Cigars: A sign of power

From Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece City Lights in 1931 to the last decade’s blockbuster Titanic, cigar smoking has always been the calculated gesture to make an influential understatement.

After all, style isn’t about being loud but being powerful and cigars are just the right way to say that. The sultan of cigars in India, Chetan Seth feels cigar smoking is panache. And why not? After all, his love for Cuban cigars dates way back long.
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Have a Cigar

Cuba: land of cigars, rum, hostess-dancers, white Mercs with fins, white-sand beaches, Ernest Hemingway and Che Guevera. Think of Cuba and you might think of all those things. And, indeed, Lifestyle saw all of these things nearly every day while in Cuba (yes, including Hemingway and Guevera). In fact, we’d sum up the holidaymaker’s experience of this island in one word: ‘easy’. Read more

New York State cigar taxes are going up on to 75%

New York State cigar taxes are going up on to 75 percent of the wholesale price on August 1, and the one bit of good news is the absence of a floor tax on the existing stocks of cigars in smoke shops. Read more

BILL TO LIFT CUBA TRAVEL BAN PASSES ONE HURDLE

Travel to Cuba could become a reality for Americans. The House Agriculture Committee recently approved a bill that would allow U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba and also loosen financial restrictions in an effort to boost agricultural trade to the island nation. Read more

Review – Short Robusto T edición limitada 2010

Short and stout with a pigtail cap and even draw. The cigar is peppery and leathery with touches of wood and earth that leave the palate a touch dry.
Body: Medium

95-100: Classic /  90-94: Outstanding  /  80-89: Very good to excellent   /   70-79: Average to good commercial quality  Below 70: Don’t waste your money  /   N/A: Not Available Note: Prices are manufacturers’ suggested retail, before taxes.

-Cigar Insider

Tasting Report : Exclusive April 2010 Cigar Aficionado Previews

Ramon Allones

Gigantes
92 POINTS n 7 5/8″ x 49 n £20.30 n Humidor Selection
An exemplary double corona with the perfect amount of
resistance on the draw. There is a flavorful and balanced
interplay of rich, sweet, nutty flavors, tea notes and cocoa.
Body: Medium Read more

NO DAY AT THE BEACH: BLOOMBERG AIMS AT OUTDOOR SMOKING BAN

NO FAN OF SMOKE, NEW YORK MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, who famously turned off the smoking lights on virtually every indoor smoking haven in the City That Never Sleeps, is setting his sights on a broader smoking ban. “We’re talking about banning smoking on beaches and in parks,” Bloomberg said last week at a news conference. “Overwhelmingly, when you ask people in parks or on beaches, they say they just don’t want smokers there.” New York City has 1,700 parks and seven beaches. The ban was first presented to Bloomberg by his appointed health commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley, in May 2009 as part of a broader anti-smoking strategy
outlined in a document titled “Take Care New York 2012.”

-Cigar Insider

Cuban cigar maker welcomes increase in millionaires

Cuba is perhaps best known for cigars and for bucking the status quo, and that certainly is the atmosphere at the headquarters of Habanos. Here, executives of the premium cigar distributor plot to skirt global smoking bans.

Unlike Fidel Castro and Che Guevara they seem to have nothing against the rich. They credit the wealthy – along with successful guerilla tactics – for a 4.3 per cent increase in sales so far this year, after a 7.7 per cent decline in 2009, and say a big increase in millionaires world-wide is welcome news. Read more

Cigar habit that saved a banker’s life hits political career

A penchant for cigars looks to have brought one junior French minister’s political progress to an abrupt halt in the latest expenses scandal, but back in his banking days at Merrill Lynch, on one specific day in 2001 to be precise, the habit proved a blessing. Read more

Blind Tasting Cuba’s Newest Edicion Limitadas

CUBA’S LIMITED EDITION CIGARS FOR 2010 CAME EXTREMELY  EARLY THIS YEAR, AND CIGAR INSIDER HAS PUT THEM TO THE TEST.

Edición Limitadas historically ship to tobacconists in the fall, but this year they came in the spring, and Cigar Insider has blind tasted two of the three cigars—the Montecristo Grand Edmundo and the Partagas Serie D Especial. Called a Cañonazo in Cuba’s cigar factories, the Montecristo essentially takes the shape of a Cohiba Siglo VI, sharing its 5 7/8 inch by 52 ring gauge dimensions. The Partagas Serie D Especial, which measures 5 1/2 by 50 ring, is an elongated version of a Serie D No. 4 (4 7/8 by 50.) Both come in wooden boxes of 10 cigars. How did they perform in a test with the bands off? See page four for the results.

- Cigar Insider

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