Have a Cigar?

Good to see that British investigators are not letting little things like honor killings and home invasions keep them from doing important work - like checking on the origins of Boris Johnson’s cigar humidor.

By the way, Humiblog is a good source of information on cigars. I used to be quite the connoisseur, myself, many years ago, and had gotten to a point where I could identify the country where the filler leaf was grown without prior knowledge of the brand (this is small potatoes when you consider that there are genuine experts – not mere dilettantes like me – who can tell you what side of a particular mountain the leaf was grown on). A cigar store in North Carolina would occasionally give me samples of new brands and ask my opinion.

In the late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s, I still found certain Havana’s to be the best; however, socialism eventually ruins everything, and I noticed that the Cuban government was growing slack in its quality control. At their best, of course, Cuban cigars were (and are) the gold standard of smoking; but the consistency is no longer dependable (the Zino Davidoff firm ultimately canceled its contract with Cuba for the production of cigars under the Davidoff name, precisely because of quality issues). When the price of cigars went through the roof, I eventually gave up smoking them on a daily basis, and became what I am now: virtually a “skid row” smoker, who gets his nicotine from Winchester Little Cigars (machine-made gaspers that look like cigarettes).

And here’s a remarkable, but true, story for you. The only Playboy magazine I ever bought was one that had a lengthy article on cigars ( here’s the cover of the issue I’m talking about, graced by the lovely Anne Randall). I was attending the University of Detroit in the fall semester of 1973, and one evening, after polishing off a hot dog and an order of vinegar fries at a little diner near the campus (I regret that I have forgotten the name of the restaurant, but I think it was a Greek place; Onassis Coney Island , or Nathan’s, perhaps?). I walked back to the dormitory and on the way saw this issue at a news stand. I forked over the money – eager to improve my knowledge of cigars – and later sat in my room poring over the article (shielding my eyes, of course, from the lascivious charms of Miss Randall - Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! - Dang! I keep forgetting to turn off the Mendacimeter). Anyhow, I eventually became a great partisan of the Hoyo de Monterrey brand, particularly the Excaliber line. In my opinion, Honduran tobacco generally has a richness and body that is closer to the great Cuban leaf than tobacco grown in the Dominican Republic (which I find comparatively milder) and Nicaragua (which varies pretty wildly between bland and sharp).

I still enjoy a good cigar from time to time, but the “golden age” of my smoking career is long gone – when I used to work for a bank in Miami and had exclusive use of the old corporate board room for my office, with its marble floors and walls, and a brass and marble-topped table that was so large that it had to be lifted up by crane to the third floor when the bank building was constructed in 1938; I could puff away to my heart's content. Impossible these days, of course.