The dog and bike’s owner decided to push the man who had the bike’s rear wheel in his hand and the poor guy fell back into a large family of children.  Now we have crying children, two angry men ( one father and one dog owner) and one very angry guy who was hell bent for revenge.  Next thing that happened was that the pizza company ran out of fresh slices and announced that a few minutes of patience would be required while they went into their restaurant for more.

Alcohol must have been playing a part in this drama because some very strong language was thrown about which seemed to irritate a few mothers holding their children.  So now we have a barking dog, angry mothers, an angry dog and bike owner and hungry people starting a chant of ” hurry up hurry up” towards the restaurant.  The coffee I was drinking went well with the Lanceros and I was feeling that this may have been one of my more entertaining mornings in an otherwise sleepy neighborhood.  The cops showed up!

Things mellowed out in the line-up when more pizza appeared but this was a growing crowd that obviously showed up with a big appetite.  They ran out of pizza again and I started to hear sirens and more cops showed up, this time with a paddy wagon.  There was a police dog (another German Shepherd) that started barking at the already agitated dog which made the dog owner throw a few obscenities towards the law enforcement officials.  The cigar was really starting to taste great when a mother pushing a stroller over in my direction decided that shrieking at me about the foul smell in the air, ruining the whole Olympic spirit.  I told her that this was a job for the cops!!

Things got out of hand when a kid wearing a white chef’s hat( who obviously worked for the pizza joint) took down the free pizza sign.  The crowd didn’t like that at all … More yelling, more barking, more shrieking about my cigar and I felt that I had died and gone to Heaven. This was an incredible Cohiba and I wasn’t about to put it out… Do you think I’m crazy?? I knew that the cops had their hands full with an unruly mob and so I let the irate mother and now crying kid in the stroller get all of this angst off her chest as I leisurely sipped my coffee and noticed the cigar moving nicely into the second third.  Now the “dog and bike” owner was face down on the ground as the cuffs were being applied to his wrists when a folding chair was tossed into the window of the pizza joint.  Strong glass and no damage…. But….. More cuffs came out and the inside of paddy wagon was starting to see a few more new faces.  The rain started coming down and I decided that it was time to make my way over to the car for the quick drive home.

I love the fact that our city has this much world attention and I’m happy about our athlete’s medals so far.  I’m also happy that there are a record number of law enforcement officials from all over Canada in our city, taking care of business whenever the free food runs out!