[Porschekid962]

Grant I almost completely blanked on the Sancho Panza and Padron. The Padron's have to be my number one around or under 10dollar smoke. My humidors are starting to get a little low so its time to restock em. Working at a cigar shop helps a bit! lol, Dave which Edge did you have, the madura or natural? Rocky also makes one that comes in its own coffin and is almost the size of a Cohiba "A". The maduros (edge) are a pretty strong smoke, I over humidified mine then left it in my "breathing" humidor and it took some of the no pun intended, edge off of it.

Has anyone gotten their hands on a Padron 40th anniversario yet? The 1926 and 1946 are excellent as well but the 40th is being praised up one butt cheek and down the other.

Neat story, customer came in the other weekend with a small cohiba box, figured they were cigarillos, nope, cuban tobacco filtered cigarettes, damn strong! Has anyone else noticed the decline in quality amongst not only Cuban cigars but non cuban as well? I dont know whats going on but wrappers are full of veins, there are hollow spots, draws are horrible, at least one out of almost every box of cigars I see are bad.

True story, it popped my bubble as well but its true and I believe it. A "friend" of mine is from that funny little island. He goes there now and again to visit family and sometimes finds things in his bags when he gets back here and has no idea how it happened......

Anyways, the only cigar company that has its own rolling facility is Cohiba (we are talking about the contraband island). The rest of Cuban cigars are rolled at factories all over the island so sometimes you see a Monte #2 with a light wrapper and then a box with nice dark oily wrappers. The rolling factories check to see what bands they have and what boxes they have and they all start rolling to use them up, so for a week lets say they will only roll perfectos as they call them which = monte #2, bolivar belicoso fino, diplomaticos, R&J belicoso, san cristobal la fuerza. They simply cut them down to different lengths and thats that. I was amazed to hear this but after thinking about it there is nothing unbelievable about it. You have limited resources and a huge demand so you do what you can to speed things up.

That being said, certain cigars, anniversarios, limitadas, ciglo VI, special blends are all blended by the manufacturers master blender and then rolled by an elite group of rollers at a "special" rolling plant in cuba.

Anybody seen a Padron 40th anniversario? To let you know each box is hand painted, all of those cigars are rolled by two men, thats it. Quality control on Padron is second to none, they roll very limited quantities and shut down for almost a month over christmas.

Ok back to class. Enjoy your smokes none the less because I still do. Each has its own uniqueness due to the fact that the tobacco from one factory comes from a different grower than another factory, smoke em and enjoy em.

Anyone in socal should check out the shop I work at, very big and super nice, I dig it. Not a shameless plug but it would be nice to have porsche nuts in there while I am working to talk to....lol

cenizalounge.com ryder