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Write about BAD cigars!
If I think about it, I've smoked a few bad cigars over the years.
I think this site is excellent in the way that we express our positive feelings about cigars we have enjoyed. I read everything on here and quietly think about what to try next in the short, medium and long term because of the recommendations we post here.
However, most of what we write boils down to very personal opinion, and I wondered whether there would be a concensus over what we think are bad cigars.
I would dismiss my "naughty boy" behind the bikesheds type early ventures into cigar world. I actually feel great about myself in my teenage years. I was a Class 1 swot at school. Almost butter wouldn't melt.
Behind the good boy facade, I was nicking cigars out of my Dad's office and smoking them in the toilet upstairs. I find it hysterical that I didn't get sniffed out and bollocked - but I got away with it at home with my parents AND in the toilet at my sister's. Come to think of it, I got away with cigar smoking regularly in the toilet of the Ipswich to Liverpool Street train on the way back to boarding school - another place for debauchery and vice, in which cigars featured large.
So when my Dad's cigars featured, there was some quality.
However, if I think about where my main supply of cigars came from from about the age of thirteen, it was from certain newsagents that displayed Castellas in their windows. I managed to go in and buy five Castellas early in my teenage years, and I found it exciting and arousing because it was forbidden and adult in nature. (I think I was fifteen before I went in for my first Mayfair, and - Jeez - what a man I felt after that!).
So what was the first bad cigar?
Well, it wasn't the ubiquitous Castellas of the 1970s.
It was...
HAMLET.
How the hell did I smoke one of those? I can't remember. I don't think I'd have bought one. I think it was probably at the age of 16 or 17 when I would have been out on the demon drink in the post-pube rush to corruption that a mate would have handed me one in a pub.
I've probably smoked no more that three of those cigars in my life, but each time was execrable. The taste is vile, in my opinion, and I remember they get bloody hot very quickly and burn your tongue. I should have been put off by the smell alone.
What's amazing is that some people believe that Hamlet is the only cigar there is. That's their only experience of a cigar!
I swear to God that if I were ever to be caught short and wanted a smoke and the only cigar available on a long journey in, say, a petrol station was a Hamlet...
...I'd buy a packet of Marlboros.
Yes - I really do think Hamlet is that crap!
I've only got one other Cigar Of Shame and that's a cigar that should perhaps know better.
GUANTANAMERA
I get given quite a lot of these at functions where my band plays, and I have three guitarist friends who like the guitar design on the lid but who don't smoke cigars. Who do we know who smokes cigars? Bryan!
These cigars come in a transparent plastic tube. Already a bit rubbish, then, before lighting up.
I keep some of these in the drawer beneath my car seat in case I'm off playing somewhere and have run out of decent smokes. I am NEVER desperate to have a smoke, but I know I always have some of these available if I run out.
The reason why I wrote that these cigars should have known better is because they seem to be made of reasonable tobacco... BUT they taste as if they have additives in them like cigarettes. I suspect that is the case because they burn rapidly.
They taste artificial. Terrible. They really do!
Maybe it's me, but I know what a good Cuban or NC cigar tastes like on the taste-buds. Even in their great variety, Cubans deliver some core taste of quality that makes them stand out.
Guantanameras are devoid of positive points taste-wise. You could pose with one, but it would be better not to light it.
So if I could avoid two cigars, I would avoid Hamlet and Guantanamera cigars.
I'd be interested to know other people's thoughts on this topic. It's all subjective, but it's fun.
Right. Now I can go back and perve at the pictures of boxes of cigars that COIV has posted a link to.
I think this site is excellent in the way that we express our positive feelings about cigars we have enjoyed. I read everything on here and quietly think about what to try next in the short, medium and long term because of the recommendations we post here.
However, most of what we write boils down to very personal opinion, and I wondered whether there would be a concensus over what we think are bad cigars.
I would dismiss my "naughty boy" behind the bikesheds type early ventures into cigar world. I actually feel great about myself in my teenage years. I was a Class 1 swot at school. Almost butter wouldn't melt.
Behind the good boy facade, I was nicking cigars out of my Dad's office and smoking them in the toilet upstairs. I find it hysterical that I didn't get sniffed out and bollocked - but I got away with it at home with my parents AND in the toilet at my sister's. Come to think of it, I got away with cigar smoking regularly in the toilet of the Ipswich to Liverpool Street train on the way back to boarding school - another place for debauchery and vice, in which cigars featured large.
So when my Dad's cigars featured, there was some quality.
However, if I think about where my main supply of cigars came from from about the age of thirteen, it was from certain newsagents that displayed Castellas in their windows. I managed to go in and buy five Castellas early in my teenage years, and I found it exciting and arousing because it was forbidden and adult in nature. (I think I was fifteen before I went in for my first Mayfair, and - Jeez - what a man I felt after that!).
So what was the first bad cigar?
Well, it wasn't the ubiquitous Castellas of the 1970s.
It was...
HAMLET.
How the hell did I smoke one of those? I can't remember. I don't think I'd have bought one. I think it was probably at the age of 16 or 17 when I would have been out on the demon drink in the post-pube rush to corruption that a mate would have handed me one in a pub.
I've probably smoked no more that three of those cigars in my life, but each time was execrable. The taste is vile, in my opinion, and I remember they get bloody hot very quickly and burn your tongue. I should have been put off by the smell alone.
What's amazing is that some people believe that Hamlet is the only cigar there is. That's their only experience of a cigar!
I swear to God that if I were ever to be caught short and wanted a smoke and the only cigar available on a long journey in, say, a petrol station was a Hamlet...
...I'd buy a packet of Marlboros.
Yes - I really do think Hamlet is that crap!
I've only got one other Cigar Of Shame and that's a cigar that should perhaps know better.
GUANTANAMERA
I get given quite a lot of these at functions where my band plays, and I have three guitarist friends who like the guitar design on the lid but who don't smoke cigars. Who do we know who smokes cigars? Bryan!
These cigars come in a transparent plastic tube. Already a bit rubbish, then, before lighting up.
I keep some of these in the drawer beneath my car seat in case I'm off playing somewhere and have run out of decent smokes. I am NEVER desperate to have a smoke, but I know I always have some of these available if I run out.
The reason why I wrote that these cigars should have known better is because they seem to be made of reasonable tobacco... BUT they taste as if they have additives in them like cigarettes. I suspect that is the case because they burn rapidly.
They taste artificial. Terrible. They really do!
Maybe it's me, but I know what a good Cuban or NC cigar tastes like on the taste-buds. Even in their great variety, Cubans deliver some core taste of quality that makes them stand out.
Guantanameras are devoid of positive points taste-wise. You could pose with one, but it would be better not to light it.
So if I could avoid two cigars, I would avoid Hamlet and Guantanamera cigars.
I'd be interested to know other people's thoughts on this topic. It's all subjective, but it's fun.
Right. Now I can go back and perve at the pictures of boxes of cigars that COIV has posted a link to.
... I said to my mum, "Come on, surely they had better cigars than these.... oh wait a second, I forgot that it's tescos we're talking about" 
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