Montecristo B Compay Centennial Humidor

Posted on April 15, 2013 by atgroom under Commemorative Release, Montecristo

It’s a glorious day in Melbourne, the last hurrah of an Indian summer, and my errands concluded I can’t think of a better way to spend the afternoon than on a bench by the river, watching the passers-by, enjoying the sun, drinking a milky coffee and smoking the Montecristo B from the Compay Centennial Humidor.

The Montecristo B was released in 1971 and supposedly discontinued in the mid-1980s, although by all accounts they are still produced in small numbers. They come in humidors of 50, and aside from the addition of a second band and an inscription on the inner panel, the Compay Centennial Humidor is identical to the ‘standard’ production.

I’ve never quite been able to understand where the B fits in the Montecristo line-up; I’ve never quite been able to understand who it’s for. I understand the numbered cigars, those are for everyone (they deliver the Montecristo flavour in a range of reasonable sizes), and I also understand the Especiales (for the connoisseurs), the Opens (teenage punks), and even the Edmundos (Americans whose mouths have become distended from chewing too much gum, a condition that leaves them tragically unable to smoke anything thinner than a 52 ring). Even the A has a place (people with too much time on their hands), but the B, who is that for? It’s 6mm longer than the Monte 4 and 7mm shorter than the Monte 3 – is this a niche that needs to be filled?

I suppose that’s why they’re so rare.

The cigar has a very rounded head, verging on a bullet tip, with a good thick cap. Construction is perfect, the draw nicely firm. The first puffs are tangy and herbal over strong tobacco, very heavy and rich, and obviously of the highest quality. I like the bands on this cigar, which are much less flashy that those on the 95 – just the standard Cuban personalised band below the regular Montecristo one. The effect is that of an affectionate birthday gift rather than a slick exercise in integrated marketing.

As I was taking the pre-light photograph a courting couple took up residence on the seat downwind of me, and as I light the cigar and the first billows of smoke drift in their direction the female of the species begins to cough and glare at me (her boyfriend is on his phone, oblivious). Doesn’t she realize what a special thing it is to inhale the smoke of a cigar like this? Only 7500 of this edition were produced, and even the regular B is a very rare beast. How would poor Compay feel to think that his birthday present would bother someone so? It’s a shame they couldn’t get him to roll the cigars for one of these humidors (well, it’s a shame he died five years before this one was released, but perhaps they could have tried it for the 95). Imagine what a collector’s item those would be.

She has reached the end of her boost juice, and slurps the bottom of it furiously in between hacking coughs and sidelong glaring. I admit it, I am at a stage where I am deliberately exhaling larger clouds in her direction than is strictly speaking necessary. They taste of strong coffee, with notes of hot roasted vanilla bean.

I am resting the cigar on my sunglasses between puffs, and they’re surprisingly well suited to life as an ashtray, at least at this ring gauge. The nose pads grip the cigar exactly tight enough, and the arm folds down just right as a retaining guard. It allows me to rest the cigar in the lee of my body, sheltered from the very slight winds that gust occasionally, and protects the cigar from whatever filth is on this public bench. I think would protect it from all but the most violent of accidental jostling.

It’s really a very nice cigar, this Montecristo B. Perfect burn, with woody notes over full tobacco. A hint of barnyard and some kind of sour fruit… grapefruit maybe, or bitter orange, that sour herbal aftertaste of Chinotto and Campari. A family of Scandinavians has replaced the couple on the bench downwind, and for a moment I feel slightly guilty exhaling my bilious clouds toward their clutch of fresh faced Aryan children, but they don’t seem to be bothered. There’s certainly no glaring going on. The smallest boy is coughing, but I think he has a cold.

In the bottom third of the cigar I begin to find myself swimming a little from the nicotine, its pressure on my temples. I’ve read that the B is a mild cigar, but for this example at least that is definitely not the case: this example is much stronger than a Monte 4, and stronger inch for inch than any other Monte I can recall. It really is a wonderful way to spend an afternoon though, out here by the water, fresh air and a nicotine buzz. The cigar ends in a very classy way, dark chocolate mixed in with the tar, the quality of the tobacco obvious to the last. This will not be a cigar that leaves a bad taste in my mouth tomorrow morning. I eschew the provided smoker’s bin, and instead lob the nub into a garden bed; a noble cigar like this deserves a better resting place that a cylinder of discarded cigarette filters.

All up, a fantastic little cigar, that is better than both the Salomones II and the No. 4 from the Compay 95 humidor. A Harem of Dusky Beauties – your home for practical consumer advice.

[Author’s note: a draft of this article was published a few weeks ago on a major international cigar forum, where several members took umbrage with my quip about Americans with mouths distended from chewing too much gum, seemingly under the impression that I was characterising their entire race as slack jawed ruminants who chew constantly at sugarised rubber much as a cow chews her cud. For this I would like to offer a heartfelt apology. The comment was intended in jest, but it is a poor example of the type, depending on both an inaccurate stereotype and a cheap shot for what little humour it contains. I fully and unconditionally apologise for it, and beg humble forgiveness for any offense caused. In my limited experience, I have always found Americans to be possessed of extremely small mouths that are rarely in motion.]

Montecristo B Compay Centennial Humidor at the Cuban Cigar Website

Montecristo No. 4 Compay 95 Aniversario Humidor

Posted on April 10, 2013 by atgroom under Commemorative Release, Montecristo

In the last edition of A Harem of Dusky Beauties I talked about the Salomones II from the Compay 95 humidor; in this edition I will cover the other cigar from that box, a humble Montecristo No. 4. Please read that article if you would like some greater history of the humidor (or indeed my thoughts on South African chicken restaurants and privacy in our Orwellian present) – I won’t repeat myself here… there simply isn’t time, as today I have for you a rambling essay about cigar construction and blending.

Generally speaking, a cigar is made up of four tobacco leaves rolled into a bunch. The higher the leaf grows on the plant the stronger its flavour and the heavier its nicotine will be, and the slower it will burn. At the farms the leaves are sorted into categories based on what part of the plant they come from, and then they are dried, fermented and aged. The length of their fermentation and ageing, and the methods used to achieve it, vary dependant on what category they fall into. Eventually the leaves find their way into the central warehouses and the blender’s hands.

On one level the blend used in a cigar is a basic formula – an Upmann No. 2 might contain one leaf from the middle of the plant, one from the bottom, and another from the top (with a trained eye and a willingness to destroy an $11 cigar it is relatively easy to establish what proportions of each of these make up a given cigar), but there is some art beyond this in the blender’s occupation; the blender must search out some quality, a terroir is involved; he must inhale deeply of a leaf and say “ah ha! This has the subtle scent of coffee and vanilla bean, it must have come from the north side of the Vuelta Abajo valley, and belongs in a Montecristo Especial!” (presumably he goes on to say “but what’s this grassy aroma? My friend Boxer the plough-horse must have left some fertiliser near this plant… it smells like he had a good breakfast, that scamp!”)

Consider the case of the Punch Punch and the Punch Black Prince; these are two cigars of exactly the same size, from the same marque, from the same factory, bearing the same band and retailing at approximately the same price. What then is the difference then between the Punch Punch and the Punch Black Prince? The blend! The terroir! A hint of cinnamon and Boxer’s heavy lunch! My point is that blends are ethereal, hard to nail down, and that they matter, at least to the connoisseur.

I was once at a fundraising auction for the victims of a Cuban hurricane where the centrepiece of the items offered for sale was a box of special cigars donated by the Cuban ambassador to China. The cigars were Montecristo No. 4s with special bands celebrating 50 years of Chinese/Cuban comradeship, and the box they came in bore a similar sticker where the Habanos S.A. seal would usually sit. Diplomatic cigars, they were billed as, although what that means is hard to say. In the case of the diplomatic Cohiba Lanceros I think the consensus is that they represent the crème de la crème of the production; all Cohiba Lanceros are made equal, but some are more equal than others, and the diplomatics come only from the desks of the level 10 rollers, and while they all have the same blend, only those examples that are made from particularly fine leaves, only those examples that truly exemplify the blend are good enough for the diplomatic box.

At El Laguito with the Lanceros I can see it, but the Monte 4? Is someone sorting through the tens of millions produced annually, across many different factories, and plucking out the very best to throw in a box and send to China? Do high level rollers even roll Monte 4s? I doubt it. The ambassador probably purchased these cigars at the LCDH that morning and got a few bands printed up in a Chinese copy shop.

All of which is my long winded way of making a wider point about the Compay Segundo Monte 4: it tastes like a Monte 4, and were it to taste like something else it would on some level be a failure.

That said, it is a particularly fine example of the breed. Perfectly constructed. Well aged. Nice band. Recommended.

(P.S. It would be remiss of me not to mention the drink with which I accompanied this cigar, a shiso infused vodka and tonic.

When I was a child my sister and I briefly tried to raise silkworms (to what end I don’t recall – there certainly weren’t enough for pyjamas). We fed them on what our mother told us were mulberry leaves (their natural diet), and they lasted a week or so before dying premature and mysterious deaths (my mother attributed their demise to the unnatural heating in our home). I was a curious child, and must have sampled a mulberry leaf or two, because twenty years later when presented with an odd leaf as a garnish on a meat platter in Japan I instantly recalled the flavour: “that’s a mulberry leaf,” I declared with authority. Nobody disputed it.

That was five years ago, and today my friend Stevespool (a well-known Japanophile) has begun to cultivate shiso (known in the west as the ‘beefsteak plant’) to infuse into vodka. He offered me a raw leaf to sample, and after trying it I looked at him in confusion. “No Steve,” I said. “That’s a mulberry.”

That night in the shower I put the pieces together, and the ghosts of my silkworms, wandering for more than two decades, were finally put to rest. My mother had misidentified the plant.

Anyway, shiso infused vodka is pretty good. Sort of sweet, with a strong herbal aftertaste. It turns pink when you add the acid of the lemon to it!)

Montecristo No. 4 Compay 95 Aniversario Humidor on the Cuban Cigar Website

Montecristo Salomones II Compay 95 Aniversario Humidor

Posted on April 3, 2013 by atgroom under Commemorative Release, Montecristo

Compay Segundo, sometime cigar roller, big time Cuban musician. Is it unfair to call him the Cuban Elvis Presley? I can’t say, as honestly I only know him from the humidors. My understanding is that he’s an old club singer that sprang to worldwide fame as the star of The Buena Vista Social Club, a film I never saw. The humidor features two sizes of cigar, 55 fairly nondescript Montecristo No. 4s (more on those later), and 40 examples of this, a glorious Salomones II.

I do love a good perfecto, these giant, bulbous bastards. I showed this cigar to a non-smoker once, and he observed that it was “such a stereotypical big boss cigar.” If you must do a 57 ring gauge, Cuba, this is how to do it: 42 at the business end. A heck of a band, too: basically the Montecristo band, but in place of the crossed swords we have a portrait of the man of the hour, grinning and resplendent in a Panama hat. Has anyone else ever had their face on an official Cuban cigar band? The only one that springs to mind is Simon Bolivar, and with all due respect, he accomplished a little bit more with his time than Segundo did. I wonder if there’ll be a Cohiba Castro humidor for his 90^th in a few years – 45 Lanceros and 45 Coronas Especials, each with Fidel’s smiling face on the band.

The cigar begins well, a little spice on the front palette, over roasted vegetables; the blackened skin of a charred capsicum. The tobacco is obviously first class, with a hint of cream and honey.

I’m pairing this with a bottle of crème de cacao that I found recently among my grandfather’s things. Although it appears unopened, the level has dropped down to the bottom of the neck: the angels share (although a little staining around the label indicates that perhaps the garage floor may have also taken a slice). I asked my grandfather where it came from and he said he got it from his brother’s place (my great uncle died in 1996). The fact that it was produced in Australia but bears no metric measurements or indication of alcohol content dates it to the mid-70s at the latest. Sugar and cocoa, aged in the bottle for more than three decades. I poor a little over ice, and observe the liquid churning vigorously around the ice blocks. Some kind of chemical reaction is occurring. I take a sip. It’s good. A sweet, understated chocolate. I’m not totally sure what this stuff tastes like new, but the decades of age haven’t harmed it. Well, not much. There is just a hint of mildew.

Mid-way through the cigar is very heavy, full bodied and tannic, with a surprising amount of tar for a cigar that still has five inches left to smoke. Dusty wood is on the back palette, with a hint of dried wheat (the husks are burning). As it waters down, the crème de cacao is getting worse, with rust and musty basements now dominating the aftertaste, and not in a good way. I won’t have another.

I throw on a little Compay for the sake of atmosphere, and while I’d like to say it reminds me of wild nights in Havana, that’s not true. I was a young man when I was in Cuba, and although there were certainly bands playing this kind of music on the Malecon and in the tourist restaurants, the night spots I sought out were the ones where young people go to rub their sweaty bodies against one another (back then I was in the market for another kind of dusky beauty) and for me Cuban music will always be over-loud Spanish hip-hop played through cheap speakers. No, what this Best of Compay Segundo reminds me of is eating at Nandos, and I can never think of Nandos without thinking of her.

A few years ago I worked near Doncaster Shoppingtown and would eat my lunch in the food court there. It had been six months, and I was thoroughly sick of everything that was on offer, and so as I did most lunchtimes I was prowling around, my hands in my pockets, scowling at the different menus and trying to decide what was the least offensive on this particular day. This lunchtime was worse than most; it was a week into the school holidays, and every store had a long line of itinerant youth in front of it. Nandos was never really an option for me (I don’t consider their food to be good value), so I only gave them the briefest glance, but when I did my eyes fell upon an absolute vision behind the counter. She was wearing a Nandos hat, her light, almost white blonde hair in a ponytail out the back of it, a few tendrils loose, two hanging forward, framing her face. She had high, reptilian cheek bones and a wide, pink mouth, which was pressed into a bored pout as she waited at her register for someone to approach her (she would later smile, revealing teeth that were as white as they were straight and perfect). Her skin was porcelain, with a luminescent, almost transparent quality, but the real source of her beauty was her eyes; two large limpid pools of ozone blue. My heart skipped a beat when I saw her, and then rapidly tried to make up the loss. Unthinkingly I stumbled toward her, magnetically drawn. My voice caught in my throat as I tried to place my order, as I stammered “one classic chicken burger combo, please.” She had an accent, a slight South African, “how would you like that; mild, medium, hot, extra hot or lemon and herb?”

“Extra hot.”

I watched her while I waited for my food; watched her delicate hands folding stickers around toothpicks to make the sauce flags; watched her kneel to retrieve a Sprite from the low fridge; watched her toss and salt the chips in the fryer. Her beauty was mesmerising, intoxicating, and I couldn’t look away. I couldn’t understand how nobody else seemed to be noticing her. What was this girl doing in a Nandos? A goddess was standing before us and we were doing nothing to celebrate her! Where was the parade? Where was line of fawning suitors? Why was nobody starting a war for this angel?

Her name tag had read “Beth”, and I wasn’t back in the office long before “beth +nandos +doncaster” went into my search bar. I don’t know what I was looking for, really; validation, I suppose, a post about her on some internet forum where perverts evaluate the comparative beauty of our nation’s fast food vendors. I found nothing.

I ate Nandos for lunch every day that week, but come the next Monday she had vanished, back to the ethereal plane from whence she had descended. I loitered around the next few days, but no, she was gone.

Into the last few inches, and surprisingly the cigar has mellowed, light tobacco over toast, with a little bean and sweetness. Perhaps a hint of citrus in there, in the same smoky, chemical way that scotch has a hint of citrus. I’m well into my second hour of smoking, and it’s starting to take a toll on both my palette and my constitution. I French inhale, trying to divine some deeper tasting note, but I can’t do it. I feel a little woozy. Perhaps it’s the crème.

Three months later she returned. I saw her from across the food court, a vision emerging from the water on a clamshell. Had someone been watching me as I caught sight of her they would have seen a man transformed, a scowling beast hunched in a winter coat suddenly erect and beaming, striding across the food court. She was just as I had last seen her; a perfect, lovely angel, with only one tiny difference: her nametag now read “Bethany.”

Back in the office I tried again, “bethany +nandos +doncaster,” and there she was. A Facebook page: Bethany Coetzee, seventeen years old, formerly of Cape Town, now of Doncaster High; my angel beaming at me in the privacy of my cubical. I highlighted her name and searched again, and was unsurprised by the result: a portfolio on the website of a modelling agency that listed her as ‘In Development.’ The pictures were mostly unflattering (I suspect that the makeup artist was also ‘in development’ and wanted to show off their stuff, really cake it on) but there were a few at the end that made my heart beat. They were simple Polaroids, presumably the ones she submitted to the modelling agency with her application, and in them she stood in a neutral pose, no makeup, hair unstyled, against her bedroom wall, wearing only a plain black bra and panties.

I tug on my cigar and reflect on this anecdote, which is one I’ve been bringing out for a few years on later evenings amongst more degenerate company. I tell it as an illustration of far we’ve come as an information society: I never would have imagined twenty years ago as I played Commander Keen on my x486 that two short decades later we would live in a world where one could fancy a random waitress and minutes later be looking at pictures of her in her underwear. As I think about the story now though, I realize it makes me look like an asshole.

A few weeks ago I met a guy at a wedding with a very attractive girlfriend (although nowhere near as attractive as Bethany), and when I asked how they’d met he replied that he’d walked into a room and she was the best looking woman he’d ever seen, as if that was enough of an explanation. Well, what did I do when I walked into a room and saw the best looking woman I’d ever seen? I skulked back to my lair, and creepily stalked her on the internet.

What was I thinking? I should have talked to her! Asked for her number! At the very least I should have strode up to that counter, looked right in that perfect ice blue eye and said “girl, what are you doing working here? Don’t you know how beautiful you are? My Mercedes is parked right outside. Let’s go to the airport and make some real fucking money.”

The cigar ends well, with very little tar, which is surprising, given its length and girth. If you only smoked half of it (either half), it’d be better than a Monte 4, but as it stands it’s just too damn long. Total smoking time, 3:40.

Montecristo Salomones II Compay 95 Aniversario Humidor on the Cuban Cigar Website

Montecristo Robusto Edición Limitada 2006

Posted on March 20, 2013 by atgroom under Edición Limitada, Montecristo

It’s St. Patrick’s Day and Argus and I have just moved some furniture, so naturally the consensus is that we should find a pub and have a pint of the black stuff. We’re simple men in search of simple pleasures, and we eschew the chaos of the local Irish pub (where on St. Patrick’s Day they have music and food and whatnot – in years long past Argus and I made an annual tradition of going there and balking at their several hundred person line) in favour of the local non-Irish pub.

The place is empty, and the publican looks up from his paper with surprise as we stride in, thumping the bar and demanding two pints of Guinness. “Sorry, no Guinness” he says. “It won’t keep.” We survey the selection with some disappointment: Victoria Bitter, Carlton Draught, Cascade Premium Light. “Well, give us the closest thing you have.” He comes back with White Rabbit Dark Ale, which, sure enough, is ‘black stuff,’ but it’s a long way from stout, and a longer way from Guinness.

I had been smoking for a few years when the Montecristo Robusto Edición Limitada 2006 was released (I owned a humidor and kept it stocked), but I had not yet really started to collect. I was aware of the EL program, but I don’t think I’d ever actually smoked one when one of my friends gave me one of these robustos to look after for a while. I remember it sitting in my humidor, a glowering dusky beauty, and I remember its aroma which seemed to overpower everything else in there; a dirty bomb of musk and hard spice. This example has none of that, but it is a handsome brute with a nice, oily sheen.

We take our seats out in the beer garden, and I rifle through my pockets looking for my camera in order to take the inaugural shot for this review, but fairly predictably I’ve forgotten it (I will later find it inside my humidor). The pictures that accompany this entry will be brought to you courtesy of my Nokia 6300. The Nokia 6300 was released in January 2007 (mere months after the Montecristo Robusto Edición Limitada 2006), and I acquired one shortly thereafter. To me it represents the apex predator of the non-smart phone; the last great Nokia. In June 2007 the original iPhone was released and changed everything, and the Nokia 6300 and its like were quickly tossed aside in favour of the smart phone paradigm, but I’ve kept mine all these years. It’s smaller than an iPhone, it’s a lot cheaper than an iPhone, it’s easier to use than an iPhone, and I don’t really want my email to follow me about twenty four hours a day. There is also a certain satisfaction to be derived in owning the pinnacle of an antiquated technology; is a 30 year old Rolls Royce not better than a new Hyundai? (For the record, I drive a 1990 Mercedes-Benz). Perhaps it’s time though. With the Google Glass and the rumoured Apple watch thing being released within the next year, the sun is setting on the smartphone era, and rising on the era of the wearable computer. Perhaps it’s time I bought a smartphone. Perhaps the latest iPhone is the apex predator.

I slice the cap of the cigar and take an experimental puff. The draw is a little loose, and when I light it it immediately becomes apparent why: there is a hole down the middle of the cigar. At its mouth the hole is almost 2mm across, and it extends probably 15mm into the cigar. It’s not really a concern, but were it not for its position in the exact centre of the cigar I would probably wonder if it was a tobacco beetle’s exit wound rather than the product of an oddly shaped leaf or dubious roll. The cigar begins very well, with nuts over medium tobacco, and just a whisper of heavy cream. First class.

Argus has ordered us a packet of chips, paying the dollar premium for Red Rock Deli Sea-Salt over Smiths Original. Even the bartender was sceptical – “they’re basically exactly the same,” he told him. I’m always wary of eating something salty like this with a cigar, as I don’t know what effect it will have on my taste buds. On the surface the taste of the tobacco is much stronger, but it seems like salt might manifests itself in different ways, swamping the palette or shrinking the taste buds or some such. Beer and chips: I’m really not taking this tasting review too seriously. Salt on the palette deserves further study.

Nonetheless, the cigar is quite wonderful, very rich, with cream and cocoa. The burn is a little uneven, but nowhere near requiring a touch up, a vast improvement of burn quality over its 2000 brethren.

The beer is very light tasting for its colour, and honestly much more appropriate for a sunny summer afternoon than Guinness would have been. It’s a little burnt and hoppy, but not overpoweringly so. There is a trick with the standard beer jug used in Australian pubs where you can pour two glasses simultaneously by titling the jug slightly and letting it spill over the lip on one side. I’ve been doing it for years as a party trick, and it generally seems to impress, despite the fact that it’s actually an incredibly simple thing that anyone can do on their first attempt. I do it on this occasion, dividing the fifth pot between us, and as I do I quip “like King Solomon, I cut the beer in half.” “No, no,” Argus protests, “I’d rather see it go to you than see it split.” I chuckle and tilt the jug a little, giving him the lion’s share. “Then you my son are the beer’s true owner.”

Toward the end the cigar tars up a bit, and grows bitter, but it’s bitter cocoa and espresso, over obviously top shelf tobacco, and not at all unpleasant. I take it till I burn my fingers.

There is a criticism among cigar aficionados that all the more recent Edición Limitadas taste the same, and perhaps there’s some truth to that, but I’m not too bothered. For my money this cigar is the superior of the both the Millennium Reserve Robusto and the 2000 EL, not to mention the Monte 4.

Montecristo Robusto Edición Limitada 2006 on the Cuban Cigar Website

Montecristo No. 4 Reserva Cosecha 2002

Posted on March 17, 2013 by atgroom under Montecristo, Reserva

When these cigars first came out I was a sceptic. “What is the point,” I asked, “of rolling an $800 version of the Monte 4?” The Monte 4 is the most popular smoke in the world, and with more than a billion sold since 1935 it is the very definition of the everyman’s cigar. The Monte 4 comes from liquor stores and petrol stations and it gets smoked at dog tracks and stag nights. It’s not a trophy smoke, some seven inch phallus with which one can luxuriate over a summer evening, but a smash and grab cigar, a kick in the teeth delivered with the morning coffee or that one last brandy. When the offer came into my inbox to purchase a box of these my reply was simple: “pass.”

And then two years later came the Cohiba Siglo VI Gran Reserva. The concept was the same, new standard size cigars rolled with old tobacco, except this time there weren’t 20 of them, there were 15, and they weren’t $800 a box but $1700. There was one other difference: the reviews. 100 points they got! Best cigar ever smoked! The cigar aficionado community was cleaved evenly in twain between those who declared the Gran Reserva far too expensive, and vowed never to smoke it, and those who had smoked it and declared it the finest cigar ever rolled. I admit it: I caved, and somewhere at the bottom of one of my humidors lies a box of 14 cigars that cost me more than the sum of the hundreds of other dusky beauties that sit on top of them. The fifteenth cigar? Well, I smoked it. It was fantastic.

All of which got me to thinking: perhaps there’s something in this ‘new cigars with old tobacco’ malarkey. Perhaps there’s something in the Montecristo No. 4 Reserva.

The draw is a little loose; the first puffs pure Monte 4, dusty straw, bean, and a touch of spice on the back of the nose. It could be all in my head, but I also feel like there’s a slight refinement, a touch of cream. From puff three I notice the aftertaste, a musky ash that is very familiar to me as the taste that no amount of brushing will remove from my mouth the morning after I drunkenly sucked down a Monte 4 nightcap. I’m not complaining – if it weren’t invariably accompanied by a splitting headache and general queasiness that taste would be not at all unpleasant – but I mention it as evidence that this cigar runs true to its roots. Fancy band or no, this is very much a Monte 4.

I’m never sure quite how far I should go in this blog. Cigars the world over are an aid to meditation, a ritual to occupy the hands so that the mind can relax and contemplate, an idea I try to convey on this website with my meandering anecdotes (I started it as much for their sake as any serious attempt at cigar criticism). I do however, share the dream of every cigar aficionado who posts his smoking diary on the internet: that it is the beginning of a path that decades from now will lead me to the stage of the Karl Marx Theatre on a sultry February evening where I will modestly wave as a dusky Cuban beauty hands me a small statue and an announcer booms “Ladies and Gentlemen… your Habanos Man of the Year.”

What will the selection committee say when they look over my archive? Will they say “no, not him, we can’t have an animal like that as our man of the year”? Or will they perhaps say “him, he’s the only voice in Habanos that tells the truth”?

Well, the truth is that I am in pain. Not physical pain (although I did crack a rib wrestling last weekend), but mental pain; the anguish one acquires when one isn’t as young as one used to be, and so many dreams have yet to be fulfilled. The pain of lost love. The pain of cowardice and regret. The pain of living. With the Montecristo 4 Reserva half smoked I take 20mg of Oxycodone, and wash it down with a little rum and apple juice.

The cigar at this stage is very nice because Monte 4s are very nice, but if you asked me to take the Pepsi challenge between this and one with a couple of years of age on it, I honestly think I’d struggle. I was expecting a cigar with a bit of finesse, a Monte 4 with the edges smoothed, but this is all Monte 4: woodsmoke, straw and bean, over the bitter grounds from the bottom of a Turkish coffee.

The opiate is in my temples and my fingers, and pressing out from behind my eyes. I probe my rib: still tender. I feel slowed. Each click of the keyboard is pleasant, and each puff of the cigar more so. I let the smoke curl from my lips, a gently wafting, twisting ectoplasm. It’s a good match, the opiate; one contemplative relaxing drug paired with another. 20mg is a lot of opiate for someone with my emaciated frame and no built up tolerance for the stuff (I haven’t had so much as a Panadine Forte since 2005); the equivalent of 200mg of codeine, 30mg of morphine, 30mg of heroin.

In the last inch the Reserva shows what may be its distinction: it hasn’t turned bitter. Monte 4s traditionally offer you a lot of tar toward the end, but just millimetres from my fingers this has none. Perhaps it’s the drug. Great waves of relaxation are washing over me, crashing breakers of content. They have forced me to the floor where I lie on my back, the smoke wafting straight up as I exhale. I feel very slow, every action laborious, and perhaps that is slowing down my smoking, cooling the cigar. It’s hard to say, my sense of time may be a little off. I probe my rib again: no pain at all. I probe my soul: no pain there either.

Eventually I become aware of one pain, although it’s not unpleasant per se, just a polite signal from my brain that something might be wrong in my fingertips. The cigar is burning them; its end has come, although the bitterness still eludes it. I solider on a moment longer, but it extinguishes itself and I let it go.

These cigars are still available on rare occasion: just this week I was offered a box at an asking price of a thousand dollars. In no sense is it worth that kind of money, and I can’t recommend that you buy them, but they’re better than a Monte 4.

Montecristo No. 4 Reserva Cosecha 2002 on the Cuban Cigar Website

Montecristo Robusto Edición Limitada 2000

Posted on March 14, 2013 by atgroom under Edición Limitada, Montecristo

I’ve smoked a lot of Monte ELs in the last few weeks, and this one is the granddaddy of them all, numero uno, the 2000 robusto. It has the old non-embossed Montecristo band, faded with age to a light mauve sort of colour, and also that first EL band, the one before they realised they were going to have to put a year on these things somewhere (or perhaps the one before they realised they were going to do this more than once). It’s heavily box-pressed, thirteen years at rest having flattened the once cylindrical sides into a distinctly square shape.

I light it with a match, needing three attempts, which in turn makes the cigar a little hot and bitter in its first moments, however, when I back off it it soon settles down into a strong coffee flavour, with a hint of walnut in the aftertaste. The draw is very tight – tighter than Cuban, but looser than a coffin nail.

I’m accompanying this cigar with half a cantaloupe and some Diplomático rum, and on this still summer’s evening they’re both going down very nicely. If I’m honest the cantaloupe is a poor example of the breed – it’s practically flavourless – but with a cigar it works, offering just a very mild watery sweetness that clears the pallet and cuts some of the bitterness from the cigar’s aftertaste. The Diplomático is the same as ever, which is to say, great.

The cigar is burning unevenly and is in dire need of a touch up, but foolishly I only brought out my matches (they were right next to a torch on my desk, but on a whim I reached for the matches and only the matches. Hubris.), and you can’t really touch up an uneven burn with a match. Eventually it goes out completely, forcing my hand. It resists the relight: two long cigar matches almost burn my fingers before the smoke flows easily. I used to light my cigars with matches almost exclusively for a few years and I’ve never had anything like this kind of trouble with them before, which makes me think that something is amiss. Havana periodically changes the varietals of tobacco that make up their cigars, mostly to combat disease or fungus (it’s for this research that the elusive “Science” category of Habanos Man of the Year is awarded), and when this cigar was growing, probably in 1997 or 1998, it was the Habana 2000 strain that was in the earth. I’ve heard aficionados talk about fireproof Habana 2000 wrappers before but this is the first time I’ve encountered one.

When it’s burning though the cigar is really very nice, very balanced, and it wouldn’t be drawing too long a bow to call this chocolaty; a bittersweet bean and wood over medium tobacco. The burn remains appalling, and despite an attempt at a touch up a full inch of the cigar is unburned above where the coal seems to be, although its exact location is debateable, as only the smallest glow is visible in one corner of the charred portion. In moments like this I often think about Castro’s interview with Cigar Aficionado magazine, specifically the moment where he says that with a good Cuban cigar you should only have to light one corner and the burn will always even out. This cigar would not live up to Castro’s standard, but I suppose it was manufactured quite a while after he quit smoking.

The cigar goes out again, and exasperated I head inside to get a jet lighter, a Prince GT3000S miniature blowtorch that I bought in a Japanese hardware store and which advertises its primary functions as “jewellery repair”, “optical glass work” and “softening false teeth.” The torch claims to burn propane at 1300°C, but the asbestos wrapper resists even this inferno, glowing red, but not catching fire. For fully ten seconds I rain hellfire upon it, and as a result it is charred, but in no sense ablaze. I subject it to the furnace again, and eventually it succumbs, moments before my lighter runs out of gas.

At the time of writing Melbourne is in the grip of a heatwave, the hottest summer on record, and for this reason I started my smoking much later in the day than I normally would have. Dusk comes, and with it the mosquitos. I notice one on my arm, and bring my spare hand down upon her hard, flattening her, her grey limbs scattered within a smear of my own red essence. The carnage came too late, and within moments I can see the white bump raise and an intense itching starts, not just where she punctured me, but also in my other arm, on my ankle, my finger. I’m being eaten alive. I debate going inside to get some repellent, but the DEET would surely ruin what little is left of the cigar; it hardly seems worth it. When I’m done I’ll put a little square of sticky-tape on each bite, a trick I discovered years ago that at least stops me scratching them, but seems to somehow stop the itching as well. What a boon it would be if cigar smoke deterred mosquitos.

The end is barely bitter; heavy chocolate and coffee. I eat a passionfruit that I’ve been saving for after because I was worried that the flavour would be too strong and overpower the cigar, but it can’t even make a dint in the rich tobacco ending.

Terrible burn, but when it works it works well. Better than a poorly constructed Monte 4.

Total touch ups: 3
Total relights: 4
Matches expended: 9
Lighters depleted: 1

Montecristo Robusto Edición Limitada 2000 on the Cuban Cigar Website

Montecristo Robusto Reserva del Milenio

Posted on March 7, 2013 by atgroom under Montecristo, Reserva del Milenio

The Montecristo Millennium jar Robusto; arguably the first Montecristo special release. This was released in the fledgling days of the new Habanos S.A., the ink from Altadis’ 50% buyout was still wet on the page, and the very first sprouts of capitalism were beginning to emerge from the fallow fields of the Cuban cigar industry. Collectables were the order of the day. Special releases! Same cost to produce, higher price at the register! Lower the expenses! Increase the margins! Find the equilibrium on the supply and demand curve!

The cigar begins well, with a nice firm Cuban draw. The first notes are woody, a lot of cedar, and also something heavier, maybe oak. What does mahogany taste like? Birch? The larch? It’s definitely not pine or maple, that much I’m sure of. I feel I can also safely eliminate the Australian Red Gum, which I imagine tastes like eucalyptus oil, although there is a certain hint of the Australian bush in this smoke; the bush in the morning, after heavy overnight rain. I remember one afternoon in Cuba my bus stopped for a few hours in some nondescript village halfway between Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba, and there, in the shadow of a grim Soviet apartment block and a billboard of Castro I found a wattle tree. There was no context as to how it got there, but the flowers were unmistakable. Perhaps a few spores from that lonely specimen were taken by the trade winds and deposited in Pinar del Rio, where they made their way into my cigar? It’s plausible, but it seems like a heavier wood than that.

I’ve made myself a cheeky martini. I have in my home a serious liquor collection (certainly enough to open a decent bar or suburban bottle shop), but for some reason all I ever drink is beer and the occasional Dark and Stormy. Well not today. Two shots of Hendricks, a half of Noilly Prat and a half of Grey Goose, poured over a shaker of ice. Not shaken, not stirred, but allowed to sit, just for a moment, just long enough to chill it or until I get a sliver of peel off a lemon and place it in the bottom of a chilled martini glass: whichever comes first. I’m not sure why I don’t drink more of these. Unadulterated alcohol, a crisp, clean taste. It’s not a bad pair with a cigar, really. Very neutral. A little herbal. Definitely dissolves the tar.

The cigar is changing with every puff, the draw loosens then tightens. An inch in and it’s delicious, very rich and creamy. Medium tobacco dominates, with a hint of the barnyard, and a nice sweetness. Honey perhaps? Nectar?

I remember the 1999 into 2000 New Year’s Eve (I’m avoiding writing “the dawn of the new millennium” or anything like that, because as was explained to me at great length in the build-up to the 2000-2001 new year, “there was no year zero” etc etc. In 1999 we didn’t care about that stuff; for us, 1999 was the last year of the second millennium). A few of my punk friends and I were at my dad’s work, a 10^th floor balcony overlooking Flinders’ Street Station and the fireworks barges that were floating on the river behind it. My friends and I spent most of the night in my father’s office, doing what I don’t recall, but I know that at 11:55 or so we wandered out onto the deck in preparation for the countdown. At 11:58 Dad took me aside. “Xan, can you make sure the computer is shut down?” he said. “The IT guy wants all the computers shut down… just in case.” He didn’t have to say in case of what; I knew: the Millennium Bug! The dreaded apocalypse was nearly upon us! I scampered inside, but the computers of 1999 did not shut down so quick, and so that’s where I was as the clock ticked over: in an eight square meter cubical, looking at a 15” cathode ray tube monitor displaying something like “Windows NT is shutting down…”. Every New Year’s Eve I think about how much bigger the resolutions have gotten since then (humour).

(Part of me hoped I’d find the husk of a long dead tobacco in this cigar, which would have enabled a Millennium Bug pun in that last paragraph, but alas, it was not to be.)

Is this cigar a gateway to another time? To an age before September 11^th 2001, before the unending war on shadowy enemies, and the ubiquitous security and surveillance that goes with that; an age before the rise of China; an age when there were people who hadn’t used the internet yet; and an age where I was just a lad, taking my first (largely abortive) steps into adulthood? The flavour seems about right. Cedar. A little nutty.

Here’s a trick I just made up: when you’re smoking in the wind, rest the cigar in a champagne glass between puffs – nothing is worse for cigars than the constant agitation of a gusty breeze. There is a downside, of course: the sticky brown residue that rapidly begins to coat the inside of the glass. This is what we’re putting in our lungs? They say that age and Cuba’s intensive hand wrought process of fermenting and drying the tobacco reduces the tar, and yet twenty minutes of un-stoked smouldering from a 13 year old Cuban super-premium is enough to thoroughly coat the inside of this champagne glass with patchy brown molasses! Imagine what a fresh-from-the-table forth rate Nicaraguan would do to it!

Toward the end the cigar grows tangy… it seems that some tar has avoided the glass and wound up in last inch of the cigar, where I gingerly combust it. Bitter. Ashy. Awful. It’s the end. The bitter end of a nice cigar.

Certainly better than a Monte 4, although perhaps not quite as good as the giants of the breed.

Montecristo Robusto Reserva del Milenio on the Cuban Cigar Website

Montecristo C Edición Limitada 2003

Posted on February 27, 2013 by atgroom under Edición Limitada, Montecristo

“Inconsistent” is the aficionado consensus on the C. There are a few very vocal maligners, there are a few staunch proponents, and in the middle there seems to be a general agreement that there were some good boxes and some bad; that at their best they were cocoa and cream, and at their worst they were bland and flavourless. One certainly can’t fault their pedigree: they shared the rolling bench with the legendary Cohiba Double Corona EL, which for my money are probably the best Edición Limitada and one of the best cigars ever to grace the virgin’s thigh (more on these later).

Cigars are best appreciated alone and best enjoyed with friends, so perhaps this afternoon – a glorious summers’ one that finds me drinking beers and talking shit with two old friends in my backyard – is not the best venue to tackle a controversial cigar like the C. The die, however, is cast: the cap is cut, Caesar has crossed the Rubicon, and smoke it I will.

(Historical Aside: I read once that alea iacta est, Caesar’s famous words upon crossing the aforementioned Italian waterway are a misquote, and should in fact read alea jacta esto; “throw the dice high” as opposed “the die is cast.” So it is, Monte C: you will burn today, but your flavours are by no means set in stone… wavering humidity… accompanying beverages… my own fickle moods… anything could happen. Let’s play.)

The draw is loose; not a total wind tunnel, but a long way from a Cuban draw, and there is a light, gusty breeze blowing also that will do it no favours. The first puffs are tannic and bitter, surprising for a cigar this age. I let it settle, hoping the bitterness is an artefact of the lighting and will pass, but it continues well beyond the first puffs. The only detectable flavour behind it is a sort of smooth, medium tobacco.

My friend Argus is smoking a Monte 3 with some age on it, and Stevespool, who “can’t handle a whole cigar” sits with us, occasionally sneaking a puff from one or the other cigar as it sits in the ashtray. After one such pull on the C I ask his opinion. “It tastes like a cheap cigar,” he observes. I somewhat concur. There is definitely none of the stink of Nicaragua in this cigar, but the sentiment is correct. It is not especially pleasant.

We suckle sweet Peroni in the sun, talking shit and telling ribald anecdotes. Argus is a historian by training, and laments the self-sabotaging nature of his industry, where there’s no private sector to speak of and jobs for academics are limited to a fraction of the students studying under them, so by definition most graduates will be unemployed. Oscar Pistorius is in the news, and conversation about him quickly degenerates into jokes about robot killing machines.

With half remaining Stevespool takes another drag. “That’s got a lot better,” he observes “with kind of an interesting aftertaste.” When pushed for a taste he eventually lands on “fluffy tires… like fairy floss made from rubber… it’s not offensive, but just sort of an airy tingle.” He giggles. I’m not sure I see the sweetness myself. The rubber is certainly there. Of the two he prefers the Monte 3.

We wander across hopes and dreams and money making capers. We’re all at an age where things are getting serious: Argus has a child on the way, Stevespool a wedding, I am dabbling in home ownership, and for us now is the time when schemes must be enacted. If we want to be drinking our own single-malt at our son’s 21st birthdays, we really have to consider putting it under oak immediately. Stevespool has a chemistry degree somewhere in his shady past, and we interrogate him as to the possibilities for creating a chemically perfect scotch not with centuries of tradition but with science. He isn’t very helpful, although he does offer quite a few insights into how alcohol alters brain chemistry.

The afternoon is turning to evening and we order a pizza. I’m a little drunk, but just afternoon drunk; even priests are drunk on Sunday afternoons.

One or two brief moments aside the Monte C has tasted plain and bitter, with perhaps a little straw and medium tobacco detectable somewhere in the aftertaste. If this is cocoa then it’s unsweetened cocoa powder eaten straight from the tin. Bitterness in cigars is usually a fault I assign to the smoker; he is smoking too fast, the cigar is burning too hot, scorching the smoke. In this instance, however, I don’t think this is the case. For one, the C has lasted a good 30 minutes longer than Argus’ comparably sized Monte 3, and for two, this thing has been so bitter that I’ve found myself instinctively giving it a lot of space between drags.

I let it go a few puffs sooner that I otherwise would. The pizza is here. Perhaps if I had smoked this cigar alone I might have been able to appreciate it, but as it stands, whilst I enjoyed this pleasant afternoon with my friends, I would have enjoyed it more so with a Monte 4.

Montecristo C Edición Limitada 2003 on the Cuban Cigar Website

Montecristo D Edición Limitada 2005

Posted on February 20, 2013 by atgroom under Edición Limitada, Montecristo

Honestly, I remember nothing about this cigar. I was on the scene when they were released and I’ve had them before, but I don’t remember the reviews, I don’t remember the consensus, and I don’t remember any tasting notes. I remember the C, that controversial little cracker, and I remember the Robustos, and of course the more recent entries, the Sublime and the Grand Edmundo but the D? Nothing.

It’s a beautiful size, a elegant Lonsdale, with a nice wrapper, dark and oily. It has punch right from the start. Strong coffee and cream, with a real espresso hit on the back. Beautiful.

I’m drinking a Coca-Cola with it. At one point in my life I lived in China, and in Shanghai’s cigar lounges by far the most common accompaniment to a fine cigar is an icy glass of Diet Coke. Many Chinese have an allergy to alcohol, strong liquor especially, and that excludes them from the whiskey and rum cults we find in western cigar lounges. Outside the lounges they drink a lot of tea, but I’ve never seen it inside one. Perhaps it doesn’t have a strong enough flavour to complement the cigar. In any case, I asked a Chinese friend about it once and he told me that they drank Coke to “cut some of the bitterness.” I’ve drunken it with my own cigars on many occasions, and he’s right, it does remove a lot of the tar and compliments a cigar quite nicely. If it has a fault it’s that it is perhaps a bit too cloying, drowning the tastebuds a little, and were I compiling a definitive tasting notes guide I would probably avoid it, but for a casual smoke I think it works. I will also add the proviso that it should also be watered down with ice, and please, Coke only, no Pepsi. Pepsi is sweeter than Coke and doesn’t have the same complexity; in Coke if you concentrate you can taste the three citrus flavours – lemon, lime, and orange – as well as cinnamon, vanilla and whatever the secret ingredient is. I also have my reservations about Coke in America, which uses high-fructose corn syrup rather than the sugar we have in the rest of the world. I understand you can get proper Coke with sugar around Easter, Americans: it’s called “kosher for Passover” or something like that. Maybe one of those froufrou high end natural colas would work as well. I’ll have to try it.

It’s a wonderful day, blue skys, high twenties, but the wind is a little squally and I think it’s stoking the cigar a bit, because at a little over halfway an ashy, bitter taste begins to creep in, a sure sign that the cigar is burning too hot. Once I let the flavour fade on my tongue I’m left with a medium tobacco flavour, some hint of bean. Perhaps the Coke is ruining this cigar: it began so well, but is getting worse as it goes on. From the first puff this was shaping up to be a magnificent cigar, those full lashings of coffee has me convinced that into the second half I would be in a world of chocolate and sweet spice, but instead I just have bitterness over a little tobacco.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, this is still obviously a cigar of the highest quality, burn has been impeccable, and you can taste the obvious quality in the leaf – I’ll take the Pepsi challenge with this and a non-Cuban any day of the week – but it just disappoints a bit when compared to my high expectations.

By the end of these reviews I’m usually a little tipsy, and I wonder if my enjoyment of the cigar is coloured by insobriety; my best self is the one with two to four standard drinks inside him. No, that can’t be it; I had that first Monte 4 cold sober and that was a cracker. As I toss the nub of this cigar, I observe that I have no buzz at all from the nicotine, and, in fact, I kind of want another cigar. Something short and punchy like a Cohiba Panatela. I wonder if I have any left.

The Montecristo D: begins well, ends less so. Perhaps it’s in a sick period.

Montecristo D Edición Limitada 2005 on the Cuban Cigar Website.

Montecristo Maravillas No.1 Colección Habanos 2005

Posted on February 14, 2013 by atgroom under Colección Habanos, Montecristo

The Montecristo Maravillas No.1, from the 2005 Colección Habanos series: the book humidors. They’re great looking things those book humidors, and I love them as collectables; I imagine those lucky few who have the entire set arrayed on a bookcase somewhere (presumably in their gothic library of leather-bound volumes, concealing the secret entrance to their walk in humidor) feel a great sense of personal satisfaction, but I could never buy one myself because of what they contain: Habanos S.A.’s annual experiment into the upper limits of cigar ring gauge. 55 by 182! I can’t put this thing in my mouth! I have to hold it between two fingers and puff at it through gently pursed lips!

I light it and puff at it through gently pursed lips and it begins excellently. The draw is a little loose; the flavour classic high end Montecristo, more Especial than Edmundo. Cream, straw, a little nutty (almonds, maybe?), all over a wonderful lightly toasted tobacco of the highest grade. The thesis of this blog was originally the smoking of exotics, the unsmokables, and in my mind I often imagine the readers complaining about the cigars I smoke not being exotic enough (“Monte Open! What is this rubbish!” the imaginary critic cries, navigating away in disgust). Well, this cigar is a true exotic: 500 humidors, 20 cigars per humidor, 10,000 in total and it’s eight years old to boot.

I’m pairing this with a Hahn Millennium Ale. In the heady days of 1999, Hahn released these beers in a longneck under a champagne cork, with the yeast still in the bottle so that it would get better with age. Thirteen years later and I think it’s probably time. The angels had taken most of the neck. Moments after opening I realise my mistake: I should have paired this with a Millennium Jar cigar (more on those later). Ah well. At any rate, it’s a lovely colour, dark and red, and very sweet and rich, with a good amount of fizz, given its age. Burned hops. A little port. The surprising thing really is its origin: I would expect this beer from some Dutch microbrewery, but Hahn? The favourite beer of New South Wales (Australian state, capital Sydney), Hahn is very much a lowest common denominator inoffensive everyman lager. That they have the ability or even the aspiration to produce something like this is astounding. I’ve heard this described as the best beer every to come out of Australia, and thirteen years ago, before the microbrewery boom, that was probably true. Well, perhaps not the best – this beer is unpleasant in a lot of ways – but certainly the most complex.

The cigar is delightful, a real mellow, contemplative cigar. Not as in your face complex as the beer, but then, there is no element in the cigar that is unpleasant. The cream has gone, and I am left with a light tobacco and cedar flavour. Aromatic. A little floral.

I read on the internet that the Hahn Millennium Ale is based on Chimay Red, a Trappist Ale with which I have a more than passing familiarity. Perhaps it’s the thirteen years it spent in the bottom of my laundry cupboard, but they are nothing alike, the Hahn possessing a far richer flavour. I mention it though, because this seems like the only opportunity I’ll ever have to tell the story of Nathan, and confess to a crime that has been weighing on me for five long years.

In 2008 I lived in Japan, and there came into contact with Nathan. He was the flatmate of one of my high-school friends, an American in his mid-30s, and an alcoholic. We all partied pretty hard in Japan – it’s that kind of a place. Booze is cheap and available everywhere, and you can drink it openly on the streets. You can buy beer from vending machines, you can smoke in hospitals, and there’s not really such a thing as a bouncer. Nathan though, he took it to another level. He drank hard in bars, always beer, and would lock you in a corner and insist on telling you about his problems; about his ex-wife, about his disabled sister, and about the problems with his father and things of that nature. When the bar closed and his friends had all abandoned him he would go home and drink a bottle of Jack Daniels alone and in the dark, muttering to himself.

There was one bar in particular that Nathan liked, the Hub, where he was known as Mr. Chimay. Years before he’d requested that they stock it, and they kept a case behind the bar especially for him. He’d walk in, wave to the bartender, and take a seat, and moments later his Chimay would materialize.

I’d known him six months, and honestly, I didn’t like him and he didn’t like me, but we were in the same circle and so on Halloween I found myself dressed as Hugh Hefner and smoking a pipe in his living room. It was early, and almost all of the guests were planning to leave before too long and go to a better party. Nathan was inexplicably in his street clothes until about 9:30 when he called for silence and dimmed the lights. He turned on the TV, pressed play and disappeared into his bedroom. The Star Wars theme began to blast, and on the TV screen began, in the style of the Star Wars opening scroll, an essay telling the story of Nathan’s life in Japan. For minutes it went on, while the assembled throng stood around awkwardly, wanting to be polite, but utterly disinterested in this presentation. The final words of the scroll read “…and his name was DARTH CHIMAY”, and as they appeared on screen the theme transitioned into the Imperial March and Nathan emerged, now clad in full replica Darth Vader costume, and clutching a Chimay Red in each hand.

The lengthy pause had been the death knell of the party, and ten minutes later everybody began to make their excuses. As I prepared to walk out the door it occurred to me that I had a lengthy train ride ahead of me and no alcohol on my person, so I opened the fridge, and there on the shelf was the only booze left in the house: two Chimay Red. As I pocketed them both I looked over my shoulder, and there for a moment caught Nathan’s eye (he’d removed the helmet almost immediately). There was such a look of disappointment on his face, perhaps more at his rapidly imploding party than at my criminal act, but nonetheless, I felt bad, at least for the two minutes it took me to walk down the stairs. The Chimay was nice. It tided me over all the way to the bar. Sorry Nathan.

There’s no tannin at all in this cigar, and if I had a book of them I’d seriously consider smoking them all right now, as it seems perfectly aged. I detect a little buttered toast, and maybe a hint of salt. In a cigar this thick one expects a certain robustness, a dose of nicotine and spice, but this is really very elegant. I’ve been smoking for two hours now, and at least two smokable inches remain.

Forty five minutes later, and with less than an inch to go the cigar offers me a little tar, although very little considering the amount of fragrant leaf that has been burned. I’ve finished the Millennium Ale, and honestly, I’m quite drunk. It advertises itself as 8%, although with 13 years of evaporation and distillation who knows what it is today. Perhaps 14%, perhaps 4%. I feel quite woozy. Perhaps it’s the nicotine. There’re a lot of factors involved, really.

Either way, both were magnificent. The best Montecristo? The best Australian beer? Honestly, in this moment I can’t recall one better alternative to either, but then, in my current state I’m very much a biased narrator. The nub burns my fingers and gets thrown over the balcony, but I instantly regret it. Please, just one more puff. In any analysis it has been a marvellous way to spend a lazy afternoon.

Montecristo Maravillas No.1 Colección Habanos 2005 on the Cuban Cigar Website.