Lounge Lizards - a Cigar and Lifestyle Podcast

Recorded at Ten86 Lounge in Hawthorne, New Jersey the lizards pair the La Palina Goldie Laguito No. 2 with H by Hine VSOP Cognac. The guys discuss the unique story behind the Goldie line, they debate the merit of lighting a cigar with a soft flame versus a jet flame and they discuss Gizmo's new cigar vault.

Join the Lounge Lizards for a weekly discussion on all things cigars (both Cuban and non-Cuban), whiskey, food, travel, life and work. This is your formal invitation to join us in a relaxing discussion amongst friends and become a card-carrying Lounge Lizard yourself. This is not your typical cigar podcast. We’re a group of friends who love sharing cigars, whiskey and a good laugh.

website/merch/rating archive: loungelizardspod.com
email: hello@loungelizardspod.com to join the conversation and be featured on an upcoming episode!
instagram: @loungelizardspod

What is Lounge Lizards - a Cigar and Lifestyle Podcast?

Released every Tuesday, the LOUNGE LIZARDS podcast helps listeners navigate the experience of finding and enjoying premium cigars (both Cuban and non-Cuban) and quality spirits. Episodes range from 60 to 90 minutes and feature a variety of different topics including food, travel, life, sports and work.

The podcast features seven members: Rooster, Poobah, Gizmo, Senator, Pagoda, Grinder and Bam Bam.​

This is not your typical cigar podcast. We’re a group of friends who love sharing cigars, whiskey and a good laugh.

Join us and become a card-carrying lounge lizard yourself! Email us at hello@loungelizardspod.com to join the conversation and be featured on an upcoming episode!

**Gizmo:** [00:00:00] Welcome to the Lounge Listens podcast. It's so good to have you here. It's a leisure and lifestyle podcast founded on our love of premium cigars, as well as whiskey, travel, food, work, and whatever else we feel like getting into. My name is Gizmo 10 Tonight I'm joined by Rooster Puba, Senator Pagoda, and bam bam.

And our plan is to smoke a cigar, drink some cognac, talk about life, and of course have some laughs. So take, this is your 71st official invitation to join us and become a card carrying lounge lizard. Plan to meet us here once a week. We are gonna smoke a new world cigar tonight. Share our thoughts on it and give you our formal lizard rating.

We discuss the unique story behind tonight's cigar. We debate the merit of lighting a cigar with a soft flame versus a jet flame. And we discuss my new cigar vault all among a variety of other things for the next 90 minutes. So sit back, get your favorite drink, light up a cigar, and enjoy as we pair H by Hein, V S O P cognac with the La Paul Goldie in Lato number two, a petite landero Tonight on [00:01:00] the pod from La Paul.

It's a 38 ring gauge cigar by six inches and boys, I was very surprised when these came in. This looks excellent, gorgeous, gorgeous cigar. So it has a little pigtail on the top of it. And, uh, a very ornate band with a kind of classic looking image of a woman. Uh, I guess that is Goldie

**Senator:** Rooster's already given it a 10

**Gizmo:** on on the pigtail.

That's right. He loves a pigtail. Oh yeah. So yeah, these are, uh, I'm very, very excited to try this tonight, boys.

**Bam Bam:** What a good looking cigar. It

**Gizmo:** is surprising. So let's cut this thing. Has anyone had a La Paul cigar? Never. Nope. Me neither. No. No. So when we, we actually talked about it when, uh, this was on the cigar efficient auto top 25 of last year.

Um, and, uh, we talked about it then, and we're kind of in a run of landeros and lawnsdale, so I thought a petite landero kind of fell in, uh, fell in there.

**Bam Bam:** Very floral on the cold draw. [00:02:00] Hmm.

**Gizmo:** Let's try this thing. Hmm. Fruity even maybe. I love this ring gauge man. Yeah.

**Senator:** Bam. Bam is spot on on the notes. Yeah. Oh yeah.

That's floral and fruity. Very

**Bam Bam:** strong on the cold draw. Wow.

**Gizmo:** Yeah, it's like ri like very, yeah, like aromatic draws wide open also. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, you know, for cigar this size, I mean you, but you get a, a Jibo landero, maybe a quarter of the box is not able to be, you know, drawn without a perfect draw.

You know, construction is really difficult on these things. Yeah. I thought every cohiba was perfect. Mm, it is. Yeah. That's the ho bono's guarantee for that price. All right, boys, let's light this thing. The La Paul Goldie Elto number two, again, it's 38 ring gauge by six inches long. Cigar is named after the factory name used in Cuba.

Uh, very popular cigar. It was a lato. Number two was the Davidoff number two, which [00:03:00] obviously is long discontinued. And the only cigar that we've done on the podcast actually, uh, in this size was the Punch Mantua, which is identical to this. S Goldie

**Rooster:** was the, uh, name of the owner's wife,

**Gizmo:** right? Mm-hmm. . Yeah.

This named after her. This cigar came out probably about 10, 12 years ago. It was originally made in this size, uh, and they've continued making it as a really special story, but it's a celebration of all women according to the. The manufacturer, the owner, uh, of course, like I said, the wife, you know, the owner's wife, as Rooster mentioned, is on the band and has a very cool rolling story, which we'll talk about.

But what are you guys getting on the light? This

**Bam Bam:** is a different cigar. It's unusual

**Gizmo:** Shelton. Hmm. It's definitely different. Very perfuming. Really? But it's

**Bam Bam:** cool. Yeah. Oh yeah. Cool. The, the Retro Hill's Awesome.

**Gizmo:** So it's an Ecuadorian Havana wrapper. [00:04:00] The binder is Ecuadorian and the filler is a combo of Dominican and Nicaraguan.

Hmm. That's a weird combo that I don't think we've had before. I'm liking it right now. Yeah. Well,

**Pagoda:** they've backed a lot of stuff in this. Really? They did.

**Senator:** My taste buds are like tingling at the tip of my tongue. It's like I'm trying to place somebody. It's a weird

**Gizmo:** sensation. It is. Yeah. I, I think it's helping when I, when I, uh, smell where it's burning.

Like when I combine that with a draw.

**Bam Bam:** Oh, that's

**Gizmo:** really quite nice. It really is. They're really playing off each other very nicely

**Bam Bam:** at the burn line. There's some dried fruit and it's a little floral. Yeah.

**Gizmo:** Which is, I

**Senator:** feel like there's delicious, which is just on the finish, like a touch of cocoa of some kind.

**Pagoda:** I'm smelling like milk

**Bam Bam:** chocolate. Uh, white. Yeah. White chocolate for me. White. Kind of like a white chocolate. Mm.

**Gizmo:** Puba rooster. What do you guys think of this? They look perplexed. It's, it's definitely,

**Rooster:** I mean, you get like, I [00:05:00] don't know, you get a little bit of baking spice

**Gizmo:** to me. Yeah. You know, cocoa baking spice has a bit of a, uh, like a bit of a musty finish.

Yeah. Just a

**Rooster:** touch of it.

**Gizmo:** You got some hay cedar? Yep. I think, was it you bam, or, or Puba when, when we opened the box before we hit record, somebody said it kind of had a barnyard. Yeah, I said that. Oh, rooster said that? Yeah, yeah,

**Poobah:** yeah. When I, when I retro helmet it, maybe this will change when I retro helmet it's a little bit sharp.

Um,

maybe that's some of the Nicaraguan tobacco coming through, but, mm.

**Gizmo:** I'm, I'm very confused what . I, I just very rare that this room is

**Poobah:** speechless. . Yeah. I What are you, what are you confused about? There's

**Senator:** just the flavor notes. I don't, it's, there's something different about this cigar and I'm having a really hard time.

I just feel like anytime we light up a stick, it's very obvious the flavor notes. And I feel like all of us are kind of [00:06:00] struggling to piece together what we're getting. Oh yeah.

**Poobah:** I totally am. Don't, yeah, I thought you were confused by what I was saying. No, no, no. . Um, um, but cuz I'm confused. ,

**Bam Bam:** I can't say that it's mud muddled.

It's, it's not muddled cuz it's, it's, it's pretty good. Um, but I just can't

**Poobah:** tell what I'm getting

**Bam Bam:** yet. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think everything that's been said, you're getting,

**Senator:** and I just keep getting this tingling sensation on my tongue. It's like there's a lot of flavor. It's just, Mix of flavors I'm not used to.

On

**Rooster:** the foot you get some cinnamon. Hmm. Like a hint of cinnamon.

**Gizmo:** I'm not getting

**Senator:** that. I get that. It's not at the burn line.

**Bam Bam:** At the burn. Some baking spice, like general baking spice kind of

**Gizmo:** thing.

Smell

**Rooster:** the burn line.

**Gizmo:** Just the that's coming off. You get some cinnamon.

**Bam Bam:** You get cinnamon. When I get fruit, dry fruit, which.

and some baking spice.

**Gizmo:** It's definitely a, a like a really wide variety of things that are coming together in whatever this flavor is. But I think for the listener, I wanna make it clear that we're not saying, it's like, it's not a bad [00:07:00] confusion. No. It's a very interesting, it's interesting, uh, uh, compelling.

It's compelling. It's unusual.

**Rooster:** It's not something like we have had before that we can kind of relate to. Yeah. Like you could say, well, this cigar reminds me of that cigar. Right.

**Gizmo:** It's not like that. Right, right, right.

**Poobah:** Off the, off the bat, for me, it's, which isn't a positive. And I'm not trying to poo PPO this thing at all cause we're not even there yet.

Through the nose. It's, it's a little bit rough for me this early. Hmm.

**Gizmo:** Do you think that's a, a little bit sharp?

**Poobah:** I don't know because, no, because you can do that with the patron. So I agree with him on the finishing. There's a little something, there's a sharp or an edge. I on don't know what it

**Bam Bam:** is on the tail end of the retro hale.

It gets a little

**Poobah:** tingly. It really

**Gizmo:** does. Yeah. It's an observation and some people, but that may also be playing into why Senator has a tingling on the front of his tongue. It may be the same thing. Could be it's re i I would believe that, you know.

**Poobah:** Yeah. It's there, there is a tingling on the front of your tongue.

Mm-hmm. , there's something. Um,

**Bam Bam:** is this tobacco aged? [00:08:00]

**Gizmo:** I'm assuming It is, but they, it, there is no naming of age on the box. So it comes in a really nice, uh, 10 count box. Stained stained box stain. Yeah. Varnish box. Um, really nice presentation laid out on kind of like a, like a nice foam. Uh, insert. How much was that box?

So these are about 20 bucks a stick. So they're very limited run. Um, I think they only make Yeah, you, you paid

**Rooster:** less than the M S R P. The s r p

**Gizmo:** on these 23 or something. 23 a stick. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So, um, cigar, fish and auto put this, uh, at number 15 for last year. Gave it a 93. That's high praise. And, uh, the other thing that's cool, I don't know if we've actually, this may be the first time we've had a cigar that's rolled in the United States.

It's rolled in Miami. Really? Wow. Manufactured in Miami with

**Bam Bam:** offices in Patterson

**Gizmo:** I like to throw that in. I like bams running joke of Patterson . [00:09:00] Um, Hey, I was born there so I could say that. There you go. . You do a lot of work in Patterson? No,

**Bam Bam:** not yet. .

**Gizmo:** Uh, so yeah, this is, uh, they import all the tobacco to Miami and they roll it there. , which is pretty cool. Very cool. And Rooster, we were talking before we came on, it has a pretty cool rolling story.

Yeah, it does. Um,

**Rooster:** I think prior to 2012 there was a roller named, uh, Maria Ciera, who was the, uh, roller of these cigars, but she was the first ever woman roller. Uh, I think they have some kind of a rating system. She was like a

**Gizmo:** number nine Roller Number nine. Yeah. Yeah. That's the top roller. Top roller in Cuba.

Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And she worked at the Lato factory.

**Rooster:** Wow. And she was the top, top woman roller. And the, and the first woman roller.

**Gizmo:** When was that? How far back in time? Probably talking. You gotta be talking fifties, sixties, I would think. She's pretty old. Wow. So she retired in 2012, so Right, right. So she'd been retire, retired 10 years.

**Bam Bam:** Yeah. Oh yeah. Amazing. And when

**Senator:** she retired in 2012, she was rolling for this [00:10:00] company. Lalina. Yeah.

**Bam Bam:** Wow. Yeah. In Miami. Yep. In Miami. Wow. What a story. Yeah. That's

**Gizmo:** cool. Wild. . So they only make a thousand boxes of these cigars. I've seen them around. So, you know, listeners can definitely find them certainly as singles.

Mm-hmm. , um, only 10,000 total cigars, and I guess they make this on an annual basis as kind of like a limited edition run for La Paulina. Um, obviously I gravitated towards it because of the size. I mean, this is just right in our wheelhouse as far as size goes.

**Bam Bam:** It's kind of tasting young to me. Yep. Yeah. If this, uh, seeing it this early in the cigar, if it's sad for a while, it could get a lot better.

**Gizmo:** Possib. I'm getting a, possibly, I'm getting a bit of sweetness now that I'm liking. It's kind of rounding the mm-hmm. , the modge podge of flavors that we've been throwing out. It's, it's not bad. It,

**Poobah:** it's not bad if you like that. I, I just, I'm kidding. A little bit. . Mm. Uh, like, almost like a minty, a minty flavor.

Really? . Yeah. I'm not getting that. Mm. Well, I am mint. Is mint a good thing? [00:11:00] Like a spear. Mint. Like a, like, it's, it's slightly minty. Hmm. It's like an, um, I'm just getting a of, there's a little bit of edge

**Gizmo:** to it. I'm just getting a lot

**Senator:** of fruit. Yep. And a little bit of baking spice and a little cocoa. Um, but just the delivery, the way that the flavors are working together is, um, I'm still a little perplex.

It's strange. Strange. The things I will say that I do like off the bat on this cigar. Uh, the combustion is great for this little ring age. Um, and the construction's really nice. I mean, razor sharp, white ash. . Um, so I like how this smokes and I think even the smoke is like pretty velvety. Mm-hmm. . Yeah.

Pretty rich. The draw is outstanding. It's just trying to piece together the flavors. Yeah.

**Poobah:** The, the, the, yeah. There's white pepper in here. Yeah, definitely. I believe there's white pepper. Maybe that's, you know, can be misinterpreted as minty. There's a pepper, there's a peppery minty, which is like a fr floral.[00:12:00]

Plus pepper kind of thing going on for me.

**Gizmo:** Maybe what we should do is name this. I agree on that. Now maybe we should, we should name the flavors that we're not getting. Well, no, it's gotta be hard on cigar notes. , we've named on the pot. I'm not, no, I'm saying every, like, we have gone around the room and I'm the whole spectrum.

Yeah. We've really covered the spectrum. Uh, no, maybe except procedure

**Poobah:** To me, the pep to me, I think I find it, I find white. I find it to be white peppery. Mm-hmm. with some cocoa. Yeah. And with some, um, some dried fruit. Yeah. And a little bit of fruit baking spice. But the f the pepper for me in the, that is forwards is very forward, forward for me.

Which I think is that tingling that, yeah. That senator maybe not sure. The thing that, and through the nose that, you know, it's prominent for me now, I'm not saying whether that's a virtue in the cigar or not. This is what

**Rooster:** I'm getting. It's a medium bodied smoke. You

**Gizmo:** know? It's not mild. No, it's not. No, it's definitely not mild.

So this line that, uh, that La Paulina does in the goldies, it started, [00:13:00] uh, they, they have a ton of them. Um, this one was the first one in July, 2012, uh, as Rooster mentioned. And, uh, the role Maria rolled these actually till 2017 was when she retired 2017. So she rolled them for the first six years. Um, but they have, I mean, they have 10 sizes of the goldies now, all, all the way from, uh, the number two that we're smoking now to the number five, which is a 54 by a little under six inches, uh, seven by 40.

They really cover the gamut. Toro, unbelievable. Everything. Churchill. So you can really get this cigar in almost any viola. You know, that's your preference, but,

**Bam Bam:** um, are they, are they that popular? I know they're highly rated on ca, which doesn't honestly say

**Gizmo:** much, but on of each of these, they only make about a thousand boxes.

Some of them, they only make 300 bucks. It's a, it's a boutique brand. Yeah. Never h heard of. It's not that big.

**Bam Bam:** Yeah. Yeah. To have that many violas, I mean, that's quite the investment. Yeah.

**Gizmo:** So it's pretty cool. Hmm. Very interesting stuff. What do you guys think of the band? [00:14:00] Love the band. I love the, I love the ornate beautiful old

**Bam Bam:** school design.

Yeah. Band's beautiful. The gold and the very pale

**Gizmo:** blues Nice. And it's like really what? Nicely embossed. It looks like Queen Elizabeth . It does A little bit. It does. It looks like a stamp. Yeah. Correct.

**Poobah:** Well, anything, any band I like, I lean towards vintage bands, but some of the bands that Caldwell Cigar do.

I know we were talked about. We were gonna do the, um, we should do that cigar. We should, we should do that cigar. We need to the, um, it's called the, uh, uh, uh, the Con Connecticut standard. The mm-hmm. . Uh, that's not exactly what it is. Gizmo. We'll, look it, look it up. Was Connecticut Standard the standard?

That's a good, that's a pretty good smoke. I think we would like that. So, but, but the reason why I'm bringing it up is just the bands. I feel like the band, the artwork that Caldwell does, just, we're talking about cigar art. Eastern Standard. Eastern Standard, thanks. Mm-hmm. is, um,

**Gizmo:** oh, that has a cool band too.

**Poobah:** Yeah. All of his [00:15:00] cigars have really good art on him. Nice. We've had a couple listeners. I mean, there's something to be said for that. I, I, I just like the artwork, um, but I haven't had everything in the line. I've had a few things, and we should review

**Gizmo:** these. We gotta do a call standard. We've, we've had some listeners put that on, uh, you know, lists of like, Hey, try these, let's do Caldwell.

So We should, we should definitely, we can. Yeah.

**Poobah:** I'd like to be part of that review. I'm away. But I, I, that, I, I, I think that that's a, I haven't had one in a long, long time. Um, but anyway, they do a good job with their art.

**Gizmo:** Yeah. I like, listen, I like we talk about it all the time. I like when, when manufacturers don't try too hard on the presentation.

Mm-hmm. just put a nice cigar in a, in a really good looking box with a great band and, and you're good. We don't need two, three foot bands. We don't need all this, this crap. No. Yeah. Spend covering the cigar spend. That's right.

**Poobah:** Caldwell though, what he does is that, it's interesting just from a graphics perspective is that they have illustrators actually, he commissions illustrators to actually do it.

This looks to me not, not a, not a [00:16:00] criticism, it's, I like the band, but this looks to me like more of, um, copy of a copy of something he liked commissions artists to do these illustrations based on whatever the concept of the name of the cigar is and how that informs it. And the artwork's really pretty cool when you look at what they do.

Um, but he does it in kind of a way that honors classic bands. Um, But bringing it forward, this looks bringing, you know, bringing it forward, bringing, it's like a modern spin on a, on a classic band. I like that. Which is kind of cool. I like that. It's stylish, it's cool. It is cool.

**Pagoda:** It's smart. Yeah. This looks like a black and white copy of a British, uh, Elizabeth Queen stamp

**Poobah:** Right. But like, which is nice pull up, like pull up the Eastern standard and you see like the iconic face. Yeah. Yeah. It's awesome. It's kind of cool. Yeah. It's classic. It's kind k it looks classic, but it's like brought forward with modern

**Gizmo:** execution and it's kinda neat. Like pencil drawn almost. Yeah. Yeah.

It's, yeah, it's really neat. So this, uh, so the picture that we're talking about on this band is a photo. What looks like something [00:17:00] like, uh, pagoda said you'd see in the fifties of Queen Elizabeth, but it's of the owner's wife as Rooster mentioned. Her name was Goldie Paley, who's the wife of the founder of La Paul Sam Paley.

Uh, and this whole line is a tribute to her and women in cigars. Cool. Yeah. . Look at us, boys. Look at us. Well, this

**Poobah:** cigar, this cigar cigars changed for me a little bit at this point. Yeah, I'm, I agree. I'm not complaining. It's kind of like it started out a little rough for me and it's getting a little bit, did it just change and get a

**Gizmo:** little

**Senator:** better?

Yeah, I, I agree with that. Also, take a sip of the cognac that we're drinking. Yeah, let's talk about that and then draw the cigar immediately after.

**Gizmo:** Okay. Take

**Bam Bam:** your cough medicine boys.

**Pagoda:** madwell Dip.

**Gizmo:** Ooh. Oh yeah. Bam. You're not wrong on the cough syrup thing. Oh, it has that. Oh no.

**Poobah:** I think it's gotten better than cognac and opened up with a couple.

Everything's getting

**Bam Bam:** better for Puba tonight. Boys. .

**Poobah:** Hey. Sorry for being positive. I can be the negative guy a

**Gizmo:** lot. No, we like this guy. We like it. Yeah, we do like this. Puba. This is [00:18:00] good.

**Senator:** I think bam poisoned the well a little bit with the cough medicine comment. I

**Gizmo:** think that has a

**Senator:** cough. When I first had it, that's immediately what I got.

But I think in Pubi, use the word it's opened up. I think it has opened up where now you're not getting that nearly as much. And I also think that, I mean this is, um, there, so I should start with what we're drinking. So the listener actually knows what we're talking about. . We're, we're drinking, uh, H by Hein.

We've done Hein before. We did their rare V S O P, uh, H by Hein is also a V S O P of theirs, but it's more excessively priced. Hmm. They don't really tell you very clearly what the hell the distinction is between the two. , but I know the, the rare uh, vs O P is like 55 a bottle. This goes for 40. So much more

**Gizmo:** affordable.

But is it, is it rare for a manufacturer of cognac to have 200% VS SOPs or two XOs or whatever it might be like? That seems weird to me. It's very

**Senator:** odd. I mean when I picked this up for $40, I assumed that it was a vs. Ah, but it's A V S O P. Mm-hmm. I'm not sure. I mean I guess to their [00:19:00] credit, you know, the vs o p, it's aged longer, 40 years as opposed to two for the Vs.

So I guess it's nice to see them trying to produce A V S O P at a more accessible price point cuz all of them are in the 50 something buck range and up. Um, but I know the intent behind this is for cocktails that call for cognac to use this more than you would Sure. The 55 $5 bottle, little bottle. Um, it has some of the flavor notes of the Hein V S O P, but I don't think one, it's definitely not as smooth cuz I need ice with this.

Yeah. Um, and two. I mean, there's some of that cough medicine-y aspect that band mentioned. I don't think it's nearly as what I, it

**Gizmo:** has like a Robitussin type. Oh, it's a touch. It's just a

**Pagoda:** touch. Yeah.

**Bam Bam:** I don't, the touch, I'm not getting that. Is this, um, finished in, uh, what, what's it finished in

**Poobah:** Robitussin?

**Bam Bam:** Robitussin barrels? No, no, no, no, no, no.

It's

**Gizmo:** not that. No, it's not that bad. I'm kidding. It's not that I'm being facetious. Well, I am too, but

**Poobah:** not really. [00:20:00] Is it? You know, is it the Remy Martin? No,

**Bam Bam:** no, it's not the Hein

**Poobah:** rare, which is tremendous. No, but it's, but, but this with, with one cube of ice in it, one and a half or whatever, these little cubes that we have.

If

**Gizmo:** you have no ice in yours, I would strongly, I put my, I put some in mine. I didn't actually didn't sip it Neat. I I just put some ice after you guys tried it before we came on. Yeah, yeah. Um, here's the question. So we've been actually having trouble sourcing the. Vs. O p, the one that we did a few episodes ago, uh, that performed very nicely.

Yes. Hard to get. Were there a ton of these on the shelves

**Senator:** on this one? So I, I found this at one place that had this and, and did not have the rare, um, and then there are other places that have the rare, but they're sold out of it and don't sell this. So it, it's kind of a crab shoot. It's just tough. High is not, you have to look at it as, you know, in cognac, I mean like other spirits.

But I think especially cognac, the market is like so dominated by Hennessy, Remy Corvassier. I mean, these are owned by [00:21:00] giant conglomerates that have,

**Gizmo:** like I Remy Martin had a Super Bowl commercial this year. Yeah, exactly.

**Senator:** Yeah, they did . And so Hein is just not even a fraction, a meaningful fraction of the size of these other c.

So the distribution's just not nearly as, as deep. And so it's, it's a lot harder to source. But I think we love that Hein Rare. Rare V S O P. Excellent. Which is why I was willing to try something else. Yep. And they're XO I've never seen on shelves anymore. It's gonna be hard for us to find that. I wasn't

**Poobah:** there.

I wasn't in attendance. Did, did the Hein, V S O P, rare. Rare, yeah. Rate higher than the 17. Um,

**Gizmo:** I think it

**Pagoda:** was ide

**Bam Bam:** almost Puba. Yeah.

**Gizmo:** Okay. I'll pull it up right

**Poobah:** now. It was truly delicious. Really? Very good. That that's pretty good company. Yeah. I

**Gizmo:** really enjoyed it. Yeah, I did too. So the h the Hein rare, uh, vs. O p got a nine.

The. 1738 scored a 9.3 x. The Remy vs. O p got a 8.4. Okay. There you go. So there, that's some context as far as, um, where they [00:22:00] stand vs. O p ish. Yeah, yeah. Cognacs that we've done. And I like that we've done a block of cognac. I think that certainly for me, I know, you know, after we did 1738, I mean, I've, I, I've bought a case of it because I've enjoyed it that much as I kind of migrated away from single malt.

Of course,

**Poobah:** of course you you had to just buy kids cuz it's not readily available. That's what it does, .

**Gizmo:** Uh, but, you know, it, it's, uh, it's really found a nice place in my, my

**Bam Bam:** rotation. I don't know, I've learned how important the spirit of cognac is and what we do. It's really a very important spirit to have,

**Gizmo:** especially with a cigar.

Very important. It. Yeah, it's, it's a perfect marriage as far

**Bam Bam:** as the spirit goes. You know, before the podcast, most of us didn't know anything about it, knew

**Gizmo:** nothing, honestly knew nothing. None of us. None of us

**Senator:** drank it regularly. No, that's what was like the crime to me. Like I mentioned this obviously when we started cognac, this has been like a pet project for me and just wanting to learn why particularly cigar smokers appreciate cognac so much.

Mm-hmm. , as I mentioned, my dad would always drink cognac with a cigar and I thought it was so strange and so old school. Yep. And I [00:23:00] remember trying some Remy with him once, and I'm sitting there saying, this is pretty damn

**Gizmo:** good. Does he still drink cognac? Oh yeah. With his cigars. Nice. A hundred percent love's

**Senator:** cog.

That's cool. Love it. That's cool. And now I just, it's amazing. If you look at all, I mean, I would say the ma easily the majority of the time, if not like 70% of the time now you walk in our clubhouse, there's a cognac on the table and this is drinking cog. Pub is drinking cognac. I'm drinking cognac, bam.

Pagoda, I mean, any of us really. It's like become a staple now. It's

**Bam Bam:** an important part of our

**Poobah:** rotation. Truly important. I always have a bottle of Remy in my locker. Yeah, absolutely. At 1738. I always have. That's

**Gizmo:** a must. It's amazing. Must It's amazing. And it's so, it's, it's as, it's as very similarly priced I would think, to the, uh, the rare, right.

It is 55. They're the same about 55. So this one you said is 40 little bit more accessible. Um, and I think it's drinking kind of on par. Mm-hmm. with the pricing, uh, difference versus the rare.

**Bam Bam:** Not to go back to the stick, but it has turned, it's gotten creamy. Yeah, it's really good.

**Gizmo:** And it's [00:24:00] gotten creamier a

**Bam Bam:** little, a little bit of, uh, like a, um, it's got some honey, honey sweetness a bit, and bi, a little biscuity too.

Really nice.

**Poobah:** Yeah. Yeah. It, it changed for the better. I agreed, and maybe this is a good segue and I'm not sure it's, it's mostly the cigar, uh, no doubt. Um, but sometimes with on a, on a soft light with the soft lighter, with these smaller ring gauge cigars, you could hypothesize it, maybe you can get off to a better start.

**Gizmo:** Um, versus using the boot, uh, the, the, the jet maybe the butane jet,

**Poobah:** maybe. I'm not saying like definitely, but it, it, it, it, the, I like a soft flame indoors on a, on a cigar sometimes. I just think it gets you off to a little bit better of a start, a smoother start, just my opinion. And, and like so in the old lounge, Like I would always use the matches.

Yeah. Almost, almost always just go to the matches. Cuz the matches, they had the long matches, they were always there and they were available. It's like, well why [00:25:00] wouldn't I use the matches? Mm-hmm. to light the cigar. If unlimited long matches, I'm going to use the matche. And so when you, I'll tee that up, I'll tee that up for the,

**Gizmo:** the

**Senator:** discussion.

Discussion when you joined. I'm sure the match expenses at that lounge like tripled

**Gizmo:** me. , he'd go through a box and then after I left,

**Poobah:** rooster was still there. He was still taking . Um, anyway, but I'll tee that up because I, cuz we were talking about cigars accessories too. And then, and I think for me, um, a soft flame lighter may be in my future.

**Gizmo:** So I would say for me, I, I am not antis soft flame, however. . I just, I think if you toast responsibly with a, with a jet, totally agree. Sure. I think you can get it done. A

**Bam Bam:** single jet. Single jet that's pulled away from the foot. Yeah. Lightly toasting it. And as it gets red and red and red, you're good to go.

Yeah, totally. You'd be gentle with it. Now

**Gizmo:** I want to hear what, what rooster has to say. Cuz you're a big, soft flame guy as well. Yes, he is. Like Puba said,

**Rooster:** indoor. Soft flame, my man [00:26:00] outdoors. Jet flame,

**Pagoda:** all over the soft flame. Sometimes you don't get an even.

**Senator:** He's right. Well, that, that's my issue. So he's right.

I'm not, I don't knock soft flame. I think there's a place for it. I, I've not had terrible experiences with it. For me, just what happens sometimes where I, I appreciate the precision of the, the jet is. Sometimes either it's catching too much of the wrapper or not a part of the foot that I is not fully lit yet, so it's just harder for me to get that perfect light where with the torch it's so easy to just like, yeah, very precisely.

Get where I want

**Rooster:** go. Yeah. The, the only problem that I have with soft flame is, you know, a lot of the DuPont lighters, the Dun downhill lighters, which are, you know, they're, they're pricey. Mm-hmm. , they need maintenance. Yeah. You need to send 'em away, like once every one to two years and spend like 70, 80 bucks

**Gizmo:** really to have them serviced.

Yeah. Wow. That doesn't work. I, and that's even if you're using their butane. Right. Using their butane. Wow. Interesting. Wow. So

**Bam Bam:** I like it. . Yeah. [00:27:00] Right, exactly.

**Senator:** Maintenance. I

**Gizmo:** mean, you don't have to but your lighter's on a subscription

**Poobah:** also. But, but, but why not? But, but also the thing is a match. Use a match. I mean, if I was.

Dr. Joe, let's go back to Dr. Joe .

**Gizmo:** Dr. Joe, by the way, I love going to watching his videos. He's the

**Poobah:** best, he's the best, the best of all time. The, if you go back to, he always used the swan matches, which are hard to find now, almost impossible. Um, but those were great cigar matches that at one time were more readily available, um, than they are now.

They're not really that available, but my point is, you would always light a cigar with a mat. Cause if you're, if you're inside, why not take the time to light it with a match? Yeah. And I also think there's a, there's a, there's, there's a functional aspect to it and there's also a romantic aspect to it in lighting.

A cigar. Well, yes, a traditional aspect to lighting this. Should I turn the lights? Well, lighting a cigar with a match. Yeah, it's Now you guys, you can, you can, you can be say, I want precision, I want this, [00:28:00] that, and the other thing, or no, I, I It's

**Bam Bam:** whatever you want. I tend to agree with what, when I first started smoking cigars, I exclusively lit my cigars with a soft flame.

A match like that's got

**Gizmo:** some match's. Got match. Cricket. Cricket. The goat is ready to light his grill. . Yeah.

**Poobah:** It's look like grill matches,

**Gizmo:** but yeah, it's called

**Pagoda:** cricket.

**Bam Bam:** It was lying around here, by the way. It's called cricket. It still works. That matches. It still

**Gizmo:** works, you know, going,

**Rooster:** going back to the cigar for a bit.

I just read this cigar. There is some media tempo. Yeah. Uh, tobacco in it, which, , which is rare. You don't find that in a lot

**Gizmo:** of cigars. Yeah. That's, that's the cohiba special is

**Rooster:** the, the use of the only, only 10% of the tobacco plants, you know, are like media Tampa. It's the tip top. The plant itself, the tobacco plant, the media Tampa.

It's not, it's not every tobacco plant has that leaf. Mm-hmm. No. Yeah. So it's only 10% of tobacco plants.

**Gizmo:** It's pretty rare. It's maybe a, which is, you know, not to dive into a Cuba thing, but is, you know, media that, that [00:29:00] part of the leaf, you know, that part of the plant, that leaf is very, uh, core to the cohiba.

Line their brand. And the, the question is, is are they able to produce enough of it to produce at scale? So that people have said that, like Bek and stuff, you smoke a behi from 2012 versus a behi from 20 or 22. I've heard this. It's a significant change in flavor. Does a drop in immediate temple. That's right.

The amount of, of that, that belief that they need. Because when the cigar came out 10 years ago, certainly it wasn't in the demand mm-hmm. and at the price that it is now. So it's a big driver of their, of their revenue. But anyway, um, it is cool that it's, it's part of the cigar that also could be contributing to the different kind of flavor stuff that, that you, you're getting

**Bam Bam:** here, getting peppery and, and more of a boulder

**Gizmo:** knowing Yeah.

The cigar

**Rooster:** has actually lost that little bit of harshness that

**Gizmo:** I think we're

**Bam Bam:** all kinda

**Gizmo:** getting's, like PBA said. Yeah. It's, yeah, that's, oh, for sure that's gone away.

**Poobah:** Um, a, a, a bit, it's still in the background, but mm-hmm. , but much

**Gizmo:** less prominent. So I gotta go back [00:30:00] to the match thing. So my problem with matches is I just don't wanna work.

At lighting my cigar, like it's not romantic to me. It's work. You need patience.

**Poobah:** Well, you need patience. So, so yeah. It is, it's a, from the ritual of it, for me, I enjoy from time to time and I respect

**Gizmo:** that, but I don't, it, it's not a ritual to me. It's a pain in the ass. But Pu has gizmo.

**Senator:** We, we know you don't have patience.

Yes.

**Gizmo:** None of you say it. It's very simple. It's like fore.

**Pagoda:** Pub has steady hands. You need

**Gizmo:** steady hand

**Poobah:** with a mask. I

**Gizmo:** mean, I don't know. I, I, it, it's, I respect it. I just, um, steady

**Bam Bam:** hands in foreplay as well.

**Poobah:** A little bit of the ritual. I think you can, I think when you, if there's a certain, you know, and also too, based on the draw of the cigar sometimes, so in basing the construction of the cigar and everything and how it's been conditioned, there have been times, um, when I've been with you guys and, uh, particularly with the cigar, this ring gauge where it would take one match to it would've taken, would've taken one match.

And yeah, I would've said, I would've said, Hmm, I got [00:31:00] this, this thing would up just perfectly with one match. If

**Gizmo:** you're lighting a 54 ring gauge, you're gonna, it's gonna be a little bit different. It's gonna be a

**Poobah:** little bit different. It'll, it'll be tough. Sure, yeah, sure. But this, this, this type of cigar, 30.

you know, you just light it up with one match. Mm-hmm. And you kind of go, oh, I bet this with one match. And you take pride in that and you

**Senator:** move on with your life. Well, you, you know, who has strong feelings about this? Apparently? Who? Rocky

**Gizmo:** Patel. Yeah. . He doesn't approve a match. Right.

**Senator:** I've told this story before.

Yeah. I was in a burn by Rocky Patel Lounge, and I'm looking, I bought several cigars there. I'm looking everywhere. There's no matches on any of the tables throughout the whole place. I'm trying to find a person that hopefully has a torch on them, one of the servers, no one's around. I finally go up to the woman I bought the cigars from and I said, I've been waiting 15 minutes.

I can't find matches on any table. No one's come around to lit my cigar. What? What's going on here? She goes, Rocky Patel doesn't believe in matches. I was fucking stunned. I don't even use matches that often, and I just think it's [00:32:00] ridiculous to be a cigar lounge and not

**Gizmo:** have matches. I wonder if that's in the employee manual, like that's like one of the tenants of the business.

Like if it's a

**Bam Bam:** thing for him, I wouldn't be surprised. It's like

**Poobah:** if you went to,

**Senator:** well, actually we probably know why he doesn't like matches. He can't monetize them . He can, he can't sell them at a Fred Faith. It's

**Poobah:** not a commercial it, it's not commercially beneficial. business, baby business. Totally, and I respect that.

By the way, Rocky, your commercial don't in business manager your com, your commercial operation is something else, but it's like if you went to French Laundry and then this is very hypothetical. Maybe not

**Gizmo:** for some clearly varied, clearly exceptionally,

**Poobah:** hypothetically. But, but, but, but if you went to French Laundry right?

And you're a Tom Keller restaurant. Yeah. We eat there every day and, and we eat there every day. , I'm just saying to the restaurant. No, no, no, I'm just saying. So like, and they have all, they have like these vintage cigars there that you can buy, right? Yep. And you buy one of these from the sixties, I've heard.

Yeah. Like pre, pre embargo, shit. Everything else. Are you gonna light a pre embargo ci? with a torch or are you gonna [00:33:00] light it with a proper match? I would light it with a proper match. That's how I would

**Gizmo:** go. Actually,

**Senator:** I'd light it with a torch so I don't rooster ruining that rapper. rooster. What do you say ruining the rapper?

**Poobah:** Would the I I, no, no, no. I take a little bit of exception to that because I think it's a sagar, the, the kind of cigar fishing out that you are that you would be able to properly light cigar. I agree. .

**Gizmo:** I need like

**Poobah:** hypothetical voice. Hypothetical. You're telling me you can't get a good, proper light. Okay.

Maybe it takes you a few matches and a few extra minutes. You're a hypothe hypothetical. I have confidence that you could light, get a good, proper

**Bam Bam:** light. You know the number

**Pagoda:** of trees they have to cut down for those matches. I'm

**Bam Bam:** kidding. .

**Poobah:** I'm just saying that's what I would do.

**Gizmo:** Listen that Am I wrong? Is wrong, rooster?

Am I

**Poobah:** wrong? That is the I Light. Light That motherfucker with a max .

**Gizmo:** That is, that is an absolute dear. That is an absolute. Crazy hypo, uh, hypothetical situation. in that you're, you're at, what'd you call it? French. What is it, [00:34:00] Fran?

**Poobah:** I'm just saying French laundry, like out in, you know, California? Yeah, yeah. I'm just saying

**Senator:** Gizmo just said what you call it, like you up the restaurant

**Bam Bam:** Okay. It's in Paterson. It's a restaurant. .

**Gizmo:** No, no, no. I'm not making fun. I've never heard of it. First of all, I've certainly never eaten there. Wow. You've never heard the French laundry? Oh, listen, it's a famous book

**Rooster:** called The French Laundry.

**Gizmo:** Alright,

**Senator:** look, every show this transformation with Gizmo, he's wearing button downs.

He's got fancy cases, , fancy tower. This is the next step. We gotta, gotta get you to know some of the best restaurants in the world.

**Pagoda:** There was also a French laundry right below my high

**Bam Bam:** rise in New York City. Yeah. I called the bridge for him. It's not a, I can assure you no one in this room has eaten there.

No. Okay. So

**Gizmo:** you have to Good reservations. I I, I just wanna get back to this because the other thing about soft. That I think is challenging is I, I, I think it's difficult to get a good soft flame lighter at a reasonable price. You found one? No. Well that one it's mediocre and it's a half jet, half soft flame.

It's [00:35:00] called Bic, b i c. No, you don't. All those, all the zippos are soft fla. Yeah, those are soft flame. But what I'm saying is was like carro scene. So you don't want, yeah, you don't wanna use

**Poobah:** kerosene. You wanna use Butan. If you were on St. James Street and you happen to walk into Ed into the Davidoff store, and Edward, uh, Shaha and yeah.

Would, would offer hypothetically offer you a cigar? ? He would, he, and he would say, I'm gonna offer you a, I know hypothetically, but then

**Gizmo:** he offers hypothetically you're with the one top people in cigars ever. I'm just saying.

**Poobah:** He would probably, he would probably light his cigar with, he's lighting his cigar with a match.

What if Winston

**Senator:** Churchill was handing

me

**Poobah:** a cigar? I then he, he would definitely light it with a match. Yeah. Yeah. They

**Pagoda:** didn't have lighters than those days. .

**Bam Bam:** I'm kidding.

**Poobah:** I don't know why everyone's making fun of me. I'm just saying I'm not making,

**Senator:** you're hypotheticals are very specific and we love

**Poobah:** them.

I'm just, I'm just saying in other words like, like, okay, so that's that situation. We smoke some pretty good cigars. Sure. So why not consider lighting? All right. It's a match once in a while.

**Gizmo:** That's all. Let's say

**Rooster:** you have a, it kind of enhances the [00:36:00] experience when you're, you know, you're lighting a cigar, it's a soft flame.

It, you know, what is cigars? Cigars are all about taking time. You're not rushing it. You're not lighting a cigarette, right? Sure. You're gonna smoke the cigar for two hours. So if it takes like an extra minute to light

**Gizmo:** a cigar, that, okay. Those are fair arguments,

**Poobah:** functional benefits to it as well in that you really.

When you, you, you, you toast that, you, you toast the foot of the cigar with the soft flame. It has a very nice effect that you have. You're, you're mitigating, you know, heating up the foot of the cigar at the start of the smoke and creating a, it, it, it, it's, it's very effective indoors and to, and it can, and it can get a cigar off to a really good start.

I

**Gizmo:** would think that an aged ci cigar though, that's, that's, I think I, that kinda well accepted cigar point of view. It kind of, it kind of touches, I I, I'm with you on this. If you have an aged cigar that's maybe a little delicate, certainly a Cuban that's got some time on it, the rapper's very thin. It's been in a box forever.

That, that [00:37:00] logically for me, wa like putting the romance and the time and the, the ritual assigned logic like that has a very logical application. Yeah. And a

**Poobah:** cigar with the match isn't that hard either. Like it's right, like

**Bam Bam:** totally rocket science. I wanna pi well I wanna piggyback right on what you just said.

If you have a very expensive, rare Cuban cigar with a very thin wrapper, , unless you're experienced on lighting a cigar with a match, you can burn the wrapper before you get the toast. I think it's the opposite. Well, if you're good at it, if you know what you're doing there, there's a risk there. I love the very soft jet flame.

I can control it to within a 16th of an inch. I know exactly where it's going. Ooh. Yeah, I'm just saying.

**Gizmo:** Spoken

**Senator:** like a true architect. Just saying

**Bam Bam:** 16th of an inch ,

**Poobah:** actually, or no, I don't. I think it's a, I don't think it's a polarizing topic. No, no,

**Gizmo:** no. Not at all. Listen, we can make anything polarizing here.

Can I just offer, I mean, really, can

**Senator:** I just offer a solution to this, the next one of our upcoming episodes? I think all of us great idea [00:38:00] should have to light the cigar with a match. Let's try it. I think the ma

**Pagoda:** the thing is, it, it's all important to understand that it's fun. Matches for cigars are at least three, three and a half inches long.

You, you're not talking about the

**Gizmo:** small matches back. Yeah. You gotta get a good one. That's correct. The davidoff ones, the Puba hat. I, I would think they were probably they more interest. They

**Poobah:** were great. I went through the matches you brought me from Cuba. Yeah. The partys matches. Yep. Which were fantastic.

They're

**Gizmo:** good matches. They are fan fucking. Guess what? Fantastic. I'm gonna bring you some more. He's gonna

**Poobah:** be there. He's coming. He's coming. Yeah, he's coming. They really are. Great matches those, for whatever reason, those are better than, the davidoff matches way better for whatever reason. I mean, they just light up and you just, I'm saving those, uh, they're fantastic matches.

**Gizmo:** Listen, I went through, listen those, listen, if you come to Cuba, oh, Dallas at the party shop is gonna give you a bag of matches. Oh, they're fantastic. Matche. I think she would love him actually. Yeah, she would. She would love him. She's amazing. There's, there

**Rooster:** are not too many lighters that offer both flames in one lighter.

Yeah. I think [00:39:00] that's, you know, that's an

**Gizmo:** advantage. There's one, I found that one from Amazon. It was cheap, but it it works great.

**Poobah:** No, there's one, there's one from the

**Gizmo:** DuPont, the DuPont La Grande. The grand offers the, uh, how much is that? Yeah, two thousand's. A grand. Oh,

**Bam Bam:** great. Let's get it. They are

**Gizmo:** hypothetically hug your bucks.

hypothetically, you drop two grand on a lighter. It's perfect. Well after, after

**Rooster:** you have a. French laundry, , you know, you, you blew a grand for a, for

**Poobah:** a lunch . No, but I, yeah, but matches work just as

**Gizmo:** well. Yeah, they do. That's true. So the, you know, the list, uh, we referenced, I ordered a, a, a dual soft flame jet from Amazon.

I think it was like 12 bucks. The only complaint I have is it doesn't have a big tank, but it works fine. I don't really use the soft flame very much. Mm-hmm. , sometimes I'll use it, you know, just to touch up or cuz I feel like playing with it. But, you know, um, I'm always on a jet, like you said. I feel like the precision thing for me, precision's important.

Now the, the point that Puma made I think is valid is in heating up the cigar too much. Yeah. You certainly risk that with, that's also a problem with the

**Senator:** jet. Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's fair. I [00:40:00] mean, we're poop's argument. Makes a lot of sense. One of the things that pains me, we've all seen this. You, you're sitting in a cigar lounge and you watch a guy take out a torch that could make a creme burlee, it's awful.

And he's just burning the shit out of the cigar, trying to light it, and you're sitting there black, like

**Bam Bam:** you're ruining it and the foot of the

**Senator:** cigar is black. And the foot, the hat to your point is soft flame. That's impossible

**Gizmo:** to really, by the way, the only guy in this, like, I just wanna say, the only guy in the lizards that carries a a, a creem.

Here's Puba.

**Poobah:** Well, that was only because I was at L. That was only because I was on lbi and I stopped at a 7-Eleven and there you go. And I was smoking cigars in extremely high winds on the beach. There you go.

**Gizmo:** And then you burn through your case wind . That was true. Almost started to

**Senator:** fire in our clubhouse

**Gizmo:** That's true too.

**Poobah:** That's true too. Hey, listen man, I'm with the jet all the time. I, technically, I'm just saying I love the long matches, but you know, the thing is with the matches, which is interesting not to beat this horse to death, but, but it's hard to find good long matches. Yeah. I, I, [00:41:00] I, that are appropriate for cigars.

Um, for me, I don't, if a listener, if you're out there. and, and you have a good source for like the swans. You know, you look in the swan, the swan matches seem to be expensive. They're like not really made by the same company that used to be made by. Um, if there's somebody out there who has good long matches to recommend, just email us about Cricket.

What? Those aren't the one

**Gizmo:** No. Aren't the ones I'm.

**Rooster:** What about cedar strips?

**Gizmo:** Oh, cedar strips.

**Poobah:** Oh, yeah. Yeah. A cedar spill. You know, we used to use those. Yeah, I used to bring those to the, uh, I have never used North, used North used to bring those to the other rounds North. Yeah. Yeah. The, the other, uh, no, the um, Dave it off lounge.

Yeah. All the time. Yeah. By the way, if I take the top of the padron box and I'd split it up and I'd put it in and I'd light a cedar spill with the torch and then use the cedar spill. Uh, I've

**Gizmo:** never done that, actually.

**Poobah:** Never light a [00:42:00] cigar that, that I used to do a lot, but here, for some reason, I, at this place, I just feel like I don't have the real estate.

Move around, move your elbows. I don't, no, no, no, no to, I don't know. I just haven't done it in a while. Get it. But I used to do it back there all the

**Gizmo:** time. We

**Senator:** should try that as well. All right, so we're gonna do, I think I actually, it's so funny. I think I might, I have to find them. Have a bunch of these.

Cool. Cuz um, when I ordered. Bam. Uh, his Christmas gift, uh, of like, which, ooh, I will never cigar Vicon calendar. Never forget that gift. , she actually sent me with it a ton of those cedar spills. I, I a whole bundle

**Gizmo:** with that. Well, every single box of every box box cigars that you have

**Senator:** top, but these are like really ni like they're already, you know, cut out.

You don't have to like, tear apart the, the cedar. They're like already in. Perfect.

**Gizmo:** It just

**Poobah:** break it, it breaks on. It breaks

**Senator:** so easy. I'll use the cigar vx and once you too can break apart all the cedar you want ? No, I wanna use the cigar vx. Ah, now

**Poobah:** you wanna use Yeah, you do. Yeah. No, but actually to, it's, I'm glad [00:43:00] you guys brought it up.

Cuz I used to use those cedar spills all the time. I've never used one and I used to carry 'em in my solo case and use those. I used to light it with a jet and then,

**Gizmo:** oh, look at that. At daddy's write the cedar spill with jet's critical. You gotta write critical,

**Rooster:** you gotta light it with a match first and then use that.

**Poobah:** It doesn't really matter. Once. It's what? Once it's when it's burning. It's,

**Gizmo:** it's,

**Bam Bam:** we are down the rabbit hole now, Janice. No, but down the rabbit hole.

**Pagoda:** By the way, Carnegie, when you, before Covid, if you went, they would light a cedar, uh, one of these cedar spells and, and light your cigar for you.

**Gizmo:** Really? It's a very nice way to light a cigar.

They

**Senator:** gotta, now, now Cedars bills transmit covid. I guess so. They can't . They can't do

**Gizmo:** it. No. It's like, uh, yeah, only after nine.

**Rooster:** They still do that at the hotel National.

**Gizmo:** If you inside. Oh, inside. Inside, inside. We didn't sit inside when we were in here. Yeah. We're only in the outside. The woman likes, it's really nice.

**Poobah:** Really nice. With the cedar spot. I

**Gizmo:** like that. It'll be a let in. We will all boys. We're about halfway through [00:44:00] here on the Lato number two half of

**Poobah:** Goldy. More than that. More than me.

**Gizmo:** I have more than that. Yeah. Really. I feel like I got about three inches here. It has really gotten better and better. I think it's very delicious for me.

Yeah. I'm really enjoying it. I agree. Yep. Um, it's at this point, I mean, we're not into the last third yet at this point. It's not. Something that I'm gonna go out and buy more of. I would say like, it's not, it's not wowing me, but it's, it's, it's pretty damn good. It's

**Bam Bam:** good. There's some sophistication at this point of the cigar for me.

Yeah.

**Senator:** I think it's, it's satisfying. Yeah. It's just, um, it's not the traditional flavor profile that I like. Say I wanna buy boxes and regularly smoke. Yeah. But if someone gave me this, I'd be very satisfied. Yeah. Um, I don't have any major complaints,

**Pagoda:** but I'm not getting a ton of flavor at all now. Nocia. Wow.

**Bam Bam:** No. Surprising. I am.

**Senator:** Oh yeah, me too. I'm getting a lot here. And I would also say, I think Rooster said this started medium, which I agree, but I think now it's medium full. I agree with you.

**Gizmo:** That

**Bam Bam:** and then very nice, creamy way.

**Gizmo:** Oh yeah. [00:45:00] Yeah. But

**Rooster:** I don't, I don't know if

**Gizmo:** I would pay $23 worth it. That's the problem.

No, that's a great point. The price is, I mean, this cigar to me, if it was 13 bucks Oh, way, way more in line at 23 or 20 or whatever it was, it's, it's not there. I'll affect this. It's not there.

**Poobah:** Yeah. It's, it's not my thing, but it's not bad. No. I mean, I, I smoked through it. It's not your jam . No, but, but it's good.

Yeah. I mean it's, the construction was real good. Yeah. And then the burn was good.

**Gizmo:** And yeah. So these have been in my tower for like, Probably three, four weeks. Got them from, uh, a listener. The question here is,

**Senator:** is this in the new tower?

**Gizmo:** It's in the new tower. Oh, it's in the new tower. Ooh, it's in the vault.

Absolutely. How, how are the humidity situation? It's excellent. This can be very stressful for you. It is, and the humidity situation is very stressful for me. I bird dog it like a crazy. . Yep. I have switches. I [00:46:00] have wifi, I have Bluetooth. Can

**Senator:** I just say my favorite thing switches, . Can I just say my favorite thing?

So Gizmo's been texting us like a zillion messages about his humidity situation with this new tower . Like the day he gets another tower, which will probably, you'll need a bigger one next year, next month. I cannot even imagine. But my favorite one, he's got everything dialed in. He's got everything within how, how many tenths

**Gizmo:** of a percent?

Uh oh. I mean, it's all in, it's nailed. I mean, it's nailed . There's no variation, but,

**Senator:** but my favorite part is he goes, he goes, and I just put in a, a wifi enabled switch so I can turn the power off to the whole unit remotely in case there's an issue and I need to reset the cigar waste. You never know. We started dying.

Listen,

**Gizmo:** say the computer board fries. Next thing you know, he is gonna

**Senator:** have life alert for his like tower. I mean,

**Poobah:** this is incredible. The thing that's funny is that. Maybe it's where my tower is, is at in my house. Yeah. It could, the homeostasis there could be just Okay. But I [00:47:00] have one, what's the big size be Veda?

The 3 23 20. The three 20. So I have 1 3 20 pack in the middle of the tower. That's a, that's a 68. It keeps the whole thing. The top is 63 and the bottom is 62. And it keeps me and, and and, and it's, wow. It's that complete homeostasis at all times. That's awesome. That's fine. Like there's, there's, so if I go to Florida or something like that, when I was down for a few weeks, I checked in once a week and was like, had my son go down and be like, George, just take a look at the tower.

Nothing, nothing moves. So, so I don't listen. I'm preparing a lot of inevitable is the environment that's, that it's in. Yeah. Too. Like, you know, we all have D different

**Gizmo:** houses and different things. That's exactly it. So here's different stuff. Here's the answer to,

**Poobah:** so senators, the mine's in my basement, so it's probably more humid down there.

I don't have to worry as much.

**Gizmo:** Right. Senator is trying to tee me up to say that the cigar oasis situation, which I'm in now, we, which we could talk about. Oh, [00:48:00] I actually wasn't, but

**Senator:** I'm glad you Yes, please do. So I've only been saying this for years.

**Gizmo:** No, so the problem is, is I've actually moved the location of the tower, so my ambient.

Humidity was a major problem in where I had it because it was right near the door where the dog is constantly being put out into the backyard. Oh, that's horrible. Yeah. Horrible. Yeah. Yeah. So I moved it on the other side of the wall in a different room. So the oasis for me is just providing perfection.

If I put my other unit where this is the Remington, that lizard Sean actually bought a listener. Mm-hmm. . Um, it would've been perfect. I should have died. I have the lizard

**Senator:** cause I have the Remington. He would've needed kitty litter in

**Rooster:** that he said unit.

**Poobah:** Well, no, he did say unit. He said unit Rooster. You like that

Um, well, the Remington has that seal on it. It's like a refrigerator. So it does, it, it

**Gizmo:** it stays stable. I was very dis, I was very depressed, by the way. Even though I had the new vault, I was very depressed putting that remming. On the truck with Sean. Ah, I was bummed out, man, seeing that, [00:49:00] because it was the first, I bought that two years ago during Covid, like it was Did you video

**Bam Bam:** the, the removal of the film, the biggest,

**Gizmo:** it's like watching your child grow up and golf.

Exactly. Well, the,

**Poobah:** the biggest virtue emp empty nest. The biggest virtue to me about that humidor is just, is the seal. It's very tight. Yeah. Yeah.

**Bam Bam:** There's nothing in, it's a refrigerator.

**Gizmo:** Yeah. Literally. So the but the cigar, so I, so I purchased it is, it is, yeah. I purchased, uh, I purchased a, a, a vault, uh, from Vigilant up in, I think they're in New Hampshire or something.

And, uh, I spec, I asked them to not put a humidification unit in. They have their own, but I wanted, Something that had wifi control and whatnot. So I put an oasis in it. 3.0. 3.0. I have the auxiliary fans at the top, which are, which are moving air for me. Um, it, it's really, it's really

**Bam Bam:** amazing. What, so where are your numbers

**Gizmo:** at now?

Top to bottom? So, uh, top I have it 60 where my singles are, and some of the stuff that I'm smoking regularly. I, I like my Cubans at 60 when I smoked them. Mm-hmm. , uh, the middle's in like 62, 63. Ah, look at this. And the bottom [00:50:00] I have at 65. Listen to this guy. Yeah. It's like I have it. So precise, dude. So precise.

Wow. And I got a shout out. The people at Cigar Oasis. Oh, they're great. Let's add on. Not only is the product Excellent, you call that phone number for support. You got a human being immediately. There's no push one for this. Push two for that. In Philippines. No, they're in New York. It's ai, they're in New York.

This woman, Mary picks up the phone every time I call. Any issue or question I had connecting it to wifi. I had an issue with my remote. They handled it. I had it all the next day. I mean

**Senator:** it was amazing. The same woman Gizz is talking about, when I got a Oasis a few years ago, I had for some reason really hard time connecting it to wifi because the unit's meant to be on a 2.0 network and mine's 5.0, whatever the thing is.

She spent no exaggeration an hour on the phone with me getting it all sorted out. It's amazing. Customer service is fantastic.

**Pagoda:** Unfortunately they're amazing. They're calling at the same time and I couldn't get

**Bam Bam:** through . [00:51:00]

**Gizmo:** No. They are really amazing and the unit has just been, it's performing brilliantly for me and I, you know, I, I couldn't be happier.

The one thing I will say, I, I think Rooster can attest to this cuz he saw it in person. , I, I opted for the additional, the l e d light strip to be installed in the actual unit. And it just, it looks so good that my wife is even thrilled with how it looks. Yeah, cool. Just because it's like a soft white l e d strip and it lights it perfectly.

It's like really a, a, a, a piece of furniture. I'm really, really proud. Do you also

**Pagoda:** have a, looks saying open, O P E N, ?

**Gizmo:** He said it. No. How

**Senator:** you were calling it the unit. How was the delivery process? Vigilant.

**Gizmo:** So, so vigilance, the delivery was great. Isn't, am I

**Bam Bam:** hearing Beavis and Butthead in a corner over here?

Yeah,

**Gizmo:** that's Rooster and Pagoda. or Rooster and Puba. Excuse me. Um, The delivery process was great. I think they have a people problem. I mean, I, I, I don't know, they have a lot of work going on, so it was just tough to get things moving. I know Rooster's been fighting to get his [00:52:00] unit specked and ordered, but um, I ordered it late September.

Everything's made to order, there's nothing in stock and I got it, uh, you know, just a few weeks ago. Nice. So, yeah. Yeah. I

**Senator:** think they do, they do like a lot of like big commercial Yeah. Michael Jordan stuff. Yeah. I mean, it was funny. I just poking around their website. Um, I'm looking at one of the photos and I'm like, oh, that's awfully familiar.

The cigar bar I love in DC uh, Shelly's, they did all their lockers there. Yeah,

**Rooster:** they do a lot of wine,

**Gizmo:** uh, storage. Yeah, they do a lot of wine stuff. Cool. Yeah. Oh, that's

**Bam Bam:** great. I'm shocked you got your entire inventory. Nothing.

**Gizmo:** I did. I'm I'm completely outta Tupperware. It's unbelievable. I'm completely outta t war.

You look like you even

**Senator:** have extra

**Gizmo:** space in there. It's crazy. I really, so I really don't in the, in the case that I do want there to be the ability for air movement. Yeah. It's important. So I didn't wanna pack it so much. Like I could probably fit a few more slide lid box. Um, in there, but I can't fit, like, like this LA Paul box that we're looking at here.

Mm-hmm. this 10 count. It's like, kind of like a, a, you know, a, a pop open lid. I couldn't do any more patron drone boxes, like mm-hmm. , I'm [00:53:00] definitely at the max point. Yeah. And

**Bam Bam:** I unloaded my tower when I sent you guys the photograph. It was a Tetris project and it was fully jammed. Yeah. I took stuff out. Yeah.

And I'm back in. Some of it's in the Tupper. I'm happy I didn't have to do it for air. It's important for

**Senator:** air movement. So for the lizard record, you've, you've said you're on a freeze now. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

**Gizmo:** Which, let's, let's see, which, uh, I, I, I, I hesitate to bring this up, but, uh, a, a lizard listener of ours, mile High Cigar Guy out of, uh, out of Denver, uh, sent an all caps email.

The subject is Gizmo Intervention needed a S A P, to whom it may. Gizmo . As a fellow lizard with no self-control. I find it very concerning and discouraging that our fearless leader, gizmo, has conveniently ran out of space in his new tower already and says he's not going back to Tupperware storage to Senator Bam, pagoda, Puba Rooster and Grindr and all the fellow fellow lizards worldwide.

How [00:54:00] are we going to let this happen? I have his address and we'll be sending some Husky storage containers. I need lizards tea tonight with me. .

**Senator:** Now I have to say URA

**Gizmo:** works great. It does. I was top,

**Senator:** I have to say. You said you were on a freeze. I am. I did laugh the other day. I believe someone. You know what?

By the name of Gizmo posted. Anyone have a young punch, punch or

**Gizmo:** box. Okay. All right, good. Good point there. Uh, Senator, so here's my new policy. I'm only buying cigars that we're gonna smoke on the podcast or. I'm only buying cigars that when I finish a box, I'm gonna replace it. That's my new, that's my new policy.

I refuse to go back into Tupperware. Wow. Why? Because a, I have plenty of cigars and I need to exert some self-control, despite what my high cigars says.

**Poobah:** cigars. That's probably, that's probably good. I think most of us feedback internal feedback, you know, like that's a good, you're listening to a voice in your head.

That's good. [00:55:00] I'm listening to a

**Gizmo:** lot of, to

**Poobah:** myself. Very introspective. .

**Gizmo:** Giz. This is Giz Gizmo. This is Gizmo. You're on a freeze . I am on a freeze officially. So I did, I did, I did pick up some, uh, ho uh, ho el Elegant for us. There you go. For the podcast. Nice. I can't, oh, I only got six of them. Can't wait. Try that.

Yeah. So, you know, I like, uh, that's, that's the move. Now I'm gonna focus my buying on podcast cigars, or if I run outta something, I'm gonna replace it. So, , Mrs. Gizmo

**Senator:** must be

**Gizmo:** very pleased. Yeah, she is, she is proud of me that there's, there's seven Tupperware containers that are completely empty. She could put her

**Bam Bam:** winter clothes

**Gizmo:** in there now.

Yep. She's putting pictures and stuff in there now, so, yeah, she's, she's

**Pagoda:** soon there'll be enough money for French laundry. .

**Bam Bam:** Yeah, , hypothetically,

**Gizmo:** hypothetically a trip to Napa Valley. Maybe a trip there quick. I might be able to go to the moon if I stop. Quick Meal and back . So, yeah, I'm, I'm, I can't say it enough.

I'm very, very happy with, with my setup, man. It's fantastic. And I was able to help, uh, lizard [00:56:00] Sean, who's a listener, start, he found us in November and, uh, binged every episode since November, uh, that we've ever done. And, uh, found out when he, you know, saw my post that, uh, he, he brought it up and ended up that he was a huge fan of the pot and kind of put the pieces together that it was me in it, you know, it was just a really great experience.

We had a great day. Had some five guys and, uh, loaded the tower out and he's, he's loving it. He posted a photo of his tower. Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. And he hasn't in a great spot. You know, I kind of explained to 'em the challenges that I had with my ambient situation with the dog going in and out constantly.

**Senator:** Did you include a bag

**Gizmo:** of kitty litter for him? No, but I did give him my fan . I did give him my, uh, my battery powered fan. That's a homemade custom. Yeah. There's only three of those in the world. That's a Gimo fan. There's only three of those in the world. Custom, custom GIZ fan. So, So, yeah, I'm very, very happy with it though.

I can't wait you guys to

**Poobah:** go over and I had 1.0 failed .

**Bam Bam:** You need a maintenance plan. Need

**Gizmo:** out? Have a description model. Yeah, send it out. Send it out to Gizmo [00:57:00] Gizmo ink. It's, it's only, it's $70 once a

**Bam Bam:** month. I like that actually. Gizmo ink. That's

**Gizmo:** cool. I bet it's cool. Pub never charged the, he never charged the batteries.

I

**Poobah:** did charge them. I

**Gizmo:** bought a charger. Did you charge it though? It doesn't do it itself. I

**Senator:** did, he plugged his iPhone charger and it didn't work. It .

**Gizmo:** I gotta say though, the other thing about the cigar oasis too, that I really like, you know, the, the vault that I have is actually shorter. It's not as tall as the, the Remington, it's wider.

I was actually surprised when the crate came in. I was like, Jesus, did they send like the wrong thing? And uh, it's just, there's just so much more room in it because the shelves are. , they have a gap in the back of about three inches for airflow and stuff. Oh, that's cool. Um, it, it, it, I was able to fit everything in there.

No problem. I have a tray, a cedar tray that I got on Amazon, Cedar tray for Cubans at the top, and I have a cedar tray of loose, uh, for loosies, you know? Mm-hmm. , uh, for loose cigars. I have a cedar tray for,

**Senator:** uh oh. No, we're sure you have a trade just for Lucy. Oh, I have this instantaneous,

**Gizmo:** I have a couple [00:58:00] cabinets of those, but, uh, just a couple, couple,

**Senator:** yeah.

More than that. I, he's

**Gizmo:** got eight. I have eight. I eight. I will neither confirm nor deny the number. it's recorded. . It's a whole shelf dedicated to Lucy. The entire bottom of the thing has Lucy cabs. Enough job ,

**Rooster:** I must say the unit doesn't look that big. I mean,

**Gizmo:** you know,

**Senator:** honestly I'm shocked. It looks, it holds that

**Gizmo:** much.

That's great. It's, I can't wait for you guys to see it cuz I still have room like I left a gap where the cigar oasis, uh, remote is on the side. Mm-hmm. , like there's a gap there in that entire side that I can see it on that shelf. I can see the remote and, you know, plenty of airflow. Yeah. I could probably fit maybe four more slide load boxes.

Yeah. But my entire single Remington tower and seven Tupperware tupper door containers fit in there. No props. That's crazy.

**Senator:** Wow. We're happy to come by. If you want to go on a buying screen, you need to get rid of some stuff. We're happy to come by and take it off your hands.

**Gizmo:** My pleasure. I can't actually, I can't wait for you guys to come over.

I'd love to do another garage day for you guys to check it out [00:59:00] and pick some cigars outta there cuz it's really, I'm very, very proud of it. Love. We'll do the whole night Bonnie Ellos and yeah, just keep, keep

Rooster

**Bam Bam:** away from the and, and the dog. The dog and, and get the raccoons outta the neighborhood.

**Poobah:** My tower is just like a Tetris game. Like it's, yeah. You just have to fit everything. Yeah. It's way it can fit or it won't fit. Yeah,

**Gizmo:** I'm, I'm, I'm really happy with the new setup, so it's great. So yeah. Checking out boys. Come on. I'm

**Senator:** glad glad you've joined the Cedar Cigar Waste

**Gizmo:** Club. Yeah. Well, the cigar, you know, the other thing I wanna say about Cigar Oasis is they have an auxiliary fan kit for when you have a, a pretty large volume of stuff.

So you're able to affix these auxiliary fans that just tie into the unit at the top constant airflow nice. And I love it. Did you guys know that? I did. I did. That's neat. Do you have that? No. No. You should get it, Mike. Do you like that ? You like that ? So yeah. Big, big fan of the cigar sis people. Cool.

Awesome. All right, boys, we're well into the last third here of the [01:00:00] Lito. Number two, the Goldie from La. Paul, when are you guys thinking? I think it's better

**Pagoda:** than the last

**Bam Bam:** third. Yeah. I honestly, it, it started off a little questionable, but I think it's finishing very strong. Yeah. Yeah.

**Gizmo:** I'm pretty happy with it.

It's, it's pretty delicious. I don't know if I'm gonna go out and buy more though. No, I'm, I'm definitely not in that. Like, I, like we were with The Warped, or we were with the Ashton Vsg. Yeah. You know, um,

**Bam Bam:** I think there's some merit for a listener to try

**Gizmo:** this, though. Especially if you like small ring gauge cigars.

You're, it's a beautiful cigars. I mean, this is, I, I, I think a petite landero. I think it's just a very, very cool size that you don't see very often. It's awesome. It's awesome. Especially with rooster's, you know? Favorite the pigtail on it. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's very, very cool. Yeah. You know, Yep. So what are you guys thinking about the pairing at this point?

Eh,

**Senator:** for me, I mean, I, I think the flavors work in the sense that, like, hine is very floral, fruity, which is similar to a lot of the notes I got in the cigar. I just think the [01:01:00] finish is not anything to, you know, yeah. Sing praises about with, uh, this Hein more excessively priced one. I, I did see

**Bam Bam:** this in my pharmacy last week though.

This bottle . Oh, please. Which, you know, I could pick it up there. Anything,

**Senator:** I think, I think we, uh, we know your, your feelings at this point. Jesus . That's

**Gizmo:** dual purpose.

**Rooster:** It is. Yeah.

**Gizmo:** See, you didn't cough at all today. Not at all.

**Senator:** Yeah. Actually, we're gonna have you drink this every

**Bam Bam:** episode. Absolutely. You're gonna hold me down.

I won't do, I won't do it.

**Gizmo:** Will .

**Senator:** It sounded like you would enjoy that.

**Bam Bam:** That's why it was uh, that was a little I would, oh boy. Just .

**Rooster:** I'm really looking forward

**Gizmo:** to the Cuba trip. Yeah, me too, man. Can't wait. I'm so glad Poop is coming now. Poop is coming. Yeah. Awesome. Two, three days coming down all this days.

Gonna do like a celebrity drop. I'm gonna get him a, a metric shit ton of matches that say RGUs on them. Only if he comes. Only if he comes. Only if he comes. If he doesn't come, I'll bring him one box. Yep.

**Poobah:** ashtray. [01:02:00] Mandatory.

**Pagoda:** It's a quick swim. Quick quick. Swim.

**Rooster:** Swim. .

**Gizmo:** So I wanted to bring this up cuz it's kind of a hot topic right now.

I don't know if you guys saw this, I actually think we talked about on the text chain, but, uh, a, um, an assembly member from California introduced a bill that it would eventually ban tobacco entirely. Like not only like. , you can't smoke this or that, but completely banned tobacco from the state, which is following New Zealand.

I dunno if you're familiar with the, what they do in New Zealand, but they instituted every year it increases the age at which you're able to purchase tobacco.

**Poobah:** Social, you mean socialism? ?

**Bam Bam:** Yeah. . No, the prime minister resign.

**Pagoda:** Sure. Just because of that. I think. And

**Gizmo:** I'm just kidding. . No, it's, it's, it's, you know, like in, in New Zealand, I think this is what he's following, this assemblyman, um, in New Zealand, like, they're literally outlawing.

So like every year it increases so that new smokers can't enter the market even for, you know, handmade premium cigars. I think he should move to New Zealand.

**Poobah:** This will, [01:03:00] so I'll put a point of view forward. This has zero shot. There are too many politicians I think, who behind closed doors. Oh yeah. Love to have a cigar.

And they're not gonna just say, you can't have cigars anymore. No. Well, yeah, they'll tax the shit out of

**Senator:** it. The important context here, I set this article around, this is in the state of California, Puba.

**Pagoda:** Yeah, that's true. I think Schwarz knows is gonna run for governor again. ,

**Senator:** I mean, I would put nothing past California.

California's unusual. I'm just encouraged to hear this happen in New Zealand. Hopefully New Zealand can annex California. I mean, this is ridiculous. Yeah. The thing that, here's the, here's the look. If I, if I could be charitable and adopt this ridiculous position that adults should not be able to choose whether they can consume tobacco products or not, that we should just ban all them.

If I could somehow wrap my head, , the thing that's just so silly is that everyone else is grandfathered in basically. Exactly. So like, it, it's pointless if the, if the whole point of this is we're gonna make sure no one ever consumes [01:04:00] tobacco. It's only people born after a certain date Yep. That will not be able to purchase any tobacco products.

And every other grown adult still will be able to Yeah. Yeah. Until they die out. So that's the thing that's like, just so silly. It's

**Pagoda:** very silly. And none of that, you know, you can weeds become legal and now you're like banning.

**Senator:** Exactly. Especially like California. It's like, well everyone can go purchase marijuana anywhere they want and smoke it, but God forbid you have a tobacco product.

That's crazy problem. Well,

**Poobah:** yes. And you can also just shoot up in the middle of the street and Yeah. Yeah. And go get a fresh needle. Oh, for free. Paid by the government. No, I'm, that's true. It's not. , it's double negative, not, not analogous. Mm-hmm. what I'm saying. I mean, you know, if the state's gonna be paying for, um, fucking hypodermic needles for opioid addicts, but gonna outlaw, um, cigars.

Yeah. People paying for their own cigars, people paying for their own cigars and paying tax on that seems absurd. Ob a little bit absurd to me. I, I'm

**Gizmo:** [01:05:00] sorry. It's counterintuitive right? What? You know, what's crazy about it, which goes back to so many of the other things we've talked about with legislation with tobacco, is they don't separate handmade premium cigars from all of the other tobacco products like cigarettes or, or, or vape or whatever it may be.

They don't separate out this thing that we don't inhale, right? Like, this is not an inhaled, you know, we're not inhaling this product. Yeah. You know, I, I don't understand how like pub's point, obviously I would hope that they carve it out. Who knows if they will or won't. Hopefully this thing doesn't pass, but they need to carve out in all this legislation, they need to carve out handmade.

Premium cigars. Yeah. Oh, the good thing, I've

**Senator:** mentioned this organization a million times. They're in DC obviously. I, I do a ton of work in dc Premium Cigar Association represents all the premium cigar brands. They're all over this mm-hmm. . And they've done a phenomenal job defending the industry in the past.

So I am hopeful and optimistic they're gonna be very successful here. Yeah.

**Bam Bam:** It's only rational to to, to separate

**Poobah:** it. [01:06:00] Yeah. Yeah. PE there's only so much that, um, that people will take and tolerate, um, in terms of just this, you know, this is America, don't vote for him. Um, , right. Keep it simple. This, well, this is America.

And, and, and I think, you know, choice is, is real and freedom is real. And I think that something like this to ban, uh, cigars would just be so silly. I don't, it sounds, it sounds like, it, sounds like it's crazy. Remember, when, when, when, when. I don't think it's ever gonna happen. I mean, you, you can't, alcohol does such, um, has such.

exponentially more detrimental effects on people. Yeah. Um, than, you know, cigars do. It's not e it's not even comparable. The American Medical Association doesn't even have a, a point of view. Yeah. [01:07:00] That's published on, uh, there's no clinical data, uh, to support. Um, You know, cigars impact on health beyond like an absurd

**Gizmo:** Yeah.

Smoking 15

**Poobah:** cigars a day of cigars. A day like George Burns or something. Right.

**Gizmo:** And he lived, he outlived all his doctors. That's true. Correct. All his doctors who told him to stop smoking, he outlived them. He went to all their funerals. You know, he smoked like machine made

**Poobah:** apparently. Right. You know, so, so, so there's no, or they'd put out a, believe me, they, if they had the data, they would put it out.

Sure. They don't. So anyway, I don't think, I just think the over, I don't think it has any

**Gizmo:** legs. I hope so. But I just think the overreaching thing that I understand being concerned about teenagers getting addicted to f to fruity flavored, Nicotine products. Mm-hmm. through vape. Right. Course. That's a big thing in high schools right now.

Course. Certain middle schools. Middle schools too. Yeah. I understand being concerned about that. I understand the implications of of, of cigarette smoking. I understand the concern [01:08:00] there.

**Senator:** Yeah. Yeah. Which California, by the way, has already addressed. California at the end of last year, already passed a law that was signed into law there that bans the sale of any flavored tobacco products, which I'm fine with.

We have no problem with that. Totally. The cigar industry has no problem with that. Totally. But this is completely unnecessary

**Pagoda:** That's surprising. .

**Gizmo:** No, it's, it's just, it's something that, it's just, I don't understand this big, sweeping hand that people try to apply to this, because if you think. The quality of life improvement that we have when we smoke cigars, the community we have.

Oh, the, I mean, I mean it's like, it's the relaxation, the, the meditative nature of what we do. The ritual, as we talked about earlier. And we know, we know doctors

**Bam Bam:** at our former lounge that Yes. Would sit and have a cigar. Absolutely.

**Gizmo:** Yeah. Of course. Therapy sessions

**Senator:** for me. Sorry. So Pago will be very pleased to know that the caveat in the law is that flavored hookah and shisha flavored pipe, tobacco and flavored premium [01:09:00] cigars are still allowed

**Bam Bam:** to be sold.

So here's the another thing. So flavored us , hold on. So I smoke hookah from time to time. Hookah. You inhale, you do, yeah. Deeply inhale. Yeah. Yeah. To get the full effect of it. And I've done that a lot. And I traveled in the Middle East and when I have it, You take it all the way in and when you come out it's like this big bellowing line of smoke.

It, you can't compare this cigar. It, it's not even close. It doesn't. No, no.

**Pagoda:** It's absurd. But by the way, uh, talking about hookers, I tried Iced Hooker the other day. Yeah, I've had that pretty close. What is that? It's cold. It's really cold.

**Senator:** It's freezing that the whole thing have to heat it to make it

**Bam Bam:** work so they have damn.

Yeah. No, go ahead. No, there's a cold component. I think they use some sort of a dry ice and the smoke goes through that dry ice and it comes into your mouth and you take it in. And if you have a mint tobacco that you're using with it, it's amazing. Poopa doesn't want mint. No, no. But it's really, it's refreshing as hell.

Yeah.

**Pagoda:** Uh, the load of hooks

**Poobah:** and Patterson, by the way, let's grab some car. Let's grab some carpet. I'll sit down. . [01:10:00]

**Bam Bam:** Let's keep,

**Poobah:** get some, get some pita. Let's keep it pc baby. Kea pc. No, I'm

**Gizmo:** just saying will he with her hands?

**Poobah:** Isn't that what you do? You sit in a pillow or something?

**Bam Bam:** No, not on a pillow, but I gotcha.

I gotcha. I understand the reference . What

**Poobah:** I understand. Well, no, don't you sit in a circle and smoke the hookah. I mean, isn't that how this goes? Hookah lounge.

**Gizmo:** Yeah. Do you have to sing Kumbaya when you do

**Bam Bam:** this? Yeah. Kind of . What? It's a lot of fun though. It is.

**Poobah:** I would, I've never smoked a hookah. Oh, really?

I think you've

**Pagoda:** gonna love

**Bam Bam:** it. No. Yeah. It takes practice.

**Poobah:** No, but isn't it the thing where you're like sitting, like

**Bam Bam:** it depends on there, just like here, he's not wrong. I mean, it depends on the lounge that you go to. Some of the more traditional lounge are like

**Gizmo:** that. Yeah. Mm-hmm. .

**Rooster:** Yeah. You could have multiple pipes coming

**Poobah:** out of the same, the thing's true.

I see people sitting, it's like a whole like, yeah, yeah. Like kumbaya thing. Like you're, there's multiple, uh, two strings and

**Gizmo:** tubes. [01:11:00]

**Senator:** Well, bam can give a tutorial because Sure. Not only has he smoked hookah, I, we've been with Bam, where he's double fisting. A hookah and a cigar in the other hand, who is

**Gizmo:** amazing.

How do you now, okay. How do you discern? That was a great night. How do you discern inhaling versus not inhaling? Is this, is this a,

**Bam Bam:** it

**Pagoda:** takes practice. Is this at a that It takes plastic sometimes different face. Oh, really? Even they have it, by the way, .

**Gizmo:** Yeah. So I mean, it, it's crazy to me that, that this, this is the focus of legislation.

Yes. It's the same thing to me with the, the customs and Border patrol seizing handmade cigars. It drives me insane. Like focus on, like Puba said, why don't you focus on Fentanyl? Yeah. Why don't you focus on heroin? No. Don't you focus on opioids. Those guys are tough. They just,

**Poobah:** I, I think they are. It's just, I think some of the stuff that comes through just gets clipped.

**Gizmo:** I think it's bullshit. Yeah. You. Um, I'm telling you, I wanna make it defund. The CBP shirt. I wanna make a shirt that says Defund The cbp. Yeah, baby. With their logo on it. Free gizmo's global [01:12:00] entry. Freeze. Yeah, free. My global entry.

**Poobah:** He puts his eyes in that queer machine. That's like

**Bam Bam:** security rushes to the gate.

**Rooster:** by, by the way, how long does it take off once you put in the application for global

**Gizmo:** entry? I think it's like four to six months now. Four to six months? Yeah. It's a long time now. It took

**Senator:** me a year and a half. I applied right before Covid hit, and once Covid hit, they were like, totally shut it down.

Everything was shut down. Wow. They were just piling up the applications. It took a year and a half. Oh, geez. Just for me, like, it takes forever to get an interview, and then once I get the interview, it's like, days later I got approved. You're gonna be standing

**Bam Bam:** in line with me. . .

**Gizmo:** That's true. All right, boys, we're coming to the end here of the Lito number two, the Goldie from La.

Paul, any final thoughts before we do the, uh, formal liquid? How are you experiencing that now? I'm really enjoying the last third. I think it's very delicious. Yeah, me too. I think last thought was good. I, I think it's very [01:13:00] satisfying. I, I mean, certainly my rating will reflect how I feel about the, the long term.

Mm-hmm. chasing of this cigar. But I, I think for what it is and, and what it delivered tonight, I thought it was very, very good. You know, you guys ready to do the, uh, formal liquor rating on this thing? Oh, yeah. On the, uh, Hein. V S O P, that's what it's called, right? Just Hein. H I know. It's called H by Hein. H by Hein.

V S O P. All right. Bam. Bam. You're

**Bam Bam:** up. Well, I'm looking at the bottle now. It's a beautiful bottle, but, um, the, I, I, I didn't like it much. Okay. I'm, I'm going with a six. Six, yeah.

**Gizmo:** Pagoda. Seven. Seven Senator.

I'm at a seven. I'm also at a seven Puba. Same. Okay. So the formal liquid rating on the H by Hein, V S O P is a 6.8, which certainly for A V S O P is the lowest that we've done. So will

**Bam Bam:** anyone here pick up another bottle? [01:14:00] No. No.

**Gizmo:** I'm gonna chase

**Bam Bam:** the rare

**Pagoda:** thank you. But you know what it is, is like for 15 bucks, you're better off getting the other one.

A

**Senator:** hundred percent spend the 15. What's actually the most frustrating about this to me? To call this a V s O p A vs o p, you should be able to drink meat. Neat.

**Gizmo:** Yeah.

**Senator:** Look at what poop is drinking right now. I would never do this. And,

**Bam Bam:** okay. That is nectar, no ice. It's incredible.

**Rooster:** He's drinking the 1738. Yeah, I

**Gizmo:** know.

**Poobah:** Yeah. Yeah. Well that's, he's interrupting. He's interrupting. Uh, well I like interrupting Senator Senator, which annoys senator and just let him continue with slow. Usually it's not as much,

**Gizmo:** but tonight .

**Senator:** Clearly we need to give him some

**Gizmo:** 1738 . Slow him down a little bit. Pass it

**Senator:** down. But my point is just simple for vs o p you should be able to drink it.

Neat. The fact that you can't do that with. Um, I really wish that they just would've put out something age two years called it a vs. Yeah. And [01:15:00] I would be much more forgiving if that were the case. But for V S O P, it, it, it almost has no place calling itself

**Gizmo:** that. Do you think that that as a vs this exact spirit we're drinking, should the price be 25 or 30?

**Senator:** No, I think vss are, are normally around 40.

**Gizmo:** What this is. Okay. Yeah. So you think they're just stretching the Vs into a vs o p on this? I

**Senator:** kind of, yeah. I mean, this just

**Gizmo:** doesn't have, it doesn't have the

**Poobah:** visco, I'm sorry, I'm, now I'm interrupting. It doesn't have the viscosity. It doesn't have the sweetness. It doesn't have the balance.

It'ss a little too hot. That's right. And

**Gizmo:** that's it. Right. I agree. Right, right. All all right on point. That's that's, and that's why it's a 6.8. Yeah. Yeah.

**Bam Bam:** That's why yeah.

**Poobah:** It doesn't have any of those fucking things. And it also, you know what I'm saying? It just doesn't . Right. I mean, hundred

**Gizmo:** percent. Let him know.

Pba let him know. It doesn't,

**Bam Bam:** you guys all

**Senator:** overs scored it. I

**Gizmo:** wouldn't that, I don't think so that far. No, I don't think so. All right, let's move it along. All right, boys, let's do the, uh, former lizard rating on the La Paul, like Ito number [01:16:00] two from Goldie Rooster. You're up. Okay,

**Rooster:** so I'm gonna give it a seven.

It's got a cool, uh, history about the cigar and stuff, you know, like who used to roll it and all of that. Um, but the cigar itself, uh, for me it's a seven. There's some other cigars that we have done on the pod that we scored much higher. I think they delivered. And being that the price point of this is like $23, I don't, I don't, I don't think I would go out and buy it.

No. Yeah. So hence the score kind of reflects that. So I'm at a

**Gizmo:** seven. Okay. Puba?

**Poobah:** Yeah. I'm in the, I'm in, I'm at a seven as well. Um, if it stayed where it started, I would've given it a six or lower. I agree. Um, but it did to its merit. It didn't prove, but not to the point where I'd give it more than, uh, more than seven as a rating.

It, it, it just, it's almost like the contrast between [01:17:00] how poorly it started for me and then how it improved.

**Gizmo:** It's like a six and an eight kind of thing.

**Poobah:** Yeah. Well it was just No. Didn't push it to an eight towards the, the second half. In the last third. It, it just doesn't deliver the kind of like flavors that I want in a smoke.

Hmm. So it's a seven for me.

**Gizmo:** I'm also at a seven. I've kind of, I'm actually kind of surprised. I figured that maybe other folks would go higher than that. I was kind of teetering on an eight, factoring in price, um, and, and how it performed in the first third, those question marks that we had, even though it wasn't bad, it was just kind of confusing, compelling, but confusing.

So, um, I'm definitely in a seven as well. I'm surprised that I, I thought I'd be the first seven, but, um, I'm curious where this ends up. Senator. So I'm

**Senator:** in the exact same camp. I'm a seven. Um, I actually love how you put compelling, but confusing. I think that sums up this cigar for me extremely well. Um, the, you know, what's problematic is the things I [01:18:00] actually appreciate most about the cigar are the construction and combustion that it delivered.

Yeah. But the flavor just was not the star for me of this. I think there was a good amount of flavor. We, we, we like, you know, medium, medium, full, full body cigars. Um, so I give it credit. There, there was not a moment I thought, oh, this is really mild or too weak for my palate. But the flavors, I hate to say I, I think at some points were a bit muddled in that it shouldn't be that hard for us to pick out exactly what's happening and what we're getting in this stick.

And I felt many times that was the case. I think the final third was actually the best part of the cigar. Mm-hmm. . Um, but that wasn't the experience all the way through. So for me it's a seven.

**Gizmo:** Okay. Pagoda. Uh, for me it's

**Pagoda:** a six. Um, I, I think when I started off, I know you, you guys were experiencing a lot of the fruity and the baking spice and all.

For me it was very, Ard Hashish. I, I don't know. When I melt the scar, I smelled something very like milk chocolatey. I [01:19:00] was seeking that flavor. I couldn't find it. Um, the, you know, it developed into something very nice for a very short stint right before, you know, the middle, the middle was just not exciting at all.

I think in the back third it did develop, and it, you know, for me it became a slightly, you know, like a pepper ish, kind of a cigar at the end of the day. And it was nothing really that I'd be seeking, considering the price point. But you're right, the construction, the smoke, everything's great. Yeah. Six, six for me today.

Okay. Bam.

**Bam Bam:** Bam. Yeah. So this did start it as a six and it, for me, the end is an eight for me. Okay. I'm taking it down to the end. It, it's pretty satisfying, but you know, if you average the two, you're right in the middle. Uh, everything you've said are all really on 0.7. I also just

**Senator:** wanna say before we get out the, the composite rating, I think for me, a seven and, and maybe I don't wanna speak for anybody, but maybe others feel the same way.

This is an example of a cigar that if someone, if I'm at a cigar shop or [01:20:00] lounge and I need to buy a stick there and I can't smoke my own or I didn't bring. if they had this and not something I would normally pick up, I could smoke this and at least leave satisfied. Sure. But to Gizmo's point, is it something I'm gonna go actively chase and pursue on my own?

No. Yeah.

**Pagoda:** So on the, on the other hand, you know, for a new world there's cigars, which are priced seven to 10 bucks. True. We had hardest podcast and we've, we rated them or eight, you know, like tremendous. So my thought is, Six. Six

**Gizmo:** other,

**Rooster:** I was gonna say, would your ratings change if the cigar was priced around like 10 or

**Gizmo:** $11?

Mine wouldn't, so

**Senator:** I'll say mine would not at all. I actually very strongly considered that I'd give it a seven if this were $10 or 23 bucks. But what I will say is that this being 23 bucks doesn't help because it's not deserving of that price. Yeah. And I

**Bam Bam:** think what Senator said was accurate. You do, you will leave fairly satisfied after the

**Gizmo:** bar.

Well, and so just,

**Bam Bam:** and that, that's the, you know, this praise for the end of the cigar, which

**Poobah:** is why a seven is

**Gizmo:** very fair. So it ended up, by the way, same as the [01:21:00] H by Hein 6.8. Yep. So look at that. A perfect pairing. Perfect pairing. Now here's the thing I wanna say. Given everything that we just talked about, what I would say is, what's interesting to me, and I don't know if we'd call that a recommend, maybe a soft, recommend soft re certainly a 23 bucks.

I don't know if I would tell the listener to go out and buy a 10 count, but if you can get a single, maybe you want to try it, fine, but. I would say this, that both the cognac and the cigar tonight, the pairing for in the room, how it felt, it felt like both were at times performing higher than a 6.8, and I felt the conversation and where we were at with it.

I, I, I like, like we said, I think it was a satisfying night. I just don't think that it was thrilling in any way. No, it's just,

**Pagoda:** and they also did perform like below a seven at Trump Point. Sure, sure, sure.

**Bam Bam:** 6.8 reflects it Pub mark earlier where it turned mixed for that conversation and makes, I think it made it interesting.

I'll

**Senator:** also say, I mean, the fact that there were moments with this cigar that we all actually said like, oh, [01:22:00] wow, now we're getting something we like. Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. For me, I do think, I, I think a soft recommend is how I would describe this. Mm-hmm. . . I've never had a La Paulina cigar period. Yeah. But there were moments in this cigar I really enjoyed.

Maybe there's something else in their line that would deliver more of what I'm looking for. So I think it's at least a worthy introduction to kind of their style and what they do. And I'd be willing to try something else. I didn't smoke the cigar and say, I'll never smoke a La Paulina. Yeah. That's not the experience I had.

Um, there were things I liked about it, and I hope that maybe something else they make will just true, be a

**Gizmo:** little better. I, I think the other thing that helped our experience tonight, e even given the ratings at 6.8, is I think the fact that the cigar didn't start great. And putter out, I think, which we've experienced so many times with New worlds.

The other thing happened where that become, yeah, it started modestly mediocre. We were very curious about it, right? We're trying to dive into all these different kind of flavors we were getting, and it ended in a better place than where it started, which maybe that helped. That's an excellent point. My feeling a much better [01:23:00] place than this story.

Yeah, so maybe that's, and that's maybe that a different thing too.

**Bam Bam:** That's a cigar that has merit where we've experienced the opposite. It was a disaster.

**Gizmo:** Exactly, especially in New World. No, it got

**Poobah:** better. It did get better, but um, at that price point it should . Uh,

**Gizmo:** that's a fair point. You know, especially with medi

OTA

**Poobah:** in it.

Yeah. At that price point it should, but, but you know, to each own maybe there's, you know, there's gotta be people out there who, like the cigar,

**Gizmo:** more cigar, fish and auto guys gave it, you know, put it at 15 outta 25 and the top top, they gave it a 93. Yeah, that's So if you think, by the way, so we just gave it a 68, they gave it a 93.

That's how far off don't, what's that? 27 points. They don't know what they're doing. I mean, we should be waiting the cigars for them. Absolutely. . They should go by our

**Bam Bam:** ratings. That's serious. I, I agree.

**Gizmo:** Yeah. I mean, a 27 point difference on a cigar is kind of,

**Poobah:** Yeah, but they're giving out nine, they're, they're doing fractions and giving out 90 eights and 90 sevens and 96 s all day

**Rooster:** long.

But still, I mean, this is not a 93 points agar. [01:24:00] It's

**Gizmo:** not even close.

**Bam Bam:** Anyway, I'm gonna need a lot of this points to get me up from a 68 .

**Poobah:** No, but they also don't, they ought to, they also don't advertise in lounge blizzards, monthly

**Bam Bam:** So, you know, that's gonna, that's gotta be a thing. That's gotta be.

**Poobah:** If if they, if they did, maybe we'd give it three 90 points. Yeah. Oh, lordy. No we wouldn't, we would never do that. We would not. It's against our

**Gizmo:** ethos. Too much house. Alright boys. A 6.8 for both the H by hin vs. O p cognac. And the Lato number two in the Goldie line from La Paul, despite six point eights on both boys, I think it was a great night, great conversation.

I really, really enjoyed it. Great spending time with you and uh, we'll see you all next week. You smoke. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Thanks for joining us. You could find our merch store and ratings archive at our brand new website, lounge lizards podd.com. That's lounge lizards p o d.com. [01:25:00] Don't forget to leave us a rating and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.

If you have any comments, questions, if you wanna reach out, say hello, tell us what you're smoking, email us hello@loungelizardspodd.com. You can also find us on Instagram at Lounge Lizards Pod. We really appreciate your time and we'll, uh, we'll see you next week.