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Cigar
reviews by Nilo: An introduction
by: Nilo Zanadel (e-mail)
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Welcome to the inaugural column of my bi-weekly article about cigars. What, you are probably asking, qualifies me to write about cigars? I do not pretend to be the authority on cigars. I haven't read much about cigars. I do not own a cigar shop. I've never attended a Big Smoke. However, I have smoked lots and lots of cigars. Ask any of my friends and they'll tell you, "he constantly stinks like cigars." I love cigars. I smoke them as often as I can. It is my vice. Hence, I am your
new vices/cigar columnist. I'm not writing from the pedestal. I don't have a massive humidor full of cigars that have been sent as gifts from tobacco companies from all over the world hoping that I'll write about their virtues or give them a 98 score. I'm the guy on the street who really likes to smoke, and I'm going to tell it like it is.
I have been an avid cigar smoker for about eight years. I figure that I, like many, started smoking cigars just as the popularity (and price) of cigars was on the rise. These were heady times, the mid-1990s, when America's economy was going through the roof and conspicuous consumption was rampant. Cigar smoking, at least for those of us who were just starting, might have been a way to proclaim, "I'm a part of the great success."
I can remember the first time I had a cigar. I was on my father-in-law's 30-foot sport fishing boat off Islamorada in the Florida Keys. It was a sunny, beautiful morning around 10:00 AM and we were fishing for Dolphin fish. I was on my third Budweiser. This may sound strange, but I always found that getting slightly tuned-up before deep-sea fishing always prevented me from getting seasick. Anyhow, my father-in-law offered me a cigar. It was a La Primadora Churchill. A man with this huge cigar hanging out of his mouth looks like he's got the world by the ass. With the first taste of this cigar, I knew there was a problem. In fact, it tasted like I had the world's ass in my mouth. But, it was free and I assumed that cigar smoking is an acquired taste, so I kept on smoking.
 The La Primadora Churchill. I must have smoked a hundred of them. The last one was just as horrible as the first. It just tastes like an ashtray. Poorly constructed -- you have to re-light it constantly. It's cheap, though. I came to realize that my father-in-law smokes them a lot less than he chomps on them. He rarely lights them. He chews them up and throws them out. He was infamous at his country club because he discarded chomped-up cigars all over the golf course. They were in the rough, on the fairways, and in the sand traps. You couldn't get away from them. He played golf almost every day and was known to unload as many as one per hole. You may be asking how he had so many cigars. First, he bought them by the gross and second, he always carried a bundle of 25 with him wherever he went.
The point of this inaugural article is that cigar smoking, like life, is what you make of it. Cigars come in many shapes and sizes and fall into a wide range of price points. You may like to smoke your cigar until it burns your fingers (like I do) or you may like to hardly smoke it at all. My goal is to share some cigar stories with you, conduct some cigar tasting and pricing, and ultimately try to help you try to find that cigar that's "just right." I'm going to smoke a different cigar every week and give you my thoughts on
it, and please feel free to share your comments with me Send your questions, opinions or cigar stories to
nzanadel@bullz-eye.com.
Please feel free to share your comments with me; send any questions, opinions or cigar stories to
nzanadel@bullz-eye.com.
For even more info on cigars, visit our Vices
Web Guide!
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