New in the humidor today

[Robusto]

Just got home from a very busy day at work... to find my order from Monte arrived in the post.



More later, but - fuck me! - they smell completely awesome and I'm smiling like a goon because my humidor has a real pulse again, and my nostrils are well flaired!

Great start to the weekend.

[cohibaIV]

Niiiiiccccceeeeee!!!

You smoking tonight then Robusto????

[Wildwood]

Yaaay! Same here...got home pretty cheesed off, and there they were! No picture, sorry...my wife is the techy here...but 4 Cubans and 4 NCs really cheered me up!

One problem - it's pissing down!

Best,

Wildwood

[cohibaIV]

My..'it's pissing it down solution'

hehehehehehe

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[Wildwood]

Very nice CohibaIV...but don't your kids get pissed off with you smoking at the top of their slide?



Wildwood

[cohibaIV]

Very nice CohibaIV...but don't your kids get pissed off with you smoking at the top of their slide?


Wildwood

hahahahahahha.... Yeh, why can't kids share???

[smokiejoe]

Ive got nothing in my humi yet,as tis empty,got a nice big order coming in from monte so should fill it up then.

[cohibaIV]

17th Sep Post bag!!!

Todays postman brought me:-

A Churchills sampler, going off the recommendations from the ?What are your favourite Churchill Cigars? Thread.

They are:
1 x H. Upmann: Sir Winston Cabinet
1 x Punch: Churchill
1 x Bolivar: Coronas Gigantes
1 x R&J: Churchill
1 x Hoyo de Monterrey Double Coronas
along with

1 x Georges Reserve (Cheers Rokkitski)
and
1 x Rey Del Mundo: Demi Tasse (Present from Monte..Cheers)

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And
Five Padrons 1926
Three Padrons 1964

The large size 1926 are #9 maduro.
The middle size 1926 are #6 maduro
The smallest one is 1926 #35 maduro.
The 1964 large ones are the Pyramids maduro
The small one is a natural principe.

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As SmokieJoe would say ?LOVELLY JUBBLIE? hehehehe

[Montesmoke]

Nice selection there.

[rokkitsci]

Todays postman brought me:-

1 x Georges Reserve (Cheers Rokkitski)
and

Five Padrons 1926
Three Padrons 1964

The large size 1926 are #9 maduro.
The middle size 1926 are #6 maduro
The smallest one is 1926 #35 maduro.
The 1964 large ones are the Pyramids maduro
The small one is a natural principe.

Another bloody Brit who thinks I'm a fucking skier. R-O-K-K-I-T-S-C-I!!

I'm a rocket scientist (check out the picture: that's not Photoshopped), not a rocket skier!

But I lust after your Padrons. Especially the 1926's. From everything I've read, these cigars are some of the finest smokes on the planet.

[cohibaIV]

Another bloody Brit who thinks I'm a fucking skier. R-O-K-K-I-T-S-C-I!! http://www.ukcigarforums.com/images/icons/icon11.gif[/IMG]

I'm a rocket scientist (check out the picture: that's not Photoshopped), not a rocket skier!

But I lust after your Padrons. Especially the 1926's. From everything I've read, these cigars are some of the finest smokes on the planet.

Sorry mate, it was a jibe to make you smile

Can't wait to try the Padrons myself

[Montesmoke]

[cohibaIV]

Another Delivery.....!!

Well, what a week…another delivery…..!!!!

And a bollocking of the missus….....Thought I would get home before her


PARTAGAS SERIE D NO.4 box of 10

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H.UPMANN MAGNUM 46 TUBOS pack of 3

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EL SANTOR FIGURADO x 2

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[rokkitsci]

Uh-oh!

BY MIAMI HERALD STAFF
C...@MiamiHerald.com

SAN JUAN y MARTINEZ, Cuba -- Alejandro Gonz?lez spends his days touting
the intricate craft of tobacco growing to tourists here on the western
reaches of the island that produces the world's premier cigars.

But when Hurricane Ike blew through Cuba eight days after Hurricane
Gustav's pass, Gonzalez, 35, a tobacco engineer/plantation guide at the
Hoyo de Monterrey cooperative, joined an intense effort to move delicate
tobacco leaves from their drying barns to stronger buildings in hopes of
shielding them from the storm's fury.

Even so, more than half the crop was lost, Gonz?lez says. More than
3,000 tobacco leaf drying sheds and 8,600 homes for tobacco workers in
the region, which lies about 112 miles southwest of Havana, also were
destroyed.

''It was very, very bad,'' he said in halting English.

According to the daily newspaper Granma, Gustav alone destroyed 3,414
curing barns and damaged another 1,590. In a blow to one of Cuba's top
exports, more than 800 tons of tobacco products were damaged by Gustav.

The hardest hit city was Consolaci?n del Sur, where 1,836 of the
existing 1,857 curing barns were destroyed.

The Cuban government estimates losses from the two storms at $5 billion.
As the island struggles to rebuild, one of the few crops that can earn
the hard currency it needs to bounce back has sustained damages that
experts say could linger for years to come. Cuba made $402 million from
tobacco in 2007.

It is possible that the scarcity of Cuban tobacco will pump up prices.

Not counting the United States, Cuban cigars account for 80 percent of
the world market. Cohiba, Robaina, Quintero, Partagas and Romeo y
Julieta brands, among others, are all hand-rolled from premium tobacco
in a process that has changed little over hundreds of years. Besides
being widely hailed as the world's best, the Cuban cigars have taken on
an extra mystique in the United States, where the long-standing trade
embargo makes them forbidden fruit.

Like much of the rest of the island, tobacco production in western Cuba
is in a time warp, with locals riding horse-drawn wagons that vie with
oxen and ancient Buicks on the highway. A drive along the main highway
these days shows countless roofless barns and debris tossed about the
rolling terrain.

Rice, coffee, yuca and other crops also were damaged in the double storms.

But cigar-making is a point of national pride for the ailing communist
nation, which has few bragging rights after five decades of economic
hardship under the Castro regime.

''This is the best tobacco in the world,'' said Gonz?lez, a reed-thin
Creole descendant who studied agronomy for eight years and foreign
languages for another four.

He grows theatrical as he describes the painstaking work of tending the
seedlings, nurturing the young plants and curing the leaves in a
many-faceted process more akin to winemaking than growing a typical
field crop.

It starts with the land and the climate: The rustic rolling hills of
Vuelta Abajo, as the area is known, have ideal soil for tobacco, and the
region's humid weather provides the best growing conditions.

Tobacco is planted in the fall, beginning in October, and harvested in
the spring, around March. Some plants, cultivated for filler, are grown
in the full sun, for flavor and aroma, while those that will be used for
the cigars' outer wrapping are nurtured under cotton cloth to keep them
tender and moist.

Oxen are still used to work the fields, in part because they don't
compress the dirt as heavy machinery would. Women do most of the
handling of the plants, on the notion that softer hands are better
suited for the delicate process.

The leaves are hand-harvested over many days. After the leaves are
picked, they are sewn onto Eucalyptus sticks, which provide some
flavoring. They are then dried for two months in a special barn.

Many of those barns are now gone.

Carpenters from other provinces, the Cuban papers said, are being
organized into brigades to rebuild the barns in the worst-affected
areas. Still, government papers say the losses could have been worse: In
2002, Hurricanes Isidore and Lili claimed 11,000 curing barns.

''Each one of those barns has 400 to 500 quintales. A quintal is 100
pounds,'' said Ram?n Seraf?n, who lives in Hialeah but owns a cigar shop
in Tampa.

``How many of those did they lose? They probably had reserves in the
factory, but what are they going to do when the reserves run out? That's
when they'll see a shortage.''

When the leaves finally get to the cigar factories, such as the Fabrica
de Tobacos Francisco Donatien, in the center of Pinar del R?o, the
provincial capital of the tobacco-growing region, the leaves are
painstakingly crafted into stogies. They are hand-rolled, with each
worker expected to produce 110 cigars a day.

While Cuban cigars are widely regarded as the best, shoppers who try to
buy them on the cheap through informal channels may end up getting
ripped off. ''They are banana leaf,'' warns Gonz?lez, who disdains the
fakes because they undercut the image of the industry ''and it's bad for
Cuba.'' The real Cubans are usually sold in cedar boxes with government
stamps.

Gonz?lez claims he can spot a fake at a distance. On a recent afternoon,
inside a drying barn, he twirled a Cohiba in his fingers and held it to
his ear, listening for the crinkling sound that goes with a good cigar.

The name of the reporter who filed this dispatch from Cuba is being
withheld because the reporter lacks the journalist's visa required by
the Cuban government to report from the island.

Additional reporting was done by Miami Herald staff writer Frances Robles in Miami.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/top-stories/story/690963.html

[Robusto]

Deano. Monte. This should have been posted in What Are You Smoking Today?
I am officially a mong.