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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 are normally around 90 minutes long and feature a variety of different topics including food, travel, life, sports and work.
The podcast features eight members: Rooster, Poobah, Gizmo, Senator, Pagoda, Chef Ricky, 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!
Welcome to the Lounge Lizards podcast presented by Fabrica5. 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. Tonight, I'm joined by Rooster, Senator, Pagoda, chef Ricky, and Bam Bam.
Gizmo:And our plan is to smoke a cigar, drink some scotch, talk about life, and, of course, have some laughs. So take this as your two hundred and fiftieth official invitation to join us and become a card carrying lounge lizard. Planet with us here once a week. We're gonna smoke a Cupid cigar tonight, share our thoughts on it, and give you our formal lizard rating. We celebrate 250 episodes Unicorn Cigar from 2010.
Gizmo:We love at the playing field to debate if we bring Cubans back into our daily rotation, and a Bam Beauty secret is accidentally revealed at a post pod soiree all along a variety of other things for the next three hours. So sit back, get your favorite drink, light up a cigar, and enjoy as we pair the Macallan, Sherry cask, 18 years old, single malt scotch whiskey with the Partagas eight nine eight. A Cuban Lonsdale on the pod tonight, boys, and we are back to Partagas.
Bam Bam:Not just the Cuban Lonsdale. The. Correct.
Gizmo:It's the eight nine eight. Woo hoo. And it's a 43 ring gauge cigar by six and three quarters inches long. And, boys, we are back to where we started. Partagas.
Gizmo:Correct. And tonight, we have a two thousand ten eight ninety eight in our hands. Wow. And doesn't it look beautiful?
Pagoda:It must be my birthday.
Chef Ricky:It's gorgeous. It smells amazing. Delicate. So happy you guys haven't kicked me off the pod yet. Yeah.
Gizmo:All right, boys. Let's cut this thing. See what we're getting in the cold draw on the wrapper. Nice aged cigar tonight.
Bam Bam:Oh my good Lord. Wide open draw. Just the cap flipping right off there.
Gizmo:Slight bit of resistance for me.
Chef Ricky:I have the perfect amount of resistance. Cold draw is baking spice.
Bam Bam:Cedar, this is a problem. Why? I'm going to want to blast through this thing.
Chef Ricky:Hate to say it boys, but I'm getting tomato.
Senator:How was work today, chef?
Gizmo:Did talk about firing yourself.
Bam Bam:You know what? I'm gonna get you a neurological test.
Pagoda:No. You know one of those down over there. Yeah. When they get the cards in front of them, was tomato. Tomato.
Gizmo:Tomato. These cigars smell great.
Chef Ricky:Yeah.
Bam Bam:Not getting much on a
Gizmo:cold draw. I'm not either. Just a little bit of cedar for me.
Bam Bam:But the wrapper and the foot, actually, it's actually very, very delicate. Slight cocoa for me.
Senator:Yeah. Very faint. I'm also getting a little, like, creaminess bizarrely on the cold draw. Yeah. It's like you can tell it's On
Bam Bam:the cold. You know what I love about this? We were talking before the recording. The presentation on this thing. It's a great presentation.
Bam Bam:I haven't ever seen that in person.
Gizmo:Beautiful. We'll talk about that in a second. But first, boys, for the two hundred and fiftieth time, let's light this thing. The Partagas eight ninety eight out of Cuba. The factory coat on these boys is
Pagoda:I'm very good at this.
Gizmo:R o u The
Bam Bam:one thing I've heard
Gizmo:of 2010. Wow. So these are just coming up on about 16 years of age.
Bam Bam:Oh, the aroma's great.
Chef Ricky:Alright.
Gizmo:We said we weren't gonna celebrate too hard for two fifty. We were gonna save it for our five year episode, but I think we're doing a little bit of celebrating tonight with the pairing.
Bam Bam:Can someone please explode with joy right now? Because I'm going to.
Senator:I'm sorry. This is just another,
Chef Ricky:you know, typical night.
Bam Bam:Another episode. Please?
Pagoda:This is excellent, by the way. Thank you. I've been waiting for
Bam Bam:the evening. Not an explosion, but we'll take it.
Pagoda:No. It's not an explosion, but it will.
Chef Ricky:It's an explosion.
Bam Bam:Tell me you're not
Senator:getting a
Bam Bam:little brown sugar. I'm getting brown sugar. It's very
Gizmo:This is beautiful.
Pagoda:I'm not getting brown sugar. No. I'm just kidding. You're so
Bam Bam:Brown sugar and cocoa.
Gizmo:I love the sweetness. I love the subtlety. There's like a little leather there for me.
Bam Bam:You sprayed these.
Gizmo:I sprayed them. Yeah. Before I came, sprayed them today.
Bam Bam:This is just fantastic right now.
Gizmo:Yeah. I
Chef Ricky:I am getting like creamy caramel. Creamy cocoa.
Bam Bam:Yeah. Caramel, cocoa, brown sugar. Sugar type thing happening.
Gizmo:So keen listeners will know when we did the Partagas eight nine eight the first time, which is quite a while ago, actually. We did it. I think it was for New Year's Eve twenty twenty four, episode 113. So quite some time ago. The cigars we did on that one were from late twenty twenty.
Gizmo:So obviously tonight we're going to be comparing those to a cigar that's 16 years old almost. Unbelievable. Should be great. You wanna go now?
Pagoda:It's a 10. Alright. Next.
Bam Bam:Any performance issues in the room?
Gizmo:I'm getting a little saltiness now, which is great.
Chef Ricky:It's alright. What do you got?
Senator:I'm regretting that I brushed my teeth recently, so my palate is slowly still adjusting, but the dessert notes are definitely prominent. No tomato. I still get like a little bit of that creaminess on the finish that I was mentioning. Some cedar, some nuttiness. I don't know if it's faint, like a light coffee or a cocoa of some sort, but it's delicious.
Senator:It's excellent.
Bam Bam:Is it sweet for you?
Senator:It's on the sweeter side for sure.
Bam Bam:It's kinda like a sweet coffee with cream. Yeah. I'm very sweet for me.
Gizmo:The burn wine is very floral for me. Yeah. Like a potpourri. For
Bam Bam:me, it's more of like a bakery good.
Senator:Yeah. I get a little bit of the floral, also a lot of pastry or something
Bam Bam:like Bam's talking about. Definitely.
Chef Ricky:This is just I
Bam Bam:don't have the words anymore.
Rooster:This is sixteen years of aged tobacco, if not more. I mean, this is what Cuban tobacco is all about.
Bam Bam:What it's supposed
Rooster:to be. What it should be. When it's good. It performs well. This is what happens when the Cuban tobacco is good rolled at the great factory.
Bam Bam:For all of us to have a great draw right now is a pretty unique experience. Yeah. That's something.
Gizmo:So when I pulled out this coffin, and we'll talk about the presentation like you said, Bam, but I looked at the feet of all of them, and everything looked like there was plenty of airflow. I felt all of them individually. There were none that were like an outlier as far as weight up or down. So it seemed like a really well constructed little coffin.
Rooster:I'm just glad that you didn't precut them. I didn't. Like you do with some other cigars.
Gizmo:I've never done that for you guys. I should though.
Pagoda:You water
Bam Bam:you are talking about? Pour the fossil water on top?
Gizmo:I did, yes.
Bam Bam:You did? Okay.
Senator:I think we should precut Gizzard cigars.
Bam Bam:Look at that thing.
Gizmo:So this is coming out of a very unique presentation for these, a 10 count Partagas eight ninety eight coffin. So these are in a three stacked on four stacked on three configuration. Obviously, the name 8-nine-eight comes from the packaging in the main coffin of eight cigars on top of nine cigars on top of eight cigars totaling 25.
Rooster:I've never seen this config.
Gizmo:That's why I brought this in. This was discontinued in 2013, This configuration. Beautiful. And I just wish they still had them because you talk about accessibility, especially at today's prices, right? First off, you're not seeing many 898s coming out in 25s at all.
Gizmo:But if they had them in 10s, this is a much more palatable Yeah. Purchase, I think, for folks. And obviously, so many of those new Cuban releases are coming out in tens as opposed to 20 fives. I just think it's such a beautiful little presentation. Where's the cardboard box?
Gizmo:I left it at home.
Bam Bam:Yeah. The sleeve with the box code
Gizmo:and the other one. Yeah. Yeah. But code again is R O U November 2010. Nice.
Bam Bam:I'm just surprised at the amount of flavor we're getting from this thing. It's really surprising.
Senator:The thing that's always I don't know if bother me is the right word, but maybe it is about the eight nine eight, there's a huge variation in terms of the strength on an eight nine eight depending on the year or the box that you have. I mean, I've had some that are super bold for a Cuban cigar. This is mellow and easygoing and creamy. Like, this is very different from a lot of younger eight nine eights I've had.
Bam Bam:So It's almost half your age.
Gizmo:That's wild. That's kinda wild.
Senator:I mean, we've had a
Gizmo:He was 16 when they rolled these. That's correct. We've had a
Senator:Lucy that Giz got that's older than this, and the thing barely had any flavor.
Gizmo:It was terrible. That was It's terrible. One of the worst cigars that we've smoked together.
Senator:Age doesn't guarantee greatness with Cuban or any cigars, but this is actually excellent.
Bam Bam:That's incredible.
Rooster:But for some reason, the 898s that are $20,062,008, twenty thirteen boxes have smoked just like this.
Pagoda:This is excellent.
Rooster:The newer ones have not, like you said.
Senator:They're bolder. A
Bam Bam:little bolder. When was the last time you opened all those boxes?
Rooster:Here and there. Not in a while, I must say.
Pagoda:Yeah, I know. It's been a while since we've been on your deck.
Bam Bam:He's got fucking bears on his property for crying out loud.
Gizmo:Why are you so scared of the bears?
Bam Bam:Why?
Gizmo:Yes.
Senator:Oh, it's not just bears. He's scared of any animal.
Gizmo:Why are
Bam Bam:A raccoon sneaking up on you at
Gizmo:two animals?
Bam Bam:Squirrels. Yeah. If they're rabid.
Senator:Rabid. He hears a rabbit rustle in the bushes and he's ready to jump
Bam Bam:in Well, I'm looking at least. Checking it out. I'm obliviously just staring out to the sunset. If there's a rustle, I'm looking at it.
Gizmo:This is off to a wonderful start.
Rooster:This is so good.
Bam Bam:The burn line is fantastic.
Gizmo:I mean, you know, folks often debate online, and we see this, and we've debated it, you know, the validity of the commentary around H Cuban tobacco. And obviously, this cigar is very different today than it probably was ten years ago or five years ago or certainly when it was rolled. But there's something really special about Cuba tobacco in the right blend like this, I think, is with that amount of time on it, you know?
Bam Bam:So here's the golden question. What would these cost today?
Gizmo:So what do you wanna know? Do you wanna know what a Partagas eight ninety eight costs today fresh, or do you wanna know if you were buying the 2010s today, how much those would be?
Bam Bam:So I'm gonna guess fresh, they're about $95.98 bucks each.
Gizmo:Yeah, they're right around, I looked on Bond Roberts.
Bam Bam:That's a guess, by the way.
Gizmo:They're selling now for about $85 a cigar fresh.
Bam Bam:I'm over it.
Pagoda:You're kidding me, sir. Box is about like Wow. Thousand 100?
Gizmo:That's nice. 2,200?
Bam Bam:Let me tell
Gizmo:you something. That's before the hammer, the 15% hammer.
Bam Bam:I don't care what you guys say. If those cigars smoke like this, ring me up. I want a box of those. I would spell
Senator:I'll sell you my box.
Bam Bam:Done. Have to sample one.
Gizmo:Fuck that. Smart man. Hey.
Pagoda:A very smart man. And that sample for free. Correct.
Rooster:Well, all of us have to sample one.
Gizmo:Out of your box.
Pagoda:After you buy
Gizmo:it. What you That's
Bam Bam:not right.
Pagoda:And and we have to sample maybe two or three, and that's it. The box is gone. Alright.
Bam Bam:You're going off the rails now.
Gizmo:It'll be done. He'll have one.
Bam Bam:Sold. I'll be on a park bench with my head in my hand. So 10 years old, how much are these? You got like a buck 10?
Gizmo:No. Oh my I probably 101. No, think $2,200? I think these would probably go for 16 years of age?
Bam Bam:Oh, 16 years, yeah.
Gizmo:I think with 16 years of age, I think you'd probably get close to $200 a cigar.
Bam Bam:All right, let's rack it now.
Gizmo:You guys want to cut these in half, we'll put them on BR. We'll put
Chef Ricky:the Correct.
Gizmo:So $100
Rooster:How much can I sell a 2,006 box to Ben?
Gizmo:I would say you could probably get about $3 for those.
Bam Bam:Oh, that's good reciprocity there.
Gizmo:3,500? That's that's
Senator:Are you in? Are you in?
Bam Bam:How much?
Gizmo:I would say probably $33,500 on
Senator:Hell no.
Gizmo:Ron Roberts.
Bam Bam:Now? I'll give you $2,200
Gizmo:tomorrow. Talk to somebody. Here's one here. So before everything got crazy, the last one I'm seeing with some age, a 2,000 and 9 full box of eight ninety eights was sold on in January of this year for 2,600. So I have to imagine now with the shortage, I have to imagine it's clipping.
Rooster:It's got to be
Gizmo:three plus. I would say it's over three, which is just crazy
Bam Bam:for, of course.
Rooster:3,500. You got a deal. No. And you can't sample one.
Gizmo:What's wild about this is when this cigar was rolled and it was originally purchased, I would bet that this was probably in the $15 range. New?
Senator:What? Fresh?
Rooster:You're making me sick.
Pagoda:In 2010.
Gizmo:Yeah, 2010.
Bam Bam:Almost a 16.
Gizmo:I mean, think about it. In 2010, how much do you think a d four was? $7? Oh, easily. $8 at the most?
Gizmo:It's crazy how things have ramped up, and not just because of inflation, obviously, because of the Yeah. You know, what Chen G and his crew did a couple years ago Mhmm. In the Cigar Armageddon.
Senator:I mean, just imagine our collection of all of us. Wow. Maybe with the exception of Rooster and Bam. We're like, you know, born thirty years earlier than all of us were. Like, imagine your oldest years that like the most expensive Cuban cigar you'd buy is $15.
Bam Bam:Yeah. Know.
Senator:Like, that is wild to think to have a lifetime, a full lifetime to enjoy and collect like that.
Bam Bam:Are a few guys online, and you know one. He has quite the collection. I think he's in his early seventies.
Gizmo:No. He's gotta be close to
Pagoda:80 He or 90
Bam Bam:has incredible. I mean, he's got Davidoffs from the sixties. It's it's unbelievable.
Gizmo:Yeah. He's got he's got ridiculous
Bam Bam:You know what I'm
Gizmo:talking about. Yeah. I know exactly what you're
Bam Bam:talking about. Unreal.
Gizmo:Yep, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's got an incredible collection. But like Senator saying, I mean, had we known, you know? Yeah. I mean, did pretty good.
Gizmo:Let's be real. I mean, we all have a pretty substantial collection, because we were kind of crazy. Like, we jumped into it, we really went
Bam Bam:Hard. Hard. And timing was good.
Gizmo:And timing was very good because it was right before all that shit happened with the pricing.
Senator:We did. We just weren't buying anything to really save that Exactly. Much of And we were just plowing through a lot of which I don't regret. I'm glad we got to enjoy as much as we did, but had we known it would have been nice to have stocked up on certain things more than we were.
Bam Bam:Oh, yeah.
Rooster:I mean, COVID wasn't all that bad.
Gizmo:No. It's true. It's true. I think I've said it before in this podcast, I kind of miss those times. The quiet times of COVID.
Gizmo:No meetings, no weddings, no traveling
Bam Bam:and no choice but to
Gizmo:stay home. It was just staying home. Obviously, we met around that time as a group. I know you got some of you guys knew each other well before that, but
Rooster:I mean, the best part was the Cuban prices. Were low.
Gizmo:And, you know, they were easy to get in. There wasn't a lot of, you know, importation issues.
Senator:Yeah. I was setting alarms waking up at like three, four in the morning to buy Terminal. Lusitania's off Cigar Terminal. Yeah. Bubba and I got the exact same 50 cab.
Rooster:We were getting cigars from Canada. RSVP, Bellhop, COH,
Gizmo:Cuban Lounge,
Rooster:Bond Roberts, FOH. FOH.
Gizmo:Amazing. He's insane. Spent an obscene amount I of Annas on and FOH. I've seen amount of
Bam Bam:money. Yeah. Yeah. And some platforms online. Yeah.
Bam Bam:Yeah. They were great too.
Rooster:And they're completely gone now. Nobody, like it's hardly any come up. And if they do, it's like, you
Chef Ricky:know, Outrageous.
Gizmo:You look
Rooster:at it
Gizmo:and you're like, really? Honestly, who I'm devastated for is our buddy Mickey Mouse. His whole operation was crushed by I forgot about him. Totally forgot
Rooster:about him.
Senator:That scammer. I wonder if he's in jail.
Gizmo:He's not. I've heard he's still online, he pops up under different names, but it's certainly not to the scale that it was, thankfully. Wow.
Senator:We should send an anonymous tip to Marco Rubio.
Gizmo:We should. Send him the address.
Bam Bam:Well, don't think he's no longer in Florida, is he?
Gizmo:Who knows?
Rooster:Alabama. Alabama, I think was the last
Senator:known address. Sounds like a fugitive.
Bam Bam:Yeah.
Senator:On the run.
Bam Bam:Correct.
Gizmo:This is really a wonderful cigar.
Bam Bam:It's a lights out cigar.
Gizmo:I know I'm going to it early, but what are you guys getting right now? Oh. Fifteen minutes in?
Chef Ricky:It it got a little bit more savory on
Pagoda:my end. Yes. Savory, But I
Chef Ricky:tell you, single way that you could take the cigar in, the burn line, kicking it up through your nose for that retrohale, the traditional draw, the aroma on the wrapper, every single Yeah, it's on fire. Every single.
Rooster:You just want to enjoy this. Mean, savor it. You just want each and every puff to just last.
Gizmo:Isn't it wild how this kind of takes us I feel like my energy and my heart rate is like, no, I feel very relaxed.
Chef Ricky:I came in here kind of tense today to your point. I was doing some stuff on the computer. I felt very tense. My cheekbones felt very like I was grinding my teeth. And now I'm just
Bam Bam:Of course. I think every cigar does that for me, but I'm excited to be smoking this today.
Gizmo:I think there's an element of this
Bam Bam:nostalgic a little
Gizmo:of But there's also some X factor in the way that tobacco like this performs that for me, we talked about the price and the age and the scarcity, but for some for some reason, this cigar makes you slow down. Oh, yeah. In ways that some don't.
Senator:We've talked about this, and I feel like Pooba mentions this a lot. There are just certain cigars, whether it's, you know, a great amount of age or just like a really spectacular blend that it's so effortless, it's so pleasurable, like, you just completely, like, melt into the chair and, like, everything kinda slows down, where other cigars, you relax somewhat, but sometimes you're kinda working to, you know, keep the cigar later performing or the flavor's giving you most of what you want, but not everything. Like, this is just perfect really in every way right now.
Pagoda:And when you find out the price, you're like, you better slow it down.
Gizmo:I mean, that's that's
Rooster:that's the difference. Right?
Pagoda:No. I'm just kidding.
Rooster:Going back just a few years, you wouldn't think twice about picking up one of these out of your box. Nope.
Senator:No? Now? I mean, you would only in that they weren't the easiest to get, but not because of
Gizmo:the price.
Rooster:Still attainable. They were
Senator:still you could
Gizmo:you could be like, oh, I had a great week. It's Saturday. I'm gonna have
Pagoda:Yeah.
Rooster:You you know, you you'll pull it out. But now, these days, I mean, forget it. Yeah. Yeah. You look at it.
Rooster:So maybe I'll wait.
Bam Bam:I find it's very delicate. When I have a delicate cigar, I purposely slow down and only in a Cuban catalog do I get that experience.
Rooster:Of the new ones flavor
Bam Bam:wise or? No, Delicate, the wrapper's very delicate. I don't wanna plow through this. I feel like if I smoke it quickly, I'll canoe here and there, so I'll take it down very slowly to keep that burn line. Perfect.
Bam Bam:We're in a new world. I'll go right through it.
Gizmo:So let's talk about the eight ninety eight really quick here boys. This cigar was originally released somewhere in the early nineteen seventies. It comes now in the varnished eight nine eight box of 25 cigars. Again, eight on top of nine on top of eight. And I would say, like, the La Gloria Cubana MD o four, the H.
Gizmo:Upman Sir Winston, the cigars that are kind of those really sought after, chased, collectible, you know, really hard to find cigars are really, really scarce now.
Rooster:I don't Do mean MDO number two?
Gizmo:No, mean MDO number four because the two's been discontinued quite some time. But the stuff that's still in existence that is rolled and released very rarely, Sir Winston, '8 98 m d o four, as far as regular
Bam Bam:production. Yeah. The four was available for a while, like, two years ago. Didn't a lot of it come out?
Gizmo:They come out they come out in spurts every once in
Bam Bam:a while. But Yeah.
Gizmo:It's amazing how scarce these are, even for being quote unquote regular production that, like you guys said, I mean, reaching for them. I can't tell you the last time I looked at the box of 898s and said, I'm going to reach for one of them. It's got to be. I probably haven't had one since we did maybe two years.
Bam Bam:Yeah. They are buried right now. Not to be seen.
Gizmo:Oh, yeah. You're moving. Right? Did you pack up all your stuff?
Rooster:You need any help?
Pagoda:Maybe. I can hold them for you.
Bam Bam:No. I'm not kidding. It's a disaster.
Chef Ricky:Let me know if you need help unpacking.
Bam Bam:Half my house has moved out. Wow. So I feel like I'm camping. It's terrible.
Gizmo:So what what's up with the cigars?
Bam Bam:They're still in place. They haven't been moved.
Chef Ricky:We're gonna see Bam in flip flops soon. Can't try get by my shoes.
Gizmo:And this is Bam packed my shoes.
Rooster:They're gonna do And
Chef Ricky:they only have wrapped around the tower.
Gizmo:Yeah. The towers in place. Tower of space.
Bam Bam:Don't anybody touches the tower, you're to
Senator:be. Dead. The entire house is going to be demolished. You're just going to see this tower standing.
Gizmo:And I'm standing there looking at it glowing.
Rooster:EDOB's gotta guard it.
Gizmo:So how long do you think you're gonna be out while you do reno?
Bam Bam:At least seven months. Oh.
Gizmo:Which is gonna turn into twelve?
Bam Bam:No. I've got
Senator:That's if he's lucky.
Rooster:No change orders.
Bam Bam:To myself.
Gizmo:Bam, this is Bam.
Rooster:Oxygen oxidizes.
Bam Bam:Hey, Bam. I think we got a problem.
Pagoda:That's hilarious, Bam. This
Bam Bam:is Bam.
Gizmo:That's what that whole Genesis was was Yeah. Boob, but saying a contractor talking to himself.
Bam Bam:Happens a lot.
Gizmo:Oh, man. This is a special cigar. Oh, yeah. Alright, boys. Let's go to a couple news items.
Gizmo:Hold on.
Bam Bam:I've got I've got a question for you.
Gizmo:Yeah.
Bam Bam:Where are you so your 8-9-8s, are you are they in a tupper door or are they in a tower?
Gizmo:No. They're in my tower.
Bam Bam:Your entire collection fits in your tower? Yeah. Except for False. Yeah. No way.
Gizmo:False. You asked about the 898s.
Bam Bam:I know. No, but he
Senator:said your entire collection No, no,
Rooster:I have
Gizmo:like four Tupper doors full of Cubans.
Bam Bam:You do.
Gizmo:I have two full of Which
Senator:he said he would never go back to. That's when he got to the bigger tower.
Gizmo:Well, then, you know, listen. The times are tough. You get when you get your hands on something good, you gotta do it.
Bam Bam:He keeps buying Cubans and doesn't tell us.
Gizmo:Yeah. Okay.
Senator:Yeah. He said his entire out. Lizard J told us that too today.
Gizmo:Let me tell you something. I have sourced more cigars
Bam Bam:I'm about to cry.
Gizmo:For everybody in this room individually than anybody in this room has sourced in total for anybody. Is I have sourced thousands of cigars. You're my procurement manager.
Gizmo:I know.
Gizmo:And you're a salesman. That's correct. No. I just it's I'm not under
Bam Bam:a stick.
Gizmo:I probably have four or five tupper doors full of Cubans and
Rooster:My blood is boiling again.
Gizmo:Cubans. Why?
Bam Bam:I have to say, that was hilarious that night.
Chef Ricky:You were his sales manager.
Bam Bam:That was so good.
Gizmo:We have an email about that. Woah.
Senator:Man down.
Gizmo:Man down.
Bam Bam:Yeah. All good.
Senator:Christmas can't come soon enough for that cigar bib for Giz.
Gizmo:Yeah. I hope it's personalized.
Bam Bam:I better ash. Although chef's going strong too.
Gizmo:So, boys, let's go to some news, and then we'll get to our pairing. I mentioned this. I think it was last week or the week before, but I wanted to do it on a Cuban episode, episode 250. A lot of folks are gonna be listening to this to see what we think of the eight nine eight. The United Kingdom is proposing plain packaging on cigars, pipe tobacco, and other high end tobacco products.
Gizmo:So I wanted to mention this again for the folks who only listen to our Cuban episodes, especially folks who are outside of The United States or in The UK. You have an opportunity to make your voice heard on this issue. You have until October first of this year to do it. Go to savecigars.co.uk to let your voice be heard on plain packaging in action. We talked a lot about it last week, so you can go back and hear the discussion.
Gizmo:But I just wanted to mention it again that this is available, that if you want to speak up, you can.
Bam Bam:I don't think you need to be a UK citizen to vote.
Gizmo:You do not. That's correct. You do not. Anybody can comment on it. And of course, if you listen to our episode last week, we're not going to repeat ourselves, but a lot of good points were made about counterfeiting and lower amount of SKUs.
Gizmo:And of course, the positive things that come with smoking cigars, especially among friends. A lot of benefits there. So like I said, make make sure your voice is heard. Save cigars.co.uk. They have a full setup that they they direct you right to where you need to go to make your voice heard.
Gizmo:So let's go to some other news now. I love talking about these because I just I'm fascinated by Davidoff. We've talked about Davidoff a lot over the last few months. So they have announced that they're adding some boutique selections for a few flagship stores of theirs, including the one in New York City on Madison Avenue. So all three, one in Geneva, of course, that's probably their main one, Hong Kong, and the one in Madison Avenue, New York are getting a different Toro 54 by six using an Ecuadorian wrapper over a blend of Dominican tobaccos.
Gizmo:So, apparently, this is all that Davidoff has given, and this is according to Half Wheel. Shout out to those guys over there. We appreciate them. For example, is they say the Madison Avenue cigar only uses three different fillers while the others use four. The Hong Kong cigar is listed as medium in intensity, whereas the other two are medium full.
Gizmo:Mhmm. And that is the blending information that Davidoff is giving.
Rooster:That's all you need. I mean, what you don't need more.
Gizmo:On these crazy cigars that are coming out. At least
Rooster:they got it right on the size
Gizmo:in Toro. Yeah. It's Davidoff in Toro special sizes. The best. Crazy prices.
Gizmo:Apparently, Davidoff said that they worked with employees of those specific stores to develop the blends. Each cigar is exclusive to the specific location, and each cigar will be a regular item at those stores. Going on sale Tuesday, September 1. So look for those. Again, the blending stuff is weird.
Gizmo:You know? Ecuadorian wrapper and some consortium of Dominican filler. Any idea on price? No price announced yet. I got to imagine that they're gonna be what?
Gizmo:75?
Rooster:I would say so. Yeah.
Senator:Just look, I'm sorry. Like, as a marketing person, Davidoff has always excelled at marketing. That's gotta be the worst marketing I've ever heard. What is the draw?
Pagoda:There's no expense.
Senator:Why should someone go and purchase that?
Bam Bam:So I was about to say, why don't they at least give you what the intended notes or profile of the cigar is for each shop? Make it interesting.
Rooster:Because they lost the blender and the marketing person at the same time.
Bam Bam:Fucking janitors blending cigars now. This is unbelievable me.
Gizmo:When I read this, it's the same thing that you guys are saying. There is nothing about this.
Rooster:Nothing excites you about that.
Senator:It's interesting. I don't even know what you can take away from it. There's literally no message there whatsoever other than the number of tobaccos. Like, what what's the purpose?
Bam Bam:You're gonna take away cedar.
Gizmo:I mean, at least the year of
Senator:the horse, mocked it, but like, come up with this whole bullshit story around it. Like, there's nothing around this. That's crazy.
Pagoda:And the size of the Torah, and you know, we know Davodolf does an extremely good job with Torahs.
Gizmo:Oh Interesting. So I wonder, I'm sure, you go to Madison Avenue. You guys go sometimes, right?
Bam Bam:I have. I don't think I've ever been
Gizmo:there. Really?
Bam Bam:Nor do I wanna go.
Gizmo:What's the one you go to?
Bam Bam:So there's a Davidoff Lounge in Brooklyn. Ah. Near, we went there, you and I.
Gizmo:That's right. We went there before Ted and Company.
Bam Bam:That's an open public lounge.
Gizmo:Got it.
Senator:I thought there was some crazy fee that one of you guys were saying that they
Gizmo:charged. Yeah, was talking about that.
Rooster:Used to be at Brookfield Place?
Bam Bam:Oh, that's the one. Brookfield. Oh, that's the one. Listen to this. So I I went in years ago.
Bam Bam:Not a not a single fee. I bought a cigar, sat down, and gave me espresso. It was fantastic. Same. Parking was awful because there's nowhere to put your car.
Bam Bam:I went a year later. It was $25. I paid it. I sat down. And then I went again.
Bam Bam:It went up to $50 just to sit, not including your cigar cost. I said, have a good day. And then a few months later, they were closed for good reason.
Senator:I heard that Madison Ave 1, since they redid that shop, there's some weird thing now about being able to sit there and smoke a
Gizmo:cigar. I think I told you. I went to that one.
Pagoda:It was a $100. Oh.
Gizmo:It was a 100.
Senator:Hundreds of dollars to sit in that tiny little thing.
Gizmo:I went one after COVID was ending and I bought some cigars. And I said, okay, I'm just gonna have one right now. And they said, you can't smoke here, you're not a member.
Pagoda:So either you become a member.
Bam Bam:On the spot.
Pagoda:Or you
Gizmo:pay a 100 They wouldn't even let me pay if I wanted to.
Senator:Well, he probably walked in with a hoodie and they said, no thanks.
Bam Bam:Did it have a graphic on it?
Gizmo:It was
Pagoda:at least solid.
Gizmo:My toes were out.
Bam Bam:Oh shit.
Gizmo:So it's $100 now, Madison, I have to smoke.
Pagoda:It was $100 about six months or a year back,
Bam Bam:I think. So you've been there, Pagoda?
Pagoda:So I know one of the guys and the other, Davodos.
Bam Bam:Okay.
Pagoda:Because it used to be DelaConta, and I've known him Yeah, since yep.
Bam Bam:Long time ago.
Pagoda:Meaning I've been able to sneak in and smoke.
Bam Bam:Has anyone else been there? I've never been there.
Pagoda:But it's $100.
Chef Ricky:I haven't been there
Gizmo:in I did Las not sit down, of course, because they wouldn't let me. Right. Crazy. Yeah. One more here, boys.
Gizmo:La Galera, Ho Chi Blanco, they're celebrating their ninetieth anniversary with a cigar that is now shipping to stores. It's called the La Galera ninetieth anniversary Lecture, and there's one called the nanan. Nanan? How do you pronounce that in Spanish? N a n Garlic nan.
Gizmo:Garlic. A n. Nanan.
Chef Ricky:Nanan. Yeah. There's no n yet? No tilde
Gizmo:or n? There's no tilde, but there's an accent over the second a.
Chef Ricky:Nanan.
Gizmo:Nanan.
Bam Bam:Nanan. It's nanan.
Rooster:Spanish expert.
Senator:Bam does drive through Hawthorne a lot.
Pagoda:Oh, yeah. Correct.
Gizmo:This year marks the one hundred and first anniversary of the founding
Chef Ricky:valleys over there.
Gizmo:Of Tabaclar palm. I'm gonna keep going. In 1925, Jose Blanco the second, the son of a tobacco farmer, opened up a cigar operation, which was registered in 1936 as La Palma. While the company could use the older date, as Half Wheel says, they long have referenced the 1936 date for its founding, which serves as the inspiration for the new ninetieth anniversary, which began shipping in August. The release marks a couple of firsts, it says, meaning, most notably, the blend is a Dominican puro, meaning it's only made from tobacco grown in the Doctor, of course.
Gizmo:They have difficulty growing wrapper there. Obviously, Carlito Fuente knocked that around in the nineties with Opus X. There are some other Dominican puros, but we don't see those a lot coming out. They always they often have some sort of other wrapper on them. So both vitolas are box pressed.
Gizmo:One is a unique perfecto that has a sharp press on all four sides, but a round torpedo head. And that is an all new Vitola developed for this release according to Ho Chi Blanco. So check out the La Galera ninetieth anniversary. Maybe we'll get those in, boys, because they're pretty good looking. Beautiful cigars.
Bam Bam:Oh, yeah.
Chef Ricky:Oh, nana. There's no n. I thought you said n at the end.
Gizmo:N a n a n.
Pagoda:Oh. Yeah.
Gizmo:Yeah. Well, we'll figure it out by the next time we talk about it.
Bam Bam:Garlic on.
Gizmo:Garlic nana. And that's it for news, boys. Let's go to our pairing.
Pagoda:Alright. Well, thank you. Big meeting.
Gizmo:We have a very exciting pairing tonight, though senator's a little frustrated. We'll get to company. We'll talk about that in a minute. But cheers, boys.
Bam Bam:Cheers. Cheers.
Gizmo:Macallan 18 for our two hundred and fiftieth episode today. Correct. Two fifty. Cheers.
Bam Bam:My boys.
Gizmo:Can you believe we've done this 250 times?
Bam Bam:No. Cheers, boys.
Gizmo:Cheers. Crazy.
Bam Bam:It's not work.
Gizmo:My first time having Macallan 18.
Bam Bam:It's delicious.
Senator:Smell the nose.
Bam Bam:Caramel. And chef, it's like a little salted butter caramel thing for me on the on the finish.
Chef Ricky:Tuck a touch drier than I was expecting, to be honest, but I don't dislike it. I love this.
Senator:To the nose, I get the caramel, but I also get a little bit of fruit.
Gizmo:Yeah. There's there's like I don't I don't wanna say cherry apple. That's apple.
Senator:Yeah. That's apple. That's exactly
Gizmo:This is really nice and it's very expensive. $320 for this bottle. Ew so. Which is crazy.
Bam Bam:Yeah.
Chef Ricky:I gotta say it's very rich. It's rich. Oh yeah, very viscous, almost concentrated.
Bam Bam:Do you find it easy to drink though? I find it
Chef Ricky:very Because it's not overly sweet, because it's a little bit drier.
Bam Bam:It's balanced. Just enough sweetness, just a very faint amount of heat maybe, maybe as it goes down.
Senator:Yeah, there is a little bit of heat here. But I love it. I think Macallan 15 is smoother than this.
Gizmo:I do too. Was gonna say I I think the 15 definitely hit me more positively than this is
Senator:right Really? Yeah. The one we did mean, I've had Macallan many times, and I just for its price, there's no richer flavor expression in Macallan. There's no doubt there. You get more flavor in this than anything.
Bam Bam:That's true.
Senator:But I don't think this is the, like, smoothest, most elegant expression in the delivery of that flavor, and so that's my one complaint. But it's still excellent. I mean, it's a great spirit.
Bam Bam:So you took a sip. You took a draw. You have to admit that's an exquisite combo.
Gizmo:And what's interesting is we often talk about the pairing bringing some sort of flavor note or something out of the cigar. You know what this is bringing out of the cigar? It's bringing age.
Bam Bam:I agree.
Gizmo:I'm tasting the age more after sipping the Macallan than I was Also prior to
Bam Bam:interesting, it's not overwhelming the cigar at all, I in my
Chef Ricky:think the cigar is bringing sweetness out of the scotch, and the scotch is bringing leather out of the cigar for me.
Gizmo:What a nice pairing. I love the pairing. I was a little nervous that a Scotch was going to overpower a 16 year old cigar, obviously. Me we decided to do the Macallan 18, we talked about that a couple weeks ago, we didn't know what age of eight nine eight we were gonna do, but it's it's a really smooth, easy affair for sure.
Senator:And eight nine eight, no matter what degree of age, always has a lot of flavor. So that's why, like, I had suggested Macallan 18, like, this is a super flavorful scotch. It's not the smoothest in delivery, but it's always still pretty smooth. But if there's any Cuban cigar that would hold up to a rich, fuller scotch, it would be an eight nine eight for sure.
Rooster:I mean, just the aroma on the cigar on the foot. I don't think there's any other Cuban cigar that has this robust, pleasant, perfumey aroma like this.
Bam Bam:It's kind of unfair because of how old the cigar is, though. Because on a fresher eight ninety eight
Rooster:You're not gonna get the same experience.
Bam Bam:No. Which no. You'll get a full flavor experience. Feel bad about that. It's delicious.
Pagoda:But the
Rooster:aroma is very perfumey. It's it's a lot like the MDO series almost.
Bam Bam:On the aroma? The aroma.
Chef Ricky:Yeah. Yeah.
Gizmo:So the ABV on this is 43%, of course, like most single malts that we do. All of the Macallans, I think, that we've done. And, Senator, let's talk about the packaging.
Senator:Alright. So this is
Bam Bam:Put it back together for us.
Senator:This is the ridiculous thing. So this woman rings my doorbell to deliver this, and I'm seeing this white box around it, and I'm very confused because I'm saying to myself, supposed to be a red box, like, why is it to have this white thing? And then I see transit packaging not for display, and this is what it says on it. At the Macallan, we believe deeply in minimizing our impact on the planet. This transit sleeve is designed to protect the packaging inside on its journey to you.
Senator:When it has fulfilled its job, we ask that you complete its journey by recycling it. I mean
Bam Bam:How is it protecting the Earth though?
Senator:How deeply can you care about the planet if you're adding an extra fucking piece of packaging that you're just telling people soon as it's delivered to your door to just get rid of it.
Gizmo:And it's like either waxed or there's a layer of plastic on top of the cardboard.
Senator:It's not just cardboard. Cheap crappy thing. And the funny thing is itself that is underneath the sleeve is like a standard Macallan box like is even in the twelve year. It's just a little bit bigger, but there's no, like, special finish on the box. It's cardboard with some kind of, like, varnish thing on
Bam Bam:it. Correct.
Senator:I just don't understand. And then the thing that really kills me, on the top of the box, the flap that you open, on Macallan 12, Macallan 15, you know, it kinda has like a groove top that like really grabs inside the box when you close it, so it can't just pop open. This thing had it's just a straight cut across,
Gizmo:and
Senator:it just slides in here, and the thing just immediately look how easy this pops out. So I was holding it sideways like I would hold any other bottle and never have to worry that the top could open without me opening it myself. And you're just walking? And I'm just walking, and all of a sudden, the top just flies open, and the bottle comes out, hits the ground in the parking lot. Thank god this thing didn't break.
Senator:I mean, it's a $320 bottle of scotch.
Gizmo:That would have been very depressing. Oh, yes.
Senator:How stupid like, your job is to protect a very expensive bottle. They put the package in. Is literally how easy this thing just pops open. It makes no sense.
Gizmo:The shipping sleeve
Senator:Did you take insurance? Clearly, we're gonna need to next time. But honestly, shame on Macallan on the packaging. I think it is a joke. It's the same kind of box they use on the twelve and fifteen, just a little bigger.
Senator:The sleeve has no place being on there, and secure the damn top of the box. I mean, that's the most important part.
Chef Ricky:Yeah. So
Gizmo:there's big there's a big groove right now in the top of the cork.
Senator:Oh, there's more than that. There's scratches on the glass and everything.
Gizmo:Oh, really?
Senator:I didn't notice that. The side. Wow.
Bam Bam:That's crazy.
Pagoda:But I'm glad it didn't break. Hell yeah.
Rooster:Otherwise, you'd all be drinking nonalcoholic Guinness. That's good.
Pagoda:Well, like the non?
Gizmo:So this packaging is new as of 2024, and they have been putting age statements on it for quite some time now. But folks will remember that the packaging used to be in a black box. Now all of the regular age statement Macallan's are in red boxes. Is more marooned, than the 12. I think it's the same exact gray.
Gizmo:Is it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which I don't know why they did that because you used to be able to walk in the store, look at the shelf, and very quickly know if it's Sherry cask, you know, double cask Yeah.
Gizmo:No age, all of them.
Senator:The only thing I'll say from a branding standpoint, it it actually is makes no sense for them to be using different colors for every box because then you lose, like, an iconic color that you immediately recognize Macallan. So, like, they've moved to, like, this red now is, like, a defining color of Macallan. They should have done this years ago. So I don't have a problem with it, but I do get it's easier to distinguish the years. But just for the brand, it it helps to have one distinct look and feel.
Bam Bam:Let's talk about price for a second. Is this compatible to other eighteen year expressions as far as cost?
Senator:Yeah. It it is, sadly. I mean
Bam Bam:But that's the going rate.
Senator:Yeah? Pretty much. I'll use as an example. So like, Balvini, their '21 is kinda like their, you know, top like the 18 is for Macallan.
Gizmo:We did that one here.
Senator:Yeah. And that was a better price when we did it because I recently looked into this, and now that 21, I think, is $3.50 a bottle.
Gizmo:We got it for under 3, I think.
Senator:I think so. Yeah.
Gizmo:We got it on sale, I believe, at Bam.
Senator:But even the funny thing is, if you just rewound, like, five years ago, you could have gotten, like, that 21 Portwood for, like $2.10. Oh my god. Yeah. Other eighteen years like Glenn Merange 18 is actually more much more affordable. That's like probably the best value eighteen year you're gonna find.
Senator:I mean, I used to be able to find it for under 200. Now I'm guessing that it's got to be 2 something, but I I don't think it can possibly exceed $2.50. So like way better value. Yeah. Different flavor profile, not nearly as rich as this is.
Senator:It's not even intended to be.
Bam Bam:But it's sadly standard fare, like around $300 for a good eighteen year single malt. The richness is very compelling. It's unbelievable, I think. The sip Taking that sip, so if I just take it down quickly, I get a touch of heat in the throat. Not bad at all, but if you leave it curling on your tongue for a little while and then take it down slowly, it disappears completely, so you don't get that burn.
Bam Bam:The burn is so slight, so it's ridiculous to even talk about it, but comparing it to the smoothest and the 15, you can kind of mimic that. It's so delicious though, what we're having. It's so good. It's hard to fault the price even though it's so goddamn expensive.
Gizmo:I can fault the price.
Pagoda:I think
Rooster:it's ridiculous.
Bam Bam:I know. I know. They're all look, he just said they're all that's the category.
Gizmo:I understand that, but I think it's ridiculous.
Bam Bam:But it's a category. You can't.
Gizmo:That's fine.
Pagoda:Yeah. I think it's ridiculous. You know, but it does. I know, but.
Senator:But it's the category.
Pagoda:No, no, I mean.
Gizmo:Category's ridiculous.
Rooster:It's a ridiculous category.
Gizmo:Yeah. But you're ridiculous.
Pagoda:It does.
Gizmo:I understand.
Bam Bam:It does. I understand.
Pagoda:Yeah, it does. You know, the thing is you're paying $320. It's deep, it's rich. There's something about it that makes you feel It's
Bam Bam:so good.
Pagoda:And it's, you know, luxury.
Bam Bam:There's agree. Something about
Gizmo:It does, I mean, I will say it does feel like a luxurious pairing. Pairing. I will Yeah.
Senator:Here's here's my thing. You know, I compare the richness and flavor of this to a lot of the XO cognacs that we've done. Are expensive bottles. Those are all like $2.20 to $2.50. Mhmm.
Senator:They are as rich, if not even richer in flavor that as this is Mhmm. But they are smooth as can be. Yeah. I mean, you talk about refined and luxurious. Sure.
Senator:To me, that like is the pinnacle of that. The fact that and I'll give Macallan at least credit in this sense. The Macallan 18 has gotten better. When I had this first years ago, it was actually harsh. Like, I actively disliked Macallan 18 because there was so much flavor, which was great.
Senator:I was excited about that, but the amount of heat that came with it, I'm like, to spend that amount of money, you don't want that level
Bam Bam:of Same with the 15. The 15 has gotten better.
Senator:It has too. But now the funny part is that I think that the 15 is a more luxurious experience than this. Like, sure, this delivers more flavor. I will never dispute that. Mhmm.
Senator:But I do think the delivery of it is just more elegant and more refined in that 15, and that's a fraction of the price compared to this.
Pagoda:Yeah, I think I'd like to try the 15 right next to it.
Bam Bam:I'd love to do that too.
Pagoda:Right? Because
Bam Bam:that was a little lighter, a bit fruitier than this.
Pagoda:Yeah. Yeah. Fruity. Yeah. Is Sweeter, lighter.
Pagoda:I don't
Bam Bam:think it's sweeter because I think it's very balanced. I'm getting more caramel and vanilla here than I got in the 15. With the 15, you get that flavor profile is a little lower in the 15 and the fruitiness is a touch higher. Here, it's kind of the opposite. Although you're getting apple, but it's very faint and the other notes are more prominent.
Rooster:I mean, guess some might prefer this over the 15 and some prefer the 15 over
Senator:the Wow.
Pagoda:Like on a nice fall evening if you're sitting out during the winter, this would be great.
Senator:Funny thing is
Bam Bam:Just pay 300 something dollars for it. That's the problem.
Senator:I'm just curious. Notes It's bad. The notes that I've heard guys call out on the '18, I've heard caramel, I've heard apple, I get both of those. Other notes? Butterscotch.
Gizmo:Butterscotch. There's a touch of that chocolate that's Yeah.
Pagoda:Little bit. You know, you when you let it linger for a bit, it becomes a little bit of the cocoa chocolate.
Gizmo:Yeah. There's a little chocolate when you let
Pagoda:it When you let it linger and warm up.
Senator:Yeah. There's a little. I think more in the 12.
Gizmo:I think there's way more in the
Pagoda:more in the
Senator:12. And like I chased that note. So like I'm actually I wish there were more of that in this. But the funny thing is on the back, they have three prominent notes that they call out. Dark chocolate, dates, and ginger.
Bam Bam:No ginger at all.
Senator:No one's getting ginger. No one's mentioned dates. No. They mentioned like faint chocolate on the finish.
Bam Bam:I love ginger, and I would know it. I'm not chef, you're getting any ginger here?
Chef Ricky:I'm not getting any ginger. I could see the date call out because I think the date just it runs parallel to caramel and butterscotch, but I just think they picked something that they thought was a little more sophisticated to call out than brown sugar or caramel. But yeah, I'm not getting much ginger. I don't know if maybe they're pulling on ginger for the spice that you get here a little bit, but it's a ginger is a very, you know, unique flavor and unique
Bam Bam:Kind of that spice perks you up
Senator:a bit too.
Chef Ricky:Yeah. I kind of
Bam Bam:like that.
Chef Ricky:I have to be honest, I prefer the sweeter expression. 15. 15. Yeah. I know you keep saying balance.
Chef Ricky:I don't think it's as balanced as you're saying it is. To me it's drier.
Pagoda:Dryer, absolutely.
Bam Bam:I kind of like that.
Chef Ricky:It leans very dry for me and I don't know why, know, I mean, I'm a Scotch newbie here, but with this level of age, I assumed it would get sweeter. I don't know if this is the case for all scotches, but it's definitely not the case here. I've had the 12,
Senator:I've
Bam Bam:had don't the think that's the case. I'm guessing as they get older and more as they mature, the sweetness dissipates.
Senator:Not necessarily. I've had Glenlivet 25, which is outstanding. It's got plenty of sweetness. Flortwood from Balvenie to 21,
Gizmo:plenty of I think that's the best scotch we've ever done.
Bam Bam:It's delicious. Yeah. Well, you
Chef Ricky:look at tequila and rum, it's usually, you know, the level of sweetness and age usually have
Pagoda:some
Chef Ricky:correlation and So here it's not the
Gizmo:I also want to lay out for listeners, be very clear that we are drinking the Sherry cask, 18 years age. There is a double oak version in the same color box, very similarly priced. This one is the Sherry cask.
Bam Bam:No, thank you.
Gizmo:That is why we reach, you know, that is what we reach for every time that we go for these. Why is that, senator, that we always go for the Sherry versus the double oak?
Senator:Well, I mean, one, we love the flavor that the sweetness that a Sherry cask imparts. And that double cask is half Asian, usually like American oak, which has, like, an oakier kinda brings, like, a spicier finish oftentimes to a little sharper.
Bam Bam:Yeah. Sharpen. Exactly. Exactly. And the color in this is much better out of a Sherry cask than oak, I think.
Pagoda:Yeah. Yeah. The colors
Senator:The only other thing we should mention is just the 2026 vintage, so to speak, of this.
Gizmo:Yeah. They do have age statements on all these. And what I'm wondering I didn't I should have googled this or looked for it, but I'm wondering if they kind of view each year as its own kind of silo as far as flavor profile. Or are they like the 12 or the 15 trying to make it consistent in its flavor versus the year prior and the year prior to that? Or are they happy with it and that, you know, as it sits in 2026?
Gizmo:That's the profile this year. Like a wine.
Senator:I'm just saying I think it's definitely the opposite of what you were mentioning on anything around consistency. Like, if they thought that they could do this consistently, they would never put a vintage on it.
Rooster:Got it.
Senator:The fact that they're starting to do that to me signals that they actually are having a very, hard time keeping it consistent year to year. So they're having to put these vintages so that people chase first try the bunch of them, and then chase vintages that they like that they can find like someone who hasn't sold them all out yet as a retailer.
Bam Bam:Makes sense.
Senator:But I think that's a problem. Like Yeah. You know, what's different about spirits and wine, there are pros and cons to each. You know, I always talk about the brilliance of wine. Every vintage is different.
Senator:That's why you chase special ones. You buy a lot of it. Once it's sold out, you'll never experience it again. There's something cool about that. In spirits, it's very different.
Senator:Like, you have the ability to blend and make it such that, like, you're trying for every single year to taste identical. And, you know, the balcony double wood that we had ten years ago, the twelve year, tastes exactly the same as the twelve year that we have ten years later. At eighteen years and at this price point, if Macallan is not able to do that, like, your eighteen year is supposed to be your flagship expression. I don't know why in a spirit like this, you would want to roll the dice every time and have a different experience. So I I don't love it, honestly.
Gizmo:I also think from a marketing standpoint, if we want to talk about that, like we talked about Davidoff and Macallan with marketing, but I almost feel like you set yourself up for challenge from the consumer. And the the folks on these whiskey forums and Reddit saying, Oh, you know, the 26 sucks and the 20 five's great. You know, if you get on a bad run of a few years of it, you tarnish, as you're saying, your flagship product.
Chef Ricky:Correct. And the tequila and Macallan world, they don't use years to mark vintage. What they well, the great makers, what they rely on is lock coats. So, you know, there's very specific lots that perform better than others. You know, Fortaleza, for example, you know, lot 42 A was a very sought after lot.
Chef Ricky:Know, the different mezcal's that provide lot numbers on their bottles. You know, it's I don't know for me, I think if you're a fan of the brand, it keeps you coming back. It makes it something where it's not just, Oh, I ran out. Let me get a bottle. Now you're intentionally going to get this bottle because it's a new lot or it's a new vintage or whatever the case is.
Chef Ricky:I think for us is great because now we could drink this at least once a year. Right. Just to see how they compare it. Yeah. You know, you know,
Senator:it's true from a business standpoint. There's no question that it is smart, right? It keeps you coming back like chef saying. I just as a consumer in the spirits category prefer consistency.
Pagoda:Mhmm.
Senator:And I think like we've been frustrated over time with certain brands. Macallan is one of them where like we felt like Macallan was the gold standard was amazing. And then, like, there was a period we weren't really so thrilled with it. And then they started better delineating the double cask and the Sherry, and they seem to have figured things out now better.
Bam Bam:Same with Oben. That's Oben was another thing. Kind of an up and down roller experience from year to year almost.
Senator:Loved the 14, then something dramatically changed. Yeah. And then
Bam Bam:For two or three years.
Senator:It's now unbelievable like it used to be. So I just expect a consistent experience. I'm not looking for vintages when it comes to when it comes to reasonably priced spirits or somewhat accessible. Now the exceptions to that, like, there are crazy vintage bottles of Macallan. Like, I
Gizmo:remember five year? It's like $400. No.
Senator:I don't mean forget no. No. There's no twenty five year on it. I'm not talking about that. I mean, just a a giant year on it.
Gizmo:Got
Senator:it. Like when I was out
Bam Bam:value Pagoda.
Senator:I was in Singapore, like, there's a cigar place there, and they have on display, and they sell these bottles.
Bam Bam:It's incredible.
Senator:For me, flavor wise, the cigar has gotten less sweet and is now getting more savory, so it's definitely taking me on a journey. I feel like the first half was firmly more sweet than savory.
Bam Bam:I wouldn't say it's picked up. Think You said intensified. Body of the cigar has intensified, but the sweetness is a strain of it
Chef Ricky:that
Bam Bam:continues. It's giving me a really nice balance. I haven't lost the sweetness yet.
Pagoda:Yeah. So for me, it's savory, but I I do have a question for the retrohalers. A couple of times I was able to retrohale. I don't know, got a very slight graham cracker y kind of a thing. Is that what you've experienced in definitely, on the retrohalers.
Chef Ricky:That's why we keep retrohalers.
Bam Bam:No, you know what, it's
Chef Ricky:so pleasant.
Pagoda:It's savory, and then you're going, And I was like, wow, this is,
Chef Ricky:The retrohale does continue to be sweeter. Sweeter.
Gizmo:Yeah, think the graham cracker is a great call. I agree. Think it's more like
Rooster:glucose, glucose biscuits.
Bam Bam:Carbohydrates? Oh yeah.
Pagoda:Hey, hey, you know what they call a graham cracker in The US?
Gizmo:Sweet and carbohydrate. So, boys, very exciting. I don't think I even told you guys this. But for episodes I'm keeping secrets. For episode 250, our friends at Small Batch Cigar told me that they'd like to give some stuff away.
Gizmo:So this week on the Instagram, we're going to give away three boxes of cigars. We're gonna give away a box of stoic equanimity and wisdom. We're gonna give away a box of the Davidoff Maximar fiftieth, and a box of the Avowed New Dawn in Toro, all courtesy of our friends at Small Batch Cigar.
Senator:I'll take the Avowed.
Bam Bam:Yeah. The the Davodoff Crinkle I'll
Gizmo:take the stoic. I'll take the
Rooster:other two.
Pagoda:Yeah. The double r or
Bam Bam:never heard of it.
Gizmo:It's called the Maxim
Bam Bam:Maxim R R.
Gizmo:Maxim r. But like it's Maximar, m a x a m a r.
Senator:They used to have.
Gizmo:So so No. It's it's one word. Maximar.
Chef Ricky:Maximar. Interesting.
Senator:What are the rules you're
Gizmo:learning? About Maximar. So check out the Lounge Lizards pod Instagram page this week, and you will see the rules. Cool. No purchase necessary.
Senator:Go to the sign up for Instagram.
Gizmo:Yeah. All of sudden, there'll be
Pagoda:a Oh, damn.
Senator:I'm have to get
Gizmo:on 26 account.
Pagoda:Social media. Listen, I'm gonna ask Lizard Ryan to help me out a bit.
Gizmo:So thanks to our friends at Small Batch for doing that. It's very kind of them. And check out the Instagram. You guys can win a box of one of these three from our friends at Small Batch Cigar celebrating our two hundred and fiftieth episode.
Bam Bam:That's incredible. Very So pretty cool.
Gizmo:Very generous. They came to me with it. I was very, very
Bam Bam:It's awesome.
Gizmo:Surprised and pleased. It was very, very cool with them.
Senator:So I'm officially resigning. It pays a lot better to be a listener than it does to participate in No this shit.
Bam Bam:I can just send an email.
Gizmo:You're smoking good. 20
Bam Bam:Yeah, but if I send an email and get a box of cigars.
Pagoda:Yeah, you can
Gizmo:get a whole box.
Pagoda:You know, I'm gonna ask Chad GPT to write one. I'm gonna look at all the winning emails and ask it to come up with one.
Gizmo:So I have to tell this story about a place that we love. So we have been going after the podcast sometimes, after, you know, a recording, we're feeling good. It was a great recording. We head to this amazing new place. Like, it's like a speakeasy, but it's not like, it's kind of that, like, late night vibe.
Gizmo:It's a bar. Costco? Downtown Ridgewood. It's called the Madison Rose.
Bam Bam:MR. That's correct.
Gizmo:And the Madison Rose is, Senator, you could probably Well,
Senator:it was my dream for many years, and when we first opened, you know. I
Gizmo:mean, he's not that far off. He's not that far off. It's an amazing bar, And Garson over here has pretty much taken the place over. You know, we go there after the podcast. We get out of here, what?
Gizmo:Eleven, 11:30 sometimes. We go over there, we have some drinks. And they just roll out the red carpet. I know you've been there more than anybody, I think, senator.
Bam Bam:Yeah.
Gizmo:And you've become very good friends with one of the owners and the staff over there, and they're very, very accommodating to us. And we've done like a bunch of lounge trips and lizard trips, and we've had a great time. And they make great drinks, man.
Senator:They they I mean, I'm a very I'm very serious about cocktails, and the first time we went there, was me, Bam, and And I I had been I had seen that this place was coming for a while. I had been very closely following it, supposedly gonna be a great cocktail spot in our town, was super excited. And then I'm looking online, it says the hours are until 2AM every day.
Bam Bam:What day was that? That was Wednesday.
Senator:Think it was Wednesday. Yeah. And the thought in our town of there being a place on a weeknight open till 2AM serving drinks, I couldn't even believe
Gizmo:it. Let's paint the picture because the entire downtown of Ridgewood after 11:11. Is black.
Bam Bam:It's unheard of.
Gizmo:Dead. There are
Senator:no lights.
Bam Bam:For sure.
Chef Ricky:There are
Gizmo:no lights on a week. That's correct. It's it is completely black. Mhmm.
Senator:So we had I don't know if we maybe recorded that night. We were having a cigar over in our lounge, and I was saying to the guys, we really need to go. After some convincing, some of us were a little tired. I was very tired.
Gizmo:He's very tired until he's not. Did you notice that? Look,
Bam Bam:I was in that chair in that club. I was so comfortable. I said, guys, enjoy.
Senator:Yeah. But Bam was a trooper. He ultimately came. Yes. And it was clearly a great decision.
Bam Bam:It was a great night.
Gizmo:We were there very late that night.
Senator:Well, you weren't there this night. This is
Gizmo:the first night. Yeah.
Senator:So the the funny part is we park and we walk up, and there's a guy standing right outside the door, and we can see there's some people still inside. And he's like, oh, sorry, guys. We're closed for the night. I look at my watch, and I'm like, you know, it says online you guys are open till 2AM. It's only maybe at that point.
Bam Bam:I don't know. It's almost twelve.
Senator:Yeah. Twelve. And he's like, oh, you know, it's been a crazy night. We're we're just not serving anymore. We're closed.
Senator:I said, look. I'm just gonna say the following. We all live in this town. I've been very excited to try this place. I am huge on first impressions.
Senator:So if it's the choice is yours. If you don't you don't wanna allow us to come in and have a cocktail, that's fine, but there's no chance that I'm coming back here a second time. So he looks at me, looks at Bam, looks at Pagoda.
Gizmo:Swinging the hammer around.
Senator:And then
Pagoda:he's new in town.
Chef Ricky:He said, you guys had come in, but Pagoda has to stay.
Pagoda:No. No. He checked the shoes out, by the way. Didn't mention. Remember?
Pagoda:He did mention. He said they looked at the shoes.
Senator:Oh, I don't remember that, but
Pagoda:he did.
Senator:And then he just says, alright, come inside. So he lets us come in, we sit at the bar, and I'm looking at the cocktail menu, and I see a paper plane on there. That's my favorite cocktail, period.
Gizmo:Which you've detailed before. You've not found many great places that make a great paper plane.
Senator:One place in San Diego, shout out to Prohibition Lounge, used to be a bartender there named Heath. I think he's the best mixologist in the country. He moved over to bourbon something. They have the largest bourbon collection of any bar in the entire world in San Diego. Wow.
Senator:And I see it on there. So I said to him, this guy Josh, I said, look, the paper plane's my favorite cocktail. Most places say they can make a good one. The reality is most places can't. Should I order this cocktail here, or should I get something else?
Senator:He said, I think I make a killer paper plane. And he's like, well, where where's the best paper plane you've had? I said, San Diego. He goes, I'm from California. He goes, where?
Senator:I said, Prohibition Lounge in San Diego. He knew exactly where I was talking about. I said, if you can make it half as good as them, you'll be in good shape. Makes the cocktail. The second best paper plane I've ever had was my own after trying to mimic what I had in San Diego.
Senator:The paper plane at Madison Rose, I mean, wipes the floor with mine. It was outstanding. My guy Heath is still number one, Josh is right there, just been Like one A. Just one a? Yeah.
Senator:But unbelievable. Then had a Manhattan there. We all couldn't believe how great the Manhattans were.
Bam Bam:It's dangerous, actually.
Gizmo:It's very dangerous.
Senator:Pagoda might have got an old fashioned that night, he said, was great. Like, their cocktails, no joke, I would put up against any cocktail lounge in the entire country. The fact that it is in a suburb in New Jersey is absolutely wild. And the funniest part was when we had asked him, like, the hours and what days at the time, he had told us that their plan was they were gonna be closed Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and open Wednesday through Saturday till 2AM.
Bam Bam:That hasn't worked out.
Senator:Well, I mean, I told him straight up that night. I said, I'm sorry. Like, this is a town of people who appreciate cocktails. People love to drink there. There's no reason that you should be closing any day.
Senator:Like, you're gonna make money as it is. And so he said, alright. We'll give it a shot. And so they started opening on the other days and just killing it. So they're now open seven days a week
Pagoda:Yeah.
Senator:Till 2AM every single night.
Bam Bam:And they're crowded every night.
Senator:Packed. It's an amazing spot. So any lizards that live in this area, it's worth the the trip. You should go check out Madison Rose. Absolutely.
Gizmo:And we've been going there. I've been there probably three, four times now. Have incredible evenings there.
Bam Bam:Sure.
Gizmo:And my favorite part that you didn't mention, Senator, is that we go there, we sit outside, and we are sitting on the sidewalk in Ridgewood, New Jersey, smoking cigars Correct.
Senator:At like 02:00 in the morning.
Bam Bam:Also, unheard of.
Senator:That was also the funny thing.
Gizmo:So It's better it's better there than when we were at our member lounge down the street at North Korea.
Bam Bam:That's correct.
Rooster:Well, the
Senator:funny thing is the night that I think it was the second time we went there, we came from here, and we all parked, and I had my cigar case. And I look at the other guys, and I'm like, where's your case? And they're like, there's no way we can smoke cigars. I said, just bring your case. I brought mine.
Senator:I don't even think you had yours that day.
Chef Ricky:Really? Oh, yeah. Okay.
Bam Bam:I'm either gonna have a cigar or I'm going to Ridgewood Jail.
Pagoda:And I don't think I lost mine then,
Bam Bam:so No.
Chef Ricky:I broke Gizen, I had to run back and get ours.
Rooster:Yeah. And
Senator:so I had asked Josh at the time, you know, if we sit outside, do you mind if we have a cigar? He's like, you could lay a cigar right here for all I can anywhere you want, make yourself at home. They even bought like ashtrays for outside for us now. Like, the hospitality is off the charts. It it's really a spectacular place.
Bam Bam:Cool thing too, Josh will take a cigar. We've all given him a bunch. It's nice to smoke with him when he gets a break.
Gizmo:And you can tell how appreciative it is. Very know, because he's had a long day. We're there obviously at the end of it. Correct. So we sit down with him, we have some pistachios, we have a drink, some cigars, it's just fantastic.
Gizmo:He's gonna
Senator:be having cigars with us soon because he's bartending my birthday at my place. That's correct.
Gizmo:Garzone hired Garzone. That's right.
Senator:I'm off the
Bam Bam:hook. They'll be serving each other.
Gizmo:I make a better paper plane. Oh, you.
Rooster:What what time do they open?
Bam Bam:04:00.
Gizmo:Gotta be four
Senator:or five. It's four.
Bam Bam:Every day. Yep. Which is quite nice if you're ending your day early. I've considered going over, it'd be too much of a lush. Felt a little guilty going over for a drink.
Senator:I'm impressed there's always people in there at
Bam Bam:full Yeah.
Senator:I happier by the other day.
Bam Bam:Kind of. Yeah. I will say, I have one little criticism. I'm not a fan of his old fashioned.
Gizmo:Oh, I love his old fashioned.
Bam Bam:No. It's too light.
Pagoda:I think the Manhattans are better.
Bam Bam:I would never drink in Manhattan on rocks. That's just not my thing.
Chef Ricky:That's weird.
Bam Bam:That I can't do.
Pagoda:That's me.
Senator:I agree.
Gizmo:That's my good.
Pagoda:I can't have it in those pretty cups where you spill the drink all over.
Senator:A coupe glass.
Bam Bam:What a Ford concept. Listen, with the pinkies out, please His flavor trumps all.
Chef Ricky:His boulevardiers are delicious.
Bam Bam:I haven't had that.
Senator:Every cocktail, I have not had a single batch.
Gizmo:I'm obsessed with the old fashioned.
Bam Bam:I want to try that, chef.
Chef Ricky:It's really good. It's essentially an old fashioned with vermouth and Campari.
Bam Bam:Up though, not on the rocks.
Chef Ricky:No. It's it's stirred. It's it's on the cube. Ah. Yeah.
Chef Ricky:It's not up.
Pagoda:So it's closer to a Manhattan then if you have sweet vermouth. Right?
Chef Ricky:A little bit, but the Capari makes it somewhat more bitter and a little bit deeper.
Bam Bam:Talking about the ambiance and the way they laid out the place, it's really
Gizmo:quite
Chef Ricky:It's sexy.
Bam Bam:It's very sexy. It's compact, which I think creates pent up demand when people are there because they want to sit at the bar, unless it's us and we're smoking outside. So it creates a little bit of a social tension, which is really interesting. People crowd around at little tables. It's really very
Senator:unique. Shocked
Gizmo:at how many times you smoke outside when there's other tables there and nobody complains. One time, there was a guy there that was from the town I grew up in, in Pennsylvania.
Senator:That was That's true. That was crazy. Remember that.
Gizmo:Yeah. He was a surgeon or something.
Bam Bam:That's correct. It's crazy.
Gizmo:So the reason why I bring this up is we've been going there. We might go there tonight. I don't know. Obviously celebrating two fifty. But we were there, I guess it was last week.
Gizmo:I was pounding pistachios.
Bam Bam:Yes. You were.
Gizmo:I mean, what did you say? Had a thousand calories in pistachios. And then you asked him the pistachios.
Bam Bam:By accident. It was an accident.
Gizmo:So we're sitting there, and I think was Josh having a cigar?
Chef Ricky:No. That night, he didn't. Think he used something else.
Gizmo:Oh,
Bam Bam:okay. That night he did it. He was drinking Yeah.
Gizmo:Yeah. Was having a cigar. So we were sitting there, and all of a sudden Josh goes, what is that? The fuck is that? And we're all looking, and Josh is puttering around on the ground.
Bam Bam:Oh, fuck.
Senator:Oh. This is amazing. Motherfucker.
Gizmo:Oh, this is incredible.
Bam Bam:Alright. You
Pagoda:know what? I'm ready. I
Gizmo:forgot all about this.
Pagoda:I have no idea what happened.
Bam Bam:I'm ready for
Gizmo:this, Brewster. So
Bam Bam:Bring it.
Senator:What happened?
Gizmo:Brewster, bro. Bring it. I have no idea
Rooster:why I wasn't there.
Bam Bam:Bring
Chef Ricky:it. This feels like it happened a month ago.
Pagoda:I totally forgot about it.
Gizmo:In the interest of social what'd you call it? Social what?
Bam Bam:I don't know.
Gizmo:Social tension?
Pagoda:Well I
Gizmo:mean, Bam Bam comes prepared.
Bam Bam:So Can I tell it?
Senator:No. Because I was the one that spotted the thing on the ground.
Bam Bam:It was actually Josh that ratting me out to you fuckers.
Rooster:Wait. Why? No.
Gizmo:But he
Chef Ricky:told us what it was. The senator was the one that heard it fall.
Senator:Yeah. I heard it fall, and I looked down.
Rooster:So it wasn't a hanky.
Senator:And I saw a bottle, and the reason I asked is it looked like an airplane bottle of liquor. Yeah. And I'm like, who's carrying, like, an airplane bottle of liquor in their pocket? So I'm like, what the hell is that on the floor?
Bam Bam:Your daughter wasn't there.
Senator:Right? And then Josh was next to him, and he's looking, and I expected maybe it's like know, we're at a bar. Maybe for some reason, there's like a little small bottle of alcohol. And then Josh looks, and he's like, what the hell is that? He doesn't know.
Senator:And then all of us are looking around wondering, like, where's this come from?
Gizmo:Fishing around
Senator:on the ground. Unnecessary. And then it turns out that it's Bam's, and it's not liquor.
Chef Ricky:It was lube. Was it a plunk?
Bam Bam:I wish it was.
Rooster:So some kind of a tube.
Bam Bam:No. Or a plug.
Senator:So so so Bam Bam Bam immediately looks embarrassed, and he goes, it's hairspray. What? Of us are like, what? You carry a bottle in your pocket at all times? And then Giz asked him.
Senator:He goes, well, what what kind of hairspray are we talking about? What kind of what brand is it? And Bam's like, oh, I I think it's, like, L'Oreal or something.
Bam Bam:I see you got something primed up right there.
Senator:Could you do Giz picks up the bottle, looks at it, and he goes he goes, oh, no. It's not L'Oreal. It's Tresseme.
Chef Ricky:Tresseme. Tresseme.
Pagoda:I didn't even know people still put on hair scrub.
Gizmo:Can afford to use professional hair care products thanks
Bam Bam:to Tresseme. Our products
Gizmo:without the salon price. You're going to love Traceme European natural shampoo. It's fortified with a blend of a 100% natural extracts, rich in vitamins a, c, and p.
Pagoda:You blow dry your hair and put some hair on
Gizmo:of it. Hair from
Senator:everyday damage. Television? I got a whole
Bam Bam:combo. Shit.
Chef Ricky:Tresume. La
Gizmo:la. Tresume. Well done. So as soon as I saw
Pagoda:Well done.
Gizmo:That it was Tresume, I started singing the commercial. Singing this commercial that I remember when I was a child, like in the nineties, that was on constantly. Yeah. It's it was on constantly, so I remember that. And then I pulled it up on YouTube, and that was the end of it.
Gizmo:I started crying.
Senator:We were just dying, and the whole night we would just say things, and everything was, oh, la la.
Pagoda:Was so
Chef Ricky:Giz could not wait to record this episode.
Senator:He literally said that that night. He's like, I can't wait for the next pod.
Gizmo:Alright. Wow.
Pagoda:By the way, now I love this.
Rooster:Thank you. I can't I'm floored. Dude,
Bam Bam:that floors you?
Gizmo:Dude, you are you are like a
Pagoda:It's. Wow. So
Gizmo:Okay. Fam.
Pagoda:So so I have a question. Alright. August trip to Cuba, did you have a hair dryer with you? I did wanna make sure. I
Gizmo:There's a shortage. Alright. So I wanna hear your dissertation. Where we going? Why are you carrying around a pocket sized bottle of Tresume with us So at Madison Rose on a street in Ridgewood?
Bam Bam:So that day, I had a button shirt on and it was very hot.
Rooster:It was humid.
Bam Bam:Yeah. So I actually only use hairspray in the summer because my hair
Gizmo:He does have very thick hair.
Chef Ricky:When she says
Bam Bam:It's out of control. Like I can't make it look the way I want unless I put copious amounts of products in it. This is going to bore you all.
Rooster:No, no, no. It's not.
Bam Bam:Go ahead. Okay.
Pagoda:Go ahead, please.
Bam Bam:So for me, once I get it the way I want it to look, I feel I have to freeze it in place.
Gizmo:Do you
Rooster:use a net?
Bam Bam:Like a
Chef Ricky:netting thing? No. No.
Pagoda:No. No. By the way, I think that was also a hairspray. Those are the cheaper ones
Rooster:called net. A fish net?
Bam Bam:So I use a you
Senator:make sleep with a bandana. No.
Chef Ricky:I don't.
Bam Bam:You've seen me in Cuba wake up.
Gizmo:What about those what those Cuban ladies put
Chef Ricky:his hair in his booby? This
Gizmo:fucker. I've had
Bam Bam:breakfast with you, senator, early in the morning. You've seen me wake up. Do I have a bandana on my head?
Pagoda:I know one day it was over the hour late.
Gizmo:I could see you in
Rooster:the morning with, like, curlers all the way around.
Senator:Curlers.
Bam Bam:I'm trying to
Pagoda:uncurl the hair.
Gizmo:So I'm trying to understand.
Bam Bam:So let's talk about
Gizmo:you have a pocket size hairspray.
Bam Bam:I'll explain everything.
Gizmo:You don't go to the grocery store.
Senator:Did you have same pocket as the hanky?
Bam Bam:No. That's the other pocket.
Rooster:Okay.
Bam Bam:What about a hairbrush? Never. Because I can't brush it once it's done. I gotta, like, fuck My with my hands. Yeah.
Bam Bam:So when I have appointments and I had a lot of appointments that day.
Rooster:What kind of appointments? For
Pagoda:Sorry. Alright. I
Gizmo:mean, I'm just a point man.
Rooster:I wanna know what else
Pagoda:is on.
Senator:It a business to run?
Bam Bam:Is it business have a business to run. So when I do sales and I have back to back sales meetings, I'm driving around Brooklyn and Manhattan. My hair's flopping all over the fucking place.
Pagoda:Oh, and the convertible, I'm sorry.
Bam Bam:Yes, because of the heat and humidity. Convertible. I need something to make it look as presentable as possible, and at least make it look how I want it to look, which is very hard.
Pagoda:I'm I'm
Bam Bam:not saying a word. I'm not rating nothing. I'm not rating the cigar or I'm not I'm done.
Senator:Only rating hair products. Sure.
Bam Bam:I'm not
Chef Ricky:I am out.
Gizmo:Please let Bam carry on. Please. I'm moving
Bam Bam:the mic away now.
Rooster:Go ahead. Go ahead, Bam.
Chef Ricky:You know how much Tresemme is gonna sell after this?
Gizmo:They're gonna they're gonna be out of stock. So alright. So here's serious question.
Senator:Our presenting sponsor. Next
Pagoda:week. Tresemme.
Bam Bam:Here's the thing. I keep that bottle with me when I have a busy day. I get it. From appointment to appointment. And, you know, in between appointments, I wanna look my best.
Bam Bam:And my hair is very hard to control. So I put pomade in it in the morning.
Gizmo:You do have a lot of hair. I will say that for the listener, Bam has a ton of hair.
Bam Bam:And it's unusually long now. Yeah. So I'll put the pomade that you recommended, which I love, but it's not enough. So I gotta freeze it, and then I keep that shit with me because it Constant touch ups. My hair looks like shit at
Chef Ricky:five pomade. You freeze the
Bam Bam:pomade? I use hairspray to glue it in place.
Chef Ricky:Oh, you're freezing the hair. Gotcha.
Bam Bam:You wouldn't believe how much product I have in my hair right now, just for it to look like this.
Chef Ricky:I just think of Johnny Bravo. Otherwise, I wake up, yeah,
Bam Bam:it stands up straight. It's crazy. Oh.
Gizmo:Oh. It's more
Bam Bam:like Zoolander here. Alright.
Gizmo:So serious question because I get into the logistics of this.
Bam Bam:So And I kept the bottle in my pocket that day.
Senator:We know. And the sidewalk.
Bam Bam:Until And it fell out.
Pagoda:So what'd you do?
Bam Bam:Did you I'm like, the moment I fell out.
Senator:Oh, his face was unbelievable.
Bam Bam:It's like another chink in the arm.
Gizmo:Listen. Here's my question. Seriously. You don't go to the grocery store. You don't shop.
Gizmo:No. So do you put this on the procurement list for missus Bam while she's going?
Bam Bam:From her dresser.
Gizmo:You stole it from her dresser.
Bam Bam:And she doesn't know. Got it. It's a sample bottle, so it fits perfectly.
Gizmo:Yeah. A little travel size. Yeah. Do you have like a transit container like the Macallan does for that thing?
Bam Bam:Not a sleeve.
Gizmo:No. No sleeve?
Rooster:Nope. Do you have a carrying case?
Pagoda:Or Yeah. I think he's a tool belt with old products.
Bam Bam:A utility belt like Batman.
Pagoda:Like, utility. Yeah.
Bam Bam:I keep it in a glove compartment.
Gizmo:So I was crying we were crying laughing at the Madison Rose. What did what did this?
Bam Bam:What did
Gizmo:Josh think? Josh was
Senator:He was dying. Was cool. Now he
Bam Bam:wasn't you're exaggerating.
Senator:But he also said he wasn't surprised.
Bam Bam:Shit.
Gizmo:Listen, my friend. You're a good sport, and you're one of one. Alright. You're you're one of one. Alright.
Gizmo:And it provided a hilarious evening for us. And it really brought back that oh la la commercial.
Rooster:I would I would like to hear from listeners if they follow the same habit.
Pagoda:I can't wait for the e mails.
Chef Ricky:I don't
Bam Bam:think anyone does what I do.
Rooster:No. They might be.
Senator:I do. Think there's Yeah. They might put in their cigar case, some hairspray, a cutter, lighter.
Bam Bam:Say. Giz, you've got the best hair I've ever seen. It's like you style it, and then it can do whatever the fuck it wants.
Rooster:Deflection.
Bam Bam:Pause. I'm just saying. It looks great. That's the kind of hair I aspire to have, but I'm never gonna have this.
Senator:You want
Rooster:you want his hairstyle? I want the texture.
Gizmo:You and I have the similar texture, though.
Bam Bam:Yeah. But this is just very coarse, and it's it's just doesn't want like
Pagoda:It gives. Why don't you run
Gizmo:your first I wanna be right, Gizmo.
Rooster:What? You want Gizmo's hair stuff?
Bam Bam:Presentable hairs if you have hair, it's it's important to present it. Oh, take a dig. Took a dig. That's not a dig. It's reality.
Bam Bam:If you if you have it, just make sure I'm very I'm very lucky to have hair at my age.
Gizmo:You definitely are.
Bam Bam:Yeah. So And it's a
Gizmo:100% natural for listeners.
Bam Bam:Of course.
Rooster:Is it? Except for the listener.
Gizmo:No. It is. Don't no. Come on. He was in
Rooster:Turkey not too long
Pagoda:ago. Unbelievable.
Senator:He has
Pagoda:been in Turkey. I have.
Gizmo:Listen, man. I don't know
Bam Bam:Turkey. Ozempic. All these accusations.
Senator:Anabolic steroids.
Bam Bam:All of that.
Rooster:Yeah. Creatine.
Chef Ricky:Bam, it's all to say you look good. Don't be jealous.
Gizmo:I Thank you, chef. Honestly, dude, I'm thankful to know you because it
Bam Bam:You're, like, laughing at me.
Gizmo:For the la no. I'm laughing with you. You were laughing We with
Rooster:all are.
Gizmo:But for the last crying before he was laughing. For the last week, I've been singing Tresume, Tresume, Oh La La constantly because I remember it's like from my childhood, man. I think my mom used to use it in the nineties.
Bam Bam:For the record? Everyone used use don't have a bottle on me.
Pagoda:Marissa Tome used to use it.
Chef Ricky:Do turn your pockets inside out.
Senator:I mean, this is a this
Bam Bam:is a I really don't have it.
Gizmo:I don't
Rooster:have it. Take down your pants.
Pagoda:Let's go
Gizmo:on the paws. See the paws.
Pagoda:Those paws. Problem.
Gizmo:Oh, man.
Rooster:That's funny.
Gizmo:Bam Bam, you are one of one, my friend. Hilarious.
Bam Bam:Well, you know,
Gizmo:it's And you're a good sport. I gotta give it to you.
Bam Bam:I think it's an interesting question how other guys that have that wanna keep their hair presentable, what are they what are they doing?
Gizmo:I'm lucky for mine. Don't have any issues. Like once I do it,
Bam Bam:like by the way, hairspray is one of the worst things you can do to your hair. Is that true?
Chef Ricky:It's very Really?
Gizmo:Yeah.
Bam Bam:It dries your hair. I've been using it for years because Yeah, I can't control
Rooster:it's awful.
Chef Ricky:Exactly right. Yeah.
Bam Bam:But honestly, in a pinch
Rooster:Lifestyle podcast.
Chef Ricky:I just do a little deep conditioner. I put it in the freaking top knot and I'm good to go.
Bam Bam:That's it. You're lucky.
Rooster:That's it. Yep. You should try the top knot.
Bam Bam:I don't think that'll work for me.
Pagoda:111 figures out what kind of is it called crunchies or whatever? Scrunchies. What kind of scrunchies?
Gizmo:Crunchy. Crunchy. Crunchy.
Bam Bam:I have
Pagoda:no idea.
Chef Ricky:Crunchy scrunchies.
Gizmo:Give me a look.
Bam Bam:No. I'm not. Well done.
Gizmo:Oh, man. Alright. We are coming to the end of the second third now, boys, on the Partagas eight ninety eight from Cuba paired with the Sherry Cask, 18 years old from the Macallan. What's everybody thinking right now
Chef Ricky:As we
Bam Bam:get going
Gizmo:into the last
Chef Ricky:I'm getting a touch of hairspray.
Gizmo:You know,
Senator:we were sitting there having drinks,
Bam Bam:and he looked up that song immediately. Instantly. At the at the bar.
Gizmo:Oh, just one of one, my friend.
Chef Ricky:I totally forgot about that. One of one. That was great.
Gizmo:God bless the Madison Rose.
Bam Bam:I'm glad he can remind you.
Chef Ricky:Can't wait for best of.
Pagoda:I think I think this has made it. Announced.
Bam Bam:Chef, you keep putting the nail in the in the coffin. Alright.
Gizmo:All right. So how's the cigar for you right now, Sherry?
Pagoda:Unbelievable. That's excellent.
Rooster:You loving it? So good. Yeah.
Chef Ricky:Yeah. I love it. It's picked up a bit in spice and I like it because it's also picked up a touch in strength.
Bam Bam:I can't believe how slow rooster is smoking a cigar.
Rooster:I'm trying to, man. This is so good. Mean, the delivery is unbelievable. Wow.
Chef Ricky:You have incredible patience. Have more than
Rooster:half left.
Senator:Mean, that's par for the course
Pagoda:of the rooster.
Bam Bam:I know.
Rooster:Savor.
Gizmo:Very patient.
Rooster:Savor good things in life.
Gizmo:That's correct.
Chef Ricky:I was going slow.
Gizmo:I feel like I am. I mean, we're an hour twenty in and I still have, you know, into the last third here. I mean, I normally in a cigar of this size, I'm pretty much done with it. Hour ten, hour fifteen maybe at most. But I feel like I'm going to get to like an hour thirty, hour thirty five on this.
Bam Bam:Yeah. You know, the smoke output is pretty incredible.
Gizmo:I can't believe honestly how smoky it is.
Rooster:It's flawless, flawless construction.
Bam Bam:Oh, from top to bottom. Yep.
Gizmo:So let me ask you guys this as we're getting into the last third here. The age on the tobacco, where do you think this cigar is in its kind of life cycle as far as its maturation? You think it's past its peak? Do you think it still has a lot of legs? Do you think it's right at its moment that it should be smoked?
Gizmo:Like, if you have a box of twenty ten 898s based on tonight's experience, are you gonna start reaching for them? Are you gonna let them sit? What do you think?
Bam Bam:Because of how flavorful this is, I think it's still got legs for quite a while longer. Maybe three to five. Yeah, I agree. Of the flavor that we're getting, it's still very potent.
Chef Ricky:But to his point, I would definitely reach for this if I had it.
Bam Bam:After how many years? Sixteen. You may want to start dipping into this.
Gizmo:I feel like if you keep waiting, you might lose it.
Senator:To me, this has got to be within its peak window, for sure. I mean, I just say that because the flavor's there, but it's much tamer than a more youthful eight nine eight. I'm okay with that. And so am I.
Bam Bam:It's incredible.
Senator:I'm just saying, like, I can't imagine that five years from now that this is gonna be necessarily as flavorful. Like, it's gotta continue to come down. Like, there's no question in my mind there. So I think, like, if you have a box anywhere around this amount of age, I would be smoking it now and over the next five years, but I can't imagine five years from now that this will be any better than we're experiencing it at this moment.
Bam Bam:I think smoking it over that timeframe, yes. You're gonna have to be very patient because it's so damn good. I suspect it'll maintain if you're keeping it in that proper environment. It's my guess.
Chef Ricky:Too bad there's not 12 cigars in that box. So then we could just save it for them.
Bam Bam:Well, he's got like 22
Senator:of those little coffins.
Bam Bam:So no worries.
Gizmo:No, I'm very, very happy with the cigar. Honestly, I was expecting it to be a little bit more timid and tame than what it is tonight, given this age, based on really the conversations we've been having around the Vegas, Romania Classico Yeah, yeah. That we kind of are all feeling probably is two years past its peak, or three years past its peak, and it's on the down, you know, the downward trend. I am very, very happy
Rooster:See, with this there's another way of looking at it. It's not that it's on a downward peak. It's kind of like the flavors just kind of mellow a little bit. They get different, they get sweeter. But I don't think
Gizmo:the cigar is as good as it was.
Senator:That's a personal Every
Chef Ricky:same
Senator:peaks, I'm sorry. We can't pretend that they don't. This is a natural product just like wine is. There is a peak and then it will decline over time.
Rooster:There's people who smoke cigars that are much older than this.
Bam Bam:That's true.
Senator:There's people who drink bottles of wine that have 40 years of age on it, and I have news for you. I've had them. They don't taste remotely like a bottle of wine that has fifteen, twenty years on it.
Bam Bam:Wow.
Senator:And the question is just based on the type of wine, just like based on the type of cigar, like, some of them have longer aging potential, and so they will maintain they won't hit their peak until later, and they'll be able to maintain it potentially for longer. But everything at some point, it's like humans even. We are all going to decline at a point. Just how helps It's us
Gizmo:not if you have hairspray. Except them.
Bam Bam:Not the hair anyway.
Rooster:I mean, I have a box from 2008, and there's a few cigars left, and some in 2006. They're smoking I mean, I haven't smoked it in a while, but maybe like last year I pulled one out. It was unbelievable.
Senator:No, I believe that. I'm just saying like ten years from now, I guarantee that that will be past its peak.
Chef Ricky:You guys have the memories of elephants and I wish that I had not only that great of a memory, but also the experience you guys have. I would love some pod cycle where we do a younger version and an older version of a cigar, like back to back one week to the other. So that way it's kind of fresh in my memory so I could see the progression.
Pagoda:Totally agree. I love that idea, especially with Macallan. Well, you've experienced Macallan.
Gizmo:I've never heard Pagoda get so close to the mic. But
Pagoda:he's done that with us.
Gizmo:He has done that with know. Correct. Now what a nice evening, boys. What a great pairing. I would love some more Macallan 18 if you wouldn't mind passing it along.
Pagoda:Sure, please. Absolutely.
Gizmo:I think it's time for a second.
Bam Bam:He's so polite.
Gizmo:Oh, man. But go to
Senator:the new Garson. I like this.
Pagoda:Well, you'd be glad to know. I don't think this needs ice. Yeah.
Chef Ricky:I don't think it needs it either.
Gizmo:Shake it
Pagoda:a check.
Bam Bam:I can't keep nothing private here.
Gizmo:Just can't. Alright, boys. Let's go now to some listener comments and emails. A lot of stuff to get to tonight. We're gonna start with this one from our friend Lizard Greg, who is commenting on our commentary around thermoelectric humidors, and humidors that use air conditioning to cool and also to dry things out.
Gizmo:Thermoelectric, obviously, a little bit different of a technology, but it is also something that controls with one unit heat.
Bam Bam:Like the Remington?
Gizmo:Exactly. And there's a lot of others out there.
Bam Bam:Correct.
Gizmo:Especially the ones on Amazon. So, Lizard Greg says here, I'm still not following the thermoelectric humidor HATE. Is it based on poor experience with cheap models or something else? I understand the concerns if a unit goes crazy with temperature swings to regulate and the resulting humidity changes, but not all of us have perfect room temp locations where larger humidors can reside free of temperature swings across four seasons. Heck, those 28 count wine doors were all the rage on the Internet boards in the early two thousands to two thousand tens, and I don't believe Habanos SA has had implemented their export freezing process until two thousand six ish.
Gizmo:Not everyone follows Gizz's strict beetle protocol now, so it's only a matter of time until an outbreak and the sentiment will change. Obviously, with less Cupid cigars flowing to The States, the chances are lower. As far as I'm concerned, humidity and temperature, and he emphasized and, are absolutely vital to maintaining a collection, full stop. So I completely agree with Lizard Greg here, except for one thing. I don't want one unit to be controlling both temperature and humidity.
Gizmo:So for me, if you have an imperfect ambient where the temperature is swinging, I don't want the same unit controlling the humidity to be doing the temperature as well. Using the same because then you're gonna get into that hell cycle, as I call it, and I've detailed before, but I want something like a cigar oasis working on humidity, and I want something else dealing with temperature. Do you guys disagree with that?
Bam Bam:What Have you had any other do you have dealing with temperature?
Gizmo:My temperature's good because I do have a decent consistent ambient because it lives in my office, and it's always 68, 70, whatever.
Bam Bam:So it's dependent on placement in the home.
Gizmo:Exactly. Okay. And I understand what he's saying about it not being possible to keep consistency in some places. Some lizards don't have that luxury. But you have to either A, adjust your humidity based on the temperature to achieve the same percent moisture content in your cigars, or find a way to keep the room more consistently.
Bam Bam:Can you retrofit one of these units to have an oasis in it and not depend on the humidity factor for that machine?
Gizmo:Exactly right. You can do that? Yes.
Bam Bam:Okay.
Chef Ricky:Absolutely. You could control the temperature independently of the humidity.
Gizmo:Yeah, exactly right. You could set the
Bam Bam:humidity It's prefer that.
Gizmo:You set the humidity at some number that the unit will never reach or try to reach and just focus on the temperature, that's fine. Get a cigar oasis as well. That's what I would do.
Bam Bam:So I will say, there's a guy in town, father of Lizard Hollis, his name is Lizard Charlie. He has a hobby. He finds old wineadors, kind of this tall, takes out the guts, takes out the compressor, takes all the mechanisms out of it, leaves the shelves, which I think are kind of cool. He puts interior lighting and he does put the Oasis inside this thing, so he's not counting on the unit for temperature swings because he puts that in his living room and he's got a bunch of them. They're beautifully done and he's got an Oasis inside each one of them.
Bam Bam:What I love about that is the zero transfer of air from outside to in because it's perfectly sealed. My tower's not perfectly sealed. It's good, and I continue to maintain it, but it takes a lot of maintenance. That thing is airtight. There's something about the airtight environment where once you set the humidity and it's in a great temperature space, you'll never have to mess with it because it's perfectly sealed.
Bam Bam:There's something to that.
Pagoda:So how did he get the electrical outlet of the OSs?
Bam Bam:He cut in the back, made an opening just enough for the plug to go through and then he sealed that opening. So he plugs right into the wall. It's smart. Which is smart. Smart.
Gizmo:A lot of guys do that.
Rooster:But I mean, 99% of the
Gizmo:people keep if they have
Rooster:a tower, they keep it inside their house. So where the house is at the ambient temperature, let's say you set it at 70 or 71 degrees, that's what the tower is going to be at. Sure. So why temperature shouldn't really be an issue?
Bam Bam:It's more humidity than temperature.
Chef Ricky:No, but in my case, my tower is in the basement. I don't have central AC in my home. And my basement windows, while they are bigger than your typical basement window, they're still kind of not AC size.
Bam Bam:Is your basement finished? It
Senator:is. Okay.
Bam Bam:And insulated?
Chef Ricky:Yeah. Okay. So, it's always cooler than the rest of the home, but it does hit 80 degrees, 82 degrees. That's hot. But the cigars have done okay, you know?
Chef Ricky:So the flavor is great. The humidity, you know, I did plug in the dehumidifier in my basement just to bring the humidity down a bit because it was almost around 70 those weeks where we were getting a ton of rain.
Gizmo:Yeah.
Chef Ricky:So now I'm back down to an ambient, you know, our age of about 63 in the basement.
Bam Bam:I will say if you had central AC and you can control the temperature in the basement, even though the humidity is higher, if your tower is well sealed and you've got your Oasis set where it should be, don't think In that scenario, temperature is not a factor. It shouldn't be.
Chef Ricky:No, think the tower is sealed much better now that I put some of that Weather stripping. The weather stripping around the door there, as Senator suggested a few months ago.
Bam Bam:Yeah, we've all done that.
Chef Ricky:But as it's as you know, especially with all that rain we received, as it got more humid, it definitely creeped up a bit. Yeah, was more into 69 range in my tower, so I pulled out the dehumidifier and I just dehumidified the entire basement.
Bam Bam:Interesting.
Pagoda:I just have a comment on Russe's. So 99% keep it inside
Gizmo:the house.
Pagoda:What about the 1% they keep? In the garage? Alright, alright, alright. I was going outside the house. Gonna confuse confused me.
Pagoda:Being bad.
Chef Ricky:I had the same thought, and then I thought about the garage. I yeah.
Senator:Random question, chef. Do you keep your basement door open all the time or
Pagoda:closed sometimes?
Chef Ricky:I don't. So the thing is the basement is sort of the family room or is what I call the family room, but it's become my son's apartment. It's where the PlayStation is and the big TV and that's where he spends a lot of his time. So when he's down there, he likes keeping the door closed. So I have pretty large air conditioners upstairs.
Chef Ricky:So sometimes that air conditioned air is not making it to the basement.
Senator:Yeah. I I would just say this. So the funny thing, you know, the home I'm in now for like eight years, this is the first home I had purchased. I was closing my basement door when I first bought that house, and it was humid down there. Yeah.
Senator:And I was like, what the hell is going on here? I bought a dehumidifier, all this stuff, and was just getting tired of dealing with the dehumidifier, emptying the fucking water, all this stuff. Yep. So then I just tried just keeping the basement door open. Oh my god.
Chef Ricky:Yeah. So I tell him now needed a dehumidifier. Air movement.
Senator:Just needed airflow. That's it. My basement, with that door open, it will get colder down there than the rest of the house. Okay. It is never humid down there.
Rooster:Because it's all cinder block Yeah. And it's always cooler
Gizmo:than I'm
Senator:saying. But it was like when I was somehow, like, containing this the air, and there was no airflow, like, was actually creating a problem. All I needed to do is keep it open. It was a complete waste. I I have this dehumidifier I haven't used in eight years.
Senator:I would just recommend trying that because that may actually solve a lot of your problems.
Chef Ricky:So I tell him now when he's not down there because he, you know, you start playing these games online, and he gets pretty loud. So I tell him when he's not down there, leave the door open.
Senator:That's the key.
Gizmo:Yeah. Know,
Chef Ricky:so it's helped. But ever since I dehumidified the space two or three weeks ago, I haven't had to do it again. So I just think it got really humid. There was a ton of rain.
Bam Bam:It's tough for older homes. Even if it's like your home, your purchase was fully renovated, wonderfully documented, but they didn't have access to the foundation walls around the perimeter. If it's at least ten years old, there's something that they apply to foundations called damp proofing. That's supposed to keep the moisture and humidity low as it passes through the foundation. It deteriorates over time.
Bam Bam:I have a whole plan for my renovation. I'm exposing all that. I've got a whole plan. But if you have an older house that has damp proofing that's deteriorated, every house is going to have a challenge with humidity control in a basement unless you've got a dehumidifier and you leave that door open to the upper living levels.
Senator:That's the key. Literally, I have not used a dehumidifier
Bam Bam:in Yeah. Smart.
Chef Ricky:Well, if you have AC in your basement,
Senator:you know, whether it's
Chef Ricky:whether it's split unit, which I'm probably going to do in the future is put some kind of split unit. The AC is going
Gizmo:to dehumidify the air. Lifestyle and temperature humidity podcast. Yeah. Now, but this is very important though for folks out there who are dealing with this. I mean, a lot of people are constantly battling temperature and humidity, especially with their cigars, and it can get very challenging.
Rooster:So, I mean, what do you do, like you were saying, about the door like, leaving the door open, but if it has just rained and it's super humid out, sometimes there's no air movement outside. There's no air coming in. It's probably very
Senator:doesn't matter. My finished basement has no issue with that at all.
Bam Bam:So also if you add new insulation, which your renovator probably did before you bought it, probably put a vapor barrier in there, that's huge.
Senator:That'll The basement prior to me buying that house was unfinished. Correct. So they finished it, so I'm sure they put
Bam Bam:it in. That's all fresh insulation and vapor barrier.
Chef Ricky:There's also a wild card in my situation. There's a bathroom in my basement with a shower, right? And as I said, Ethan likes to use the basement as an extension of his bedroom. So that's where he prefers to shower. Now, man, we've all been 14 years old as young men.
Chef Ricky:Right. And, you know, that shower tends to run for a long time. So as that showers on, it's creating humidity and
Bam Bam:a lot of moving action in there.
Gizmo:You're scared, Michelle.
Pagoda:Yeah. Yeah. So.
Bam Bam:Yeah.
Rooster:Lizard Ethan, no more showers. Oh,
Chef Ricky:god. I I tell them. I'm like, dude,
Bam Bam:if you're gonna shower with all the hair, keep this short. I have a headache.
Rooster:You gotta install an outdoor shower
Chef Ricky:for it. It's all the hairspray.
Gizmo:Alright, boys. Let's move on now. Our friend Lizard Bonos on FOH got a real kick out of me trying to pronounce Welsh words when we did the Penderyn, Welsh whiskey. And he says, okay, a drinking game for the next episode. If you mess up, you sip.
Gizmo:No research until after it's been tried. Pronounce around the table top to bottom, one word each, and listed a shit ton, maybe 30 different words. And if we were to do this drinking game as Lizard Bonos proposes here, none of us would be walking out of here tonight because these words are crazy. I mean, these it's amazing that some of this is English. But yeah.
Gizmo:So shout out to him for putting this together, but we are not gonna be doing this.
Bam Bam:Sounds like a lot of toilet paper work.
Senator:Can you can you just read a few of them?
Gizmo:Here are some Irish words.
Chef Ricky:Oh, great. Iode,
Gizmo:Seamus, Sorsi, Comhay, Tideg. I I I'm gonna go on to Welsh. Lonely, Ellinead, Quicht, c w t c h, Langallan, Macallan,
Senator:Puyallan Macallan,
Bam Bam:saying having you sound drunk right now.
Senator:Yeah. Abber he's trying to say Macallan after four Manhattans.
Gizmo:Can I
Bam Bam:have a McLalilie?
Gizmo:Abergavany, Beldegort, Seifreth, Yinzebul. Wow. These are yeah. There's some real bad ones here.
Chef Ricky:Well, at least you know how most Scotch names come to Those are decent. To fruition,
Gizmo:Yeah. This is pretty amazing. But so shout out to him. I I have no idea what any of these words are.
Senator:No. I'm impressed. Your command of the language is really growing.
Chef Ricky:It's better in Spanish.
Gizmo:Thank you, senator. Here's one from Lizards Sonic Stag. He says, oh my god. We're how many years and episodes in and Pagoda manages to lose yet another case as he still has not used air tags. He must have more money than sense.
Gizmo:With regards to the members' lounge, the man so he's talking about Lizard x's wife coming in. The management should warn everyone that anyone who lets in nonmembers will have their membership canceled. The member whose partner keeps turning up should get his life sorted and be told that if there's any more issues, he will forfeit his membership. Keep up the Fabulous Podcast. It's just what's needed each week.
Gizmo:So this is some North Korean hammer.
Bam Bam:Gestapo tactics.
Gizmo:Yeah. What do guys think
Pagoda:of Senator loves him.
Senator:No. I mean, look, you're allowed to bring a guest, so you can't say if you bring a nonmember. I mean, that that defeats the purpose.
Chef Ricky:I don't think he brought her, though.
Gizmo:Good point.
Senator:I mean, that's more the problem. You got a point, Bam.
Bam Bam:I got a point.
Pagoda:Good point.
Senator:There's no easy solution. Now in our case, this lizard is actually moving to another state.
Gizmo:That's true.
Senator:The entertainment value is gonna dramatically that's a point. Decline at the You think
Chef Ricky:he's taking her with him?
Senator:Although, maybe she'll still visit.
Gizmo:He might not tell her he's moving.
Pagoda:That's right.
Chef Ricky:Does she know he's moving?
Pagoda:And if a lizard who's listening does come to experience the same scenario, that'd be great.
Gizmo:By the way, I haven't gotten a single email from a listener saying that they've had anything like this at their lounge. I think there's something in the water here in Hawthorne at our lounge. Alright. Let's go on now to some two hundred and fiftieth episode notes. We'll start with our friend Lizard Enrique.
Gizmo:Nice. Says, hello, Lizards.
Chef Ricky:Love this guy.
Gizmo:Congratulations on your two hundred and fiftieth episode. It's a true milestone. You have so much to be proud of by accomplishing such a spectacular run. Since I started listening, one of my favorites has always been Rooster, whose cool demeanor and wisdom serves as the spiritual center of the show. Wow.
Gizmo:That's a nice compliment.
Bam Bam:Very nice.
Gizmo:Yeah. As has been described by the panel in the past, he is always generous and takes care of his fellow lizards.
Bam Bam:Centuries of wisdom. A true model for us
Gizmo:a true model for us all. With that in mind, I ask how was the Fundadores dinner that Bam offered to Rooster as a make good for laying in wait and hornswoggling his friend, his elder, and fellow lizard out of $2,100 in the sale of the box in question on Bon Roberts. Where did the lads go to eat?
Bam Bam:That's funny.
Gizmo:Invited. And for Bam, did it finally feel good to square things with rooster once and for all? Your friend, Lizard Enrique. Bam, you're
Pagoda:up. This is a ten year project. That money's all gone, folks.
Bam Bam:But happy to go to dinner.
Rooster:I won't hold my breath.
Gizmo:Yeah, so we still have not done the,
Senator:we're all still waiting for that.
Gizmo:The Fundadores dinner.
Chef Ricky:Bam hasn't found a steakhouse that's
Gizmo:Let's go.
Bam Bam:Soy balls. Soy balls. I'm a generous guy. I'm ready to go.
Gizmo:Schedule it.
Pagoda:Let's go. All you have to do is take him to freaking vegan, you know, right down in town.
Rooster:No. It's for all of us.
Senator:It's for everybody. He says he's taking all of
Bam Bam:us.
Pagoda:All of us? Alright. Then I'm sorry.
Bam Bam:You're gonna call him
Rooster:right lounge. The whole lounge.
Senator:For the record, I'm hosting a steak dinner before Bam, and I didn't owe the group a steak dinner. You know what?
Bam Bam:I vicariously participate in that in that hosting.
Gizmo:So you're gonna have this dinner at his birthday party, but he's he's You
Bam Bam:know what? I'll serve all the Podcast. Mission accomplished. I'm done.
Gizmo:Alright. And now we have a voice memo from our friend Lizard Surgeon from Developing Palates celebrating our two hundred and fiftieth episode. He wanted to share this with us.
Lizard Surgeon:Gents, it's Lizard Surgeon here again and I don't want to monopolize too much of your time. Left a rather lengthy note last week, which I've not heard yet, I'm looking forward to the responses. But I just wanted to take a moment and sincerely congratulate you on reaching two fifty episodes. You've reached a bar that not a lot of cigar podcasts have done. You are in a very illustrious and elite group of individuals who have touched and influenced the industry.
Lizard Surgeon:Want to sincerely congratulate you two great two fifty episodes. Looking forward to the two hundred and fiftieth and obviously two fifty more. Have a great one, guys. Thanks.
Bam Bam:Very nice.
Gizmo:What a nice note. My friend Lizard Surgeon. Check him out on the Developing Pallets Podcast on YouTube. They do blind reviews. They're awesome.
Gizmo:Very, very detailed. They get in the weeds on things. Certainly much more scientific, I would argue, than we do. They provide a lot of value. So check those guys out.
Gizmo:Developing Pallets on YouTube. So boys, I wanted to say I finished my 8-9-8.0 and I am now going into the Fabrica5 Lonsdale that I handed out to everybody because I've been loving this cigar.
Chef Ricky:Dude, the cold draw blew me away and the first draw blew me away. This cigar is absolutely delicious.
Gizmo:So I handed these out because a lot of the guys I don't think any of the guys in the room have had these yet. No. But I have been smoking a ton of these. What do you think?
Bam Bam:Very nice. I'm getting almond, oatmeal, kind of a very bready experience
Senator:for me.
Chef Ricky:I like the oatmeal.
Senator:That's a
Chef Ricky:great way of calling it a carbohydrate.
Bam Bam:It's right
Chef Ricky:there. You're absolutely right.
Bam Bam:I think it's right there.
Rooster:Similar to a Trinity Robusta. No way. It's a little different. This is sweet. Very different.
Chef Ricky:I was gonna say there's a there's a sweet note here. It's almost like oatmeal with maple syrup, which I love doing.
Bam Bam:I don't get enough sweetness here to to say that just for me personally.
Chef Ricky:I'm getting sweetness here
Pagoda:for sure.
Bam Bam:This is a bit savory for me with that oatmeal type of an experience and then a little nuttiness for me too. Very good.
Senator:I think it's sweet and savory, but I have to say Bam, the oatmeal call out is
Gizmo:Yeah. Spot on.
Senator:So spot on.
Bam Bam:It's nice.
Senator:I don't think I've ever gotten as prominent an oatmeal note in any cigars right now.
Bam Bam:Unusual, right?
Chef Ricky:Yeah. It's great. And it's great because that just means it's bready, it's creamy, there's a rich experience to this.
Bam Bam:This would be a great
Gizmo:morning with lunchtime
Bam Bam:a coffee.
Pagoda:Now we know we can replace the oatmeal in the morning.
Gizmo:I thought this was a perfect follow-up because obviously it's very similar in size to the eight ninety eight that we just did. This is, I think, 42x6.5, so it's just a touch bit shorter.
Chef Ricky:And there I see flavor. There's a lot
Gizmo:of flavor there too that matches.
Bam Bam:Yeah. Not getting as much sweetness as I got in the 898, I will say.
Pagoda:Not yet.
Gizmo:I get a ton of sweetness out
Bam Bam:of I'm these getting this thing. Very good.
Gizmo:Alright. Let's go to another email now. This one's from our friend Lizard Garifo. He says, hello, Lizards. I'm sitting here smoking a Flor de Selva tempo while catching up on some of your episodes.
Gizmo:As I was listening to episode 242, which featured the interview with Ariana Airoa, It dawned on me that I would love to see you guys do a segment highlighting women cigar blenders and the cigars they create. There are quite a few women in the industry producing some really excellent cigars, and I think they deserve more attention. Some of these brands may be less well known depending on the region. While I really enjoy the cigars you review from the major brands, I'd also love to see you feature lesser known producers. For example, Maya Selva and her Florida Selva line would be a great place to start.
Gizmo:Maya is a Honduran born woman who entered the cigar industry under the guidance of Nestor Placentia and has been directly involved in developing her blends. Flor de Selva includes Honduran Poros, while she also has a Nicaraguan line, Cumpe, in her portfolio. I personally really enjoy the Flor de Selva Tempo Toro. Another great example is Karen Berger, who started out as a cigar roller in Nicaragua and eventually worked her way into blending and ownership. I really enjoy her tailgate and XTELLI, particularly in the Torah of Vetola.
Gizmo:So everything he's mentioned so far, I'm hearing for the first time. So this is really intriguing to me. There are also women such as Silvana Bencomo and Raquel Quesada who would make great additions to a segment like this. Of course, Quesada makes a ton of cigars. I think it could make for a really interesting episode and would be a great opportunity to shine a light on some talented women in the cigar industry who may not get as much exposure as the bigger, more established brands.
Gizmo:Keep up the great work, and thanks for all the content. PS, what's going on with Grindr and Pooba that no longer show up to the recordings? Best Lizard Garifo. So I I think this is a great note. I mean, we've really tried to include as many interesting folks as we can in the podcast and interviews and conversations and cigars that we review.
Gizmo:But certainly, we know about something or we've become familiar with it, we don't review it. So emails like this are very helpful to point us in a direction of something new that we've not heard of before. It's happened many times. We've reviewed things. The most famous one, I think, was Wizard Hen Retail with that blind review bringing in the stoic and look at what happened there.
Gizmo:Right? So so I appreciate Lizard Garifo writing out to us. So what's going on with Grindr and Pooba, boys? So Pooba is Well, first of all, I think
Rooster:he's a longtime listener.
Gizmo:Longtime listener. Oh, yeah. He's been listening. Otherwise, he won't know. Oh, yeah.
Gizmo:He's been listening for a long time and he's written this quite a bit over the years. But so, yeah, the answer on that is Pooba is pretty much in Florida full time now. Comes back every once in a while. I'm not sure when he's going to make a return, but he made a return on on the phone a couple of weeks ago. Maybe we'll get him in on the phone for the five year episode coming up in a couple of weeks.
Bam Bam:Very dubious return.
Gizmo:And Grindr has just been grinding. He's been busy as hell, man. I mean, we haven't seen him at the lounge. He's very, very busy with life and everything else.
Bam Bam:His career. Yeah.
Rooster:Yeah. So traveling, young kids.
Gizmo:Yep. Yep. That's the story now. Right now, you have to deal with the six of us for the time being. So that is the answer on Pooba and Grindr.
Gizmo:So thanks to Lizard Garifo for reaching out to us. And now, boys, it's time to go to our lizard of the week. Oops. I didn't mean to do that. And I did that.
Gizmo:That's two weeks in a row. You get
Senator:a box of Bond Robert cigars.
Gizmo:Yes. Yeah.
Rooster:Finally. I'll take the Lonsdale.
Gizmo:And now, boys, it's time to go into our lizard of the week presented by our friends at Bond Roberts. Our lizard of the week is going to win a 10 count box of cigars from our friends over there at Bond Roberts. Our lizard of the week this week is Lizard Nikos. And he says, dear lizards, I've been a listener for a little more than a year now. Let me say I really like the pod.
Gizmo:I mostly listen while I drive back and forth to work. Listen to this comment. Your pod has helped me stop looking at my phone and particularly the Instagram reels while I drive. So I absolutely have to thank you for that. So let me just say to Lizard Nikos, podcasts or not, please don't drive and look at Instagram reels.
Gizmo:Correct. That's a problem.
Senator:Says the guy who eats a salad while he's driving.
Gizmo:Also, Hey. My eyes are always on the road.
Bam Bam:Oh, that truck is special.
Gizmo:Thank
Bam Bam:you. It's got a dining table in
Gizmo:it. I really enjoy all the episodes I have heard and have enjoyed your evolution from the first episodes, which were shorter in length, to the later episodes, which have great structure and are much longer. And I absolutely love the addition of chef to the podcast. Hey. You're talented chef.
Rooster:Thank you.
Gizmo:Due to your recommendations, I'm trying many more tequilas, although many of the stuff you recommend are particularly hard to find in Greece. That's where he's at. That's While writing this email, I'm enjoying a Volcan Reposado while smoking a Bolivar Royal Corona. And let me tell you that the tequilas you recommend are absolutely working for me. Summers in Greece can get up to 40 to 45 degrees Celsius in the day, and some nights don't drop below 30 degrees Celsius.
Gizmo:So the tequilas are super refreshing and work great in the heat.
Chef Ricky:What's that mean in Fahrenheit?
Pagoda:90 plus. I wonder what they use as a chip advice. I wonder.
Gizmo:However, I'm a firm believer that during the daytime, nothing beats a nice white wine center. I loved your episode about the Cigarles wine as it's one of the favorite wines for the summer. I wholeheartedly recommend the Irini Assertico from Santorini as well if you can find it. It will not disappoint. Irini, I r I n I, senator.
Senator:It's definitely not easy to find, but I'll check that out.
Gizmo:I would like to walk you through the Cuban cigar situation here a little bit. I live in Western Greece, I usually smoke one to two Cubans a day. Here, a d four is about €25.
Chef Ricky:Dollar. What?
Gizmo:And a bellicosos finos from Bolivar is about €26. And more often than not, you can find them sitting on the shelves. We don't have any lounges in my city. However, in all restaurants and bars in my area, you can enjoy a cigar at your table if you are sitting outside.
Chef Ricky:That is
Gizmo:true. And usually they will bring you a cigar ashtray as well.
Bam Bam:Now that's
Gizmo:That's awesome.
Bam Bam:That's a Yeah. That's hospitality. That's correct.
Chef Ricky:That's one of the reasons I love Greece.
Bam Bam:That's good living.
Gizmo:In the winter, I am smoking in my living room. Let me tell you that the Dyson big and
Bam Bam:Someone just popped My
Rooster:eyes lit up.
Pagoda:Just woke up.
Gizmo:Me tell
Rooster:Oh, friend.
Gizmo:Let me tell you that the Dyson big and quiet helps me keep my house completely odorless and also keeps my girlfriend happy as she's not into cigars at all. However, she is definitely enjoying my tequilas. In Greece, we don't have padrons or the aging room sonata and concerto. We have the aging room vibrato and the espressivo. I'm assuming he means the orange bands.
Gizmo:€26 and €24 respectively. Davidoff and Fuente selection is also more limited than in The US, and prices for Davidoff are close to Cubans. Since listening to your pod, I have tried several of your recommendations, but the vast majority of non Cubans don't really work for me. A cigar that I have really added to my rotation is the Davidoff Churchill in Bellicoso. Love that cigar.
Bam Bam:Very
Gizmo:nice. The quality control is also questionable in Cubans. The last box of Ramon Gigantes that I bought had approximately 30% plugged cigars. That's not good. No.
Gizmo:That's an expensive 30%. Oh, yeah. I completely understand from your point of view the transition if you were Cubans. Even when you smoke Cubans, you spend some time to discuss how you have almost eliminated Cubans from your rotations. Please do keep in mind the situation is not the same everywhere.
Gizmo:I've been smoking cigars on and off since I was 18. I used to buy a Lusitania, which is my favorite stick, for 18 and a Cohiba Robusto for 25. Now I'm 30 and a Lucy costs about €50. It's almost three times as much. A Coro costs close to 90, which is more than three times, and I usually smoke them in special occasions only.
Gizmo:Sure. I hate to see the same sticks I used to smoke costing me 300% more. And even more, I don't like supporting Habanos by continuing my purchasing as usual. However, I find that nothing can quite scratch that itch like a Cuban. Last week, some friends from The US came over for holiday, and I treated them to some BBFs, Mani twos, and some diplomaticos from my tower.
Gizmo:They each bought different boxes from the local retailer before they left. So given this, I would like to ask you guys this. If availability wasn't an issue and prices between Cubans and non Cubans were approximately the same, would you still cut them from your rotation? For sure, you have found some absolute gems which fit your taste in new worlds. But if you had the chance to obtain Cubans easily, would you still limit them as much?
Gizmo:Lastly, if you are ever in Greece, please shoot me an email so we might meet up to enjoy some cigars and some nice wine. Keep up the great work, and enjoy the rest of your summer. Cheers, Lizard Nikos. What a
Bam Bam:great email.
Pagoda:What a
Gizmo:great email. Wow. Yeah. So if Cuban cigars, as he presents here, and new non Cuban cigars were approximately the same price and availability, would we have still cut them down in our rotation?
Rooster:No. They The answer were they were about the same price at one time, and we smoked many Cubans. We smoked probably more Cubans than New World at at times.
Gizmo:We used to do one every other week.
Rooster:Yeah. Cubans were sometimes they were usually cheaper than some of the New World cigars.
Chef Ricky:But I think at that time too, you guys didn't really discover a lot of the New Worlds that we smoke now.
Senator:Correct. And my my answer is different from both of you. My answer is I would be smoking more New Worlds than Cubans if the prices were identical. And the reason for that is, number one, chef's point is spot on in that. Again, back then, we didn't have that many great New World options.
Senator:I mean, you guys jokingly, when you met me, like Bam said to me, do you only smoke Padron? Because that's pretty much what I was smoking all the time of New World cigars. Now with the amount of options that we have, what I we've all been now spoiled with is consistency. Every time I don't look at the foot of a cigar on a New World, I pick out the cigar, I grab it, and I go. And I know that every single time, whether it's a Padron, a Fabrica five, an Aladino, an aging room, the list goes on.
Senator:A Monte Cristo, the construction's gonna be flawless. I don't even have to think twice. I'm not interested in every time having to look at the foot of the cigar, you know, the wrappers are so fragile, make sure that the humidity is at this exact perfect thing. Like, there's so many factors in Cuban cigars that it's never the case. None of us have ever had a box of Cuban cigars where the entire box has smoked perfectly, ever.
Senator:I don't I don't miss those days of like the crapshoot and the frustration when, you know, I just pulled one from the box and it was amazing, and I pull another one, and it's not. So for me, I absolutely would be smoking more New Worlds than Cubans. I'd be smoking more Cubans than I certainly am right now. There's no question there. But I would still skew more New World at this point.
Senator:I'm sorry. Like, I'm just completely over the element of surprise, the level of frustration, the plug draw, the countless things that we've had to get upset about over the years. So for me, price aside, I'd still now, given how many options we have new world wise, lean a bit more new world than Cuban.
Rooster:But having said that, the the Cuban cigars that have come rolled fresh have smoked much better. There's there's
Senator:a lot of issues. To be able to say, like, oh, we could just anytime pick out that cigar, and it's gonna be perfect. Like
Bam Bam:We haven't smoked a ton because timing and pricing didn't work out for us. That's the thing. Yeah. It was tough.
Senator:So sure, we've had some very good ones, but our sample size is small. All I know is with a huge sample size in the past, we've had a lot of problems.
Bam Bam:Right. But the recent runs, we haven't had enough access to them. And I think if we did, I think the story would be different.
Senator:And look at Cuba now. There's no way that I believe that all those are gonna be perfectly consistent.
Gizmo:It's impossible. I agree with you on that. It's impossible. I will say though that if price wasn't a factor, availability wasn't a factor, I think because my mentality when those things were true, I was more forgiving on the things you talked about
Senator:because also agree you lower then. That's the key Sure. It was not the same. Mhmm. Literally, like, people used to, you know, ask like, oh, you know, you're smoking these Cuban cigars, they're expensive.
Senator:They were cheaper. When I knew initially Bam and and Rooster from that lounge, they were cheaper
Bam Bam:Yeah.
Senator:Than the New World cigars, the Padron and Davidoff that we were smoking. And that's a fact. Yeah. That's why I was more forgiving. I was paying like $7 for a d four, and I'm paying 15 or I'm paying $12 for a Padron, like $22 for a Davidoff, of course, I'm gonna forgive when there's construction problems.
Senator:All things now being equal, if I'm gonna pay 15 for a padrone and 15 for a Cuban, and I'm gonna have, let's say, at best case, a 0.25 or really best case, a fifth of that box not ideally constructed, no. I'm not gonna forgive that.
Bam Bam:However, if pricing stay the same and there was no issue with availability, I would continue to make my Cuban purchases on a very consistent basis.
Senator:I'd be smoking more. We all would. I'm just saying I would still lean in terms of quantity. I'd smoke more New World, like I'd reach for and pull. I'll say this.
Senator:It may be like $60.40 for me.
Gizmo:I'll say this. I think that I think the pop here's here's what I'll say. I think the pop of great, well blended, great Cuban cigars is arguably unbeatable. I I think when Cuban tobacco is great, it's hard to to get there. Now I know it's not as rare as, you know, the the peaks and valleys of Cuban tobacco are much more dramatic than anything we experience in a box of Dominican, Honduran, or Nicaraguan cigars.
Gizmo:No doubt about it. But the pop in Cubans like, the
Senator:magic that we've had there, guys. I agree that the peak is higher. There's no question.
Gizmo:Like, the best
Senator:of a Cuban cigar is I think does not
Gizmo:But I think a golfer chasing elusive golf score, whatever they're
Bam Bam:The looking golfers chasing perfect contact.
Gizmo:Sure.
Senator:Like, I'm just saying, we've gotten our hands on Cuban cigars through other ways, right
Pagoda:Mhmm.
Senator:Over a period of time. And some of them were great, and construction wise, a lot of them were problematic. So this just goes to my point. Like, it's not like we didn't find a way at a point in time to get our hands on Cuban cigars and Cuban tobacco at a very reasonable price point, and there were a lot of problems. Some greatness, some awesome moments, but also a lot of problems with construction.
Senator:And so
Bam Bam:My answer would be a little different than yours. It's kind of similar. I'd be much more forgiving because they're just so readily available and affordable. Yep. I'd go through the process of elimination and get to the cigar that I want because I know I have plenty available to me.
Senator:But assume it's the same price as New World. So if a Pedrona X Lucido is $15, let's assume that a similar Cuban Rebuso is 15. For me, I would do it. Now if a Pedron Ex Luisivo, every single one in that box is
Bam Bam:That's gonna drop perfectly correct.
Senator:Smoke perfectly. Yeah. And let's say that
Bam Bam:Well, we know that going in.
Senator:A quarter of the same price point Cuban box is not gonna smoke well, and three quarters is, why would you be uniquely forgiving there? It's the same price.
Bam Bam:For me, it's nostalgia.
Gizmo:And I think they offer different things.
Bam Bam:It's completely different experience, and it takes me back to our early days when we first met. There's a lot of value for me in just that experience.
Chef Ricky:I get that. Kids, how long have you had the slums now?
Gizmo:The FOH we're smoking? The Fabrica5? Yep. Thirty days? Forty five
Chef Ricky:days Okay. At the
Bam Bam:to sorry. I got to interrupt you. I have to compliment Rob and Hamlet on this. This is I don't know how you guys are It's getting sweeter now for me.
Chef Ricky:No, we were there. We were there. So this is great because this is gonna make my point to the emails.
Bam Bam:Back to the oatmeal but with a little brown sugar and no maple syrup, but this is really I know where you're gonna go. Is It's good, man. It's hard I know exactly what you two guys are going to say. It's hard to beat this experience. This is really It's a pretty unique cigar.
Chef Ricky:How much is this Lonsdale?
Gizmo:$14.13, something like that maybe.
Chef Ricky:So we just smoked a $200 16 year old Cuban, and we have a 30 old, did you say $15
Gizmo:Let's say it's $15 I don't know exactly. 15 in New World. It's cheaper than that, but
Chef Ricky:Pre these cigars are running parallel.
Senator:Really? Pre Chef. Parallel.
Bam Bam:I don't think it's parallel.
Chef Ricky:It's not 100% match. What I'm saying is it's delivering a similar satisfaction for a fraction of the cost at a fraction of the age. Right? And, you know, with that age comes investment, you know, time and and, you know, you need the proper storage and everything that goes into Well,
Bam Bam:we smoked ten minutes ago has incredible pedigree. A 100%.
Chef Ricky:And I'm not I'm not
Bam Bam:The age and performance of that cigar was just it it was impeccable. Cut that
Senator:scrub, look what
Pagoda:you did. And if the price was the same, what was it, 500, $600 initially, before it went to $1,000? So which is about $20 a stick. So now you have to compare the same stick for $20 versus a $15 cig.
Chef Ricky:Now with a couple of years,
Senator:really love where Chef was going with this. Chef was talking about like a cigar that may be as much as $200 in today's market that we smoked prior, right? This 8-ninety 8. Yeah. With that much age.
Gizmo:By the way, none of us would buy that cigar.
Senator:No. No. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying this is a helpful reference point because we're gonna rate that cigar. A cigar that may go for $200 today with that much age, We're smoking a $15 cigar right after it.
Senator:This cigar should taste almost like
Chef Ricky:Bam's face. That sounds really good.
Gizmo:I'm looking
Bam Bam:at Rooster put that Partagas band.
Gizmo:Oh, Put the Partagas
Gizmo:band on the.
Rooster:It is just like the eight
Pagoda:nine eight.
Chef Ricky:It's like the Xeno all over again. It is.
Bam Bam:You plagiarist.
Senator:This Fabrica5 cigar that we're smoking for $15 right after a $200 cigar on today's market should taste like shit in comparison. You're not wrong, dude. And what chefs
Gizmo:You're wrong.
Senator:Is the point he's making that I a 100% agree with, There is no significant drop off in terms of flavor, construction, refinement, any of the above. It is absurd that at $15 that you can smoke this right after a $200 cigar. 16 years age. Not in any way be disappointed. We're gushing about the cigar.
Senator:Gushing. That's my point. That's his point.
Gizmo:That is why It's a great point.
Senator:Like, I'm not saying I I won't smoke Cuban cigars. You've never heard me say that. I'm not saying that I wouldn't buy more Cuban cigars if
Bam Bam:they were Thai Cuban.
Senator:Reasonably if they were reasonably priced. Of course, I would. My point is simply that there is so much in the new world space, and you don't have to think about it. The odds that you're gonna be frustrated with construction disappointment are next to none that I would, 60% of the time, pull for a new world, whether it's what we're smoking right now, this fabric of five, or other great new worlds that we love, to be certain without even giving it a thought, it should be an effortless process, that it's gonna be great, and 40% of the time, pull a Cuban knowing that sometimes I'm actually gonna be frustrated and something may be off or wrong with that cigar, and I'll be forgiving of it and allow it to eat up 40% of my rotation because at least it's similar in price point. But that's the point.
Senator:Like, we're just finishing a $200 stick lighting up a $15 cigar, and no one is sitting here saying, oh, man. What a drop off. Nothing can touch what we just smoked. I should have never even lit a second cigar. Like, no one's saying that.
Gizmo:Honestly, when I lit this, though sorry, Pagoda. When I lit this, I was like, this is a brilliant follow-up to that cigar. Yeah. I wasn't factoring price or time or age or anything else.
Senator:I'm sorry. I'm gonna go as far as to say, like, guess you know, Pam used Bam used the word pedigree, and, like, that's part of my problem with the, like, grace that we give Cuban cigars.
Pagoda:I know.
Senator:It has a Cuban band. They have nostalgia. All this shit. And so we're like, oh my god. It's amazing.
Senator:It's real. It but it's bullshit. It's artificial. Pedigree is an
Gizmo:artificial thing. That's a fair thing.
Senator:Right? Like, you say, like, a dog has pedigree like a fucking breeder bred that dog. It doesn't mean the dog itself is any greater than
Pagoda:a dog
Senator:that didn't come from that breeder. Agree. That's insane. That's like saying a kid that was born into a billion dollar household is inherently better than a kid that was born into a $2.01.
Gizmo:I think his point
Senator:is good. No. Pedigree is an artificial societal construct. That's a fact. There is no debate about that.
Chef Ricky:Senator for office.
Senator:I but I think there's just no way to debate that.
Gizmo:But I think that also
Bam Bam:He's pursuing for a utopia.
Senator:But but also It's not utopia. It's just reality.
Gizmo:I mean, we you you that's
Senator:not saying, oh, it says Macallan on it. So it's inherently better than everything else that we've never heard of. Like, that's just an artificial construct.
Chef Ricky:And it's just saying
Senator:value to Macallan. Someone else might not like it's constructed in our minds. I'll
Gizmo:I'll argue. We often in the rating portion of our program, punish pedigree because pedigree puts these things on a pedestal.
Bam Bam:Unless it earns it.
Gizmo:And it doesn't That's our argument. It doesn't eat it. It does. But you're not gonna give it.
Chef Ricky:You're not
Rooster:gonna give it the
Gizmo:rating because it said Partagas and it was 16 years old. You're gonna give it the rating for what it delivered to the experience. That's what you're gonna rate
Pagoda:it on.
Bam Bam:That is true.
Rooster:Dude, this this cigar is the best out of Fabrica five. I love this one.
Gizmo:I love the Lonsdale. Yeah. How many
Rooster:does this come in a 50 cab? I'm sorry.
Pagoda:How many of these
Bam Bam:how many of these have you had?
Gizmo:I've had this I'm into my second bundle now. Just came out Why aren't you just sharing
Pagoda:these things, though?
Senator:But the last thing I just wanted to finish saying No. I No.
Gizmo:I love this.
Senator:This is I
Chef Ricky:think, one
Senator:of the most valuable discussions we're ever gonna have for listeners. This cigar that we're smoking, this Fabrica5 right now, I guarantee if I slapped a Partagas band
Gizmo:on this We wouldn't know the difference. And everyone
Senator:smoked this to start. We would be sitting here saying
Chef Ricky:It's a 2020 Partagas eight ninety eight.
Senator:Would be saying the age it doesn't have to
Gizmo:be an
Senator:eight nine eight. I'm just saying if I slapped the Partagas band, we'd be saying the age, the refinement.
Bam Bam:Give me your cubes.
Pagoda:I'll take all.
Chef Ricky:All of this.
Pagoda:I'll take them all.
Senator:And that's if you wanna pay me what they're worth, you're
Bam Bam:welcome back. Gonna pay you $20.18 prices.
Gizmo:Well, good luck. That's never gonna happen. See you on Bon Roberts.
Bam Bam:Alright.
Senator:And so my point is very simply, like, again, we assign nostalgia, pedigree, value, all these things. This is an artificial construct in our I
Gizmo:know that.
Senator:And what has been beautiful about this podcast is that we have explored and been introduced to things that we are unfamiliar with, that are up and coming, that don't have pedigree, that we have found to be spectacular. And this is the greatest evidence to smoke this after that cigar. It is rare when I light like a special stick, which that eight nine eight certainly is in that category, and then I light something after a special stick. Usually
Gizmo:There's a
Senator:it's a disappointment.
Pagoda:Why did I do that?
Senator:It's like, this is good, but shit, it's nowhere near as great as what I smoked prior to it. There is no disappointment here at all.
Gizmo:It's the perfect follow-up.
Senator:I think anyone who's ever listened to this podcast knows if there was, I would say it even as much as I love Fabrica5 and appreciate their, you know, support of our podcast. I'm not gonna say a cigar is excellent if it's not. There's zero disappointment, and that is all I'm saying as far as why. I don't think, like, it's some foregone conclusion. Well, if Cubans were the same as New Worlds,
Gizmo:we would just smoke, you
Senator:know, 80% Cuban, 20% New World. I think that's absurd.
Gizmo:Your I point is right, though, that I think we'd be smoking more Cubans. I think we'd be smoking more Cubans than we are now, but necessarily more than you're you know, a ridiculous amount as we were back then.
Pagoda:You know, his question was if the prices were reasonably the same. Yeah. Now if the prices were reasonably the same, I think, you know, if we were to pick up six cigars, I think we'd at least be fiftyfifty. There's no question about it that they'd be harassed at D4. Yeah, they'd be,
Senator:they would here. Be here.
Chef Ricky:2.40
Pagoda:a box for D4s is what we used to pay at one point in time, 25 cigars. You know, definitely there's no question I that it would have a don't think we'd lean more towards New World or Cubans. We would just hey, add an average
Bam Bam:Great answer.
Pagoda:Yeah. Meaning, they they would be in a daily rotation.
Gizmo:Great answer. I agree with you. I think that's the now
Pagoda:because of the pricing.
Gizmo:And scarcity.
Pagoda:And scarcity, they're not in our daily rotation.
Chef Ricky:But the point that I had start that I started to make and senator is also on board with here is that had we not gone down the rabbit hole of the new world that we've that we've gone through, it'd be $80.20 instead of $50.50.
Gizmo:Sure.
Chef Ricky:Right? Like, instead of us doing one Cuban every five weeks
Gizmo:But we've said that in the past. Thank God Habanos
Chef Ricky:Yes.
Gizmo:And Sheng Ji did what they did. Forget the scarcity. Just based on the pricing forcing our hand and so many lizards around the world forcing our hands into saying, We need to find alternatives, and holy shit, look at the alternatives we found.
Senator:But this is I'm all about to push this to an extreme to pressure test this. And and all I'm saying is that if you would have asked me five years ago if I could have lived without a Cuban cigar, I would say absolutely, categorically not. Now, absolutely.
Bam Bam:Yeah. Of your experiences here.
Senator:I mean, every time I light up an aging room concerto, Your house. It is so fucking satisfying. I don't I'm not chasing anything else. I don't need there's like Mani two notes in that cigar. Like, I don't need
Gizmo:a Cigar Exactly. You're a 100% right there.
Rooster:I think this cigar is so Cubans esque that it makes you not miss and paying those prices. It's true.
Bam Bam:Most of these Fabrica5 cigars are.
Gizmo:I think this one though, I think The it's so reason why I brought this in tonight, and I'm so glad that I wanna say that I planned this
Bam Bam:It's very unusual.
Gizmo:Lighting this around the time that I I read that email.
Rooster:You planned it.
Gizmo:I didn't, but I'll say that I did. The way that this is lined up, you know, the center is It fell
Senator:out of his pocket like Bam's hairspray.
Bam Bam:Go ahead. Play it.
Gizmo:Fabrica5.
Bam Bam:I'm not rating. I'm not rating today. I'm not gonna rate. Unicorn. I'm abstaining tonight,
Gizmo:you, but no.
Bam Bam:No. You think I'm kidding? I'm not kidding. No. Fultuously swear I'm not gonna rate.
Bam Bam:I can't
Chef Ricky:wait to see Rob put an Instagram post of him singing this theme song.
Rooster:We should we should rate the hairspray.
Gizmo:I'll give
Rooster:it a 10.
Pagoda:It works. I do want to mention that I think Habanos did this into themselves, right? Because free markets, because it became so difficult to get Cubans over here, the prices just went ridiculous, I think it opened up a new market because a lot of the cigars that have really entered into a rotation are actually being produced in the last five years.
Gizmo:A 100%. That's true. There's so many new entrants.
Pagoda:So many new entrants. 100%. Stoic from Aladino's
Gizmo:to Kellner.
Pagoda:Kellner. Avowed. Avowed, Fabrica5, you know, even the congenital Aging room. The Sonata.
Gizmo:The new Aladino stuff.
Pagoda:All of them Amazing. Yeah, come so thank you. Another great point.
Bam Bam:Dakota.
Gizmo:Now, you know, I'm glad that this aligned the way it did because me bringing in this Lonsdale for us to smoke tonight was just saying, number one, how much I've loved this cigar over the last few weeks or six weeks or whatever.
Bam Bam:Thank you. Thank you.
Gizmo:But I've been smoking this a lot. But also, like, in its format, lining up next to the eight ninety eight, I've really enjoyed how this is smoked even as fresh as they are. I can't believe how good they're smoking. So for this to align as well as it did, after that cigar, with this email, in this discussion, I mean, this cigar's a home run. And the
Senator:other parallel I just wanna draw is also with spirits. Look, if we all think back to what we were drinking with this cigar, we were all Scotch guys all the time.
Gizmo:100%.
Senator:We were spending bare minimum $50 a bottle for anything that we were drinking when we were lighting a cigar we wanted to drink. And you fast forward in time, and we found this rum category that is $20.25 bucks a bottle that all of us love. And now if we were to pose the same question of, well, if the price of single malts came to be equal to the rum that we drink, would we be drinking so much more single malt? No. No.
Senator:My answer is no.
Gizmo:Dude, that might be the best example so far to
Pagoda:my I love that because
Gizmo:Honestly, that might be the best one so far.
Pagoda:I'm drinking a lot more rum, for sure.
Gizmo:Yeah. Of course. We
Senator:are rum. Because it's delivering as much if not more enjoyment than the cinnamon rolls that we were having before. And so, like, I don't think it's just a function of, well, if prices become equal, are we suddenly, like, gonna, you know, be drinking more of that or suddenly smoking more so many more Cubans necessarily in the New Worlds. Like, I think Pagoda's Points Fair, like, at best case, like, it's probably $50.50. And I'm saying in my case, just because I hate having to look and think.
Senator:Like, you spend money to make life easier. Right, like when you indulge in some way. Right? So if I'm paying for a cigar, I want it to be effortless, I want it to be a guaranteed experience. I absolutely hate having to think about it.
Senator:So for that reason alone is the only reason I'm saying. For me, it would probably be not necessarily fifty fifty, probably sixty forty New World to Cuban. That means a whole lot more Cubans than I'm smoking now, but for all those reasons, I just think it's worth us just challenging, like, you know, some of the nostalgia that we have, some brands that have incredible history and staying power, the Macallans of the world, the Partagas, the Cohibas, all of that, and just acknowledging that, like, a lot of that is a construct, and we have found some pretty fucking spectacular I stuff outside of
Bam Bam:can't say that it's a Would you consider nostalgia actually a construct? Yes. It brings back Nostalgia's an individual feeling.
Senator:It's not a universal truth.
Bam Bam:And that's the thing. So for each individual, if it brings back certain feelings that you've had in the past with an experience with a cigar remember the first time I had a Ramona on a specialty select. Those are special moments. I love to rekind I love to relive.
Senator:I'm not saying that doesn't make it better. That's all I'm saying.
Gizmo:I think that's the that has been made tonight, though, is that you know, remember remember Rob talked about runs. Right?
Bam Bam:Yeah.
Gizmo:You have that incredible cigar and you chase that like a high. With the non Cubans that we've fallen in love with, you don't have to.
Bam Bam:No, you're
Gizmo:because every time you go back to it, it's there.
Pagoda:It's You're
Bam Bam:on high at
Senator:consistent It's constantly I totally Totally
Gizmo:And I'll say, I was away for a week. You know, I came back today. I came back honestly, and I walked in my garage, and I saw the bottle of Macallan 12 sitting in my garage. I didn't think about a single malt scotch the entire time I was away. I was drinking rum.
Gizmo:I was drinking a little bourbon with, you know, I have an old fashioned mix that I love. It's so funny that the parallel that you're making with single malt scotch with how our palates and preferences have changed. I look at that Macallan 12 now, and I did today, like, that's a special spirit that I'm not reaching for all the time. Think about where we were five years ago. That's all we were drinking.
Gizmo:The whale is part
Senator:is if Macallan 12 was $25 just like Abuelo or Florida County, it wouldn't change much. That's true. That's all I'm trying to
Gizmo:point That's true. I think we'd be smoking more Cubans, but to your point, not as many as we were.
Rooster:You know, I just wish that we had not lit this
Gizmo:So thanks again to Lizard reading,
Pagoda:can't take it back.
Bam Bam:It's a great email.
Gizmo:Great email and one For great 250 episodes, I actually think that that's a perfect discussion to sum up what the last 250 Tuesdays have been for us in our journey in a Cuban every other week. Our deep passion for Cubans that we really fell in love with those. And look at what has happened this journey into finding these new entrants into our rotations that have become staples more so than the Cubans. It's quite apropos. Correct.
Pagoda:Honestly. By the way, I'd love to You know, once Nico wins the Bond Robert cigars, I'd love to hear his opinion about the new world versus
Gizmo:and the Macallan, Sherry Cask, 18 years old. You guys have already sent the ratings. Any final thoughts on the pairing before we get into the individual ratings? I I thought, shockingly for me, I know that senator wasn't surprised, but I'm surprised how well the 18 years aged scotch paired with Yeah. That old Partagas eight nine eight tonight.
Gizmo:It really made the you know, each of the entrants made the other pop.
Bam Bam:Yeah. It it didn't the spirit didn't overwhelm the cigar as I thought it would. Let
Senator:the ledger again reflect this. Don't ever question my palate.
Gizmo:This is why you're here. So boys, it's time to go into the formal liquor rating tonight on the Macallan Sherry Cask, 18 years old. Bam. Bam.
Bam Bam:You're up. I'm at a firm nine. I love how rich this was. I love that touch of heat. I, again, like the 15.
Bam Bam:I did get a lot of butterscotch and a lot of vanilla. This was just a much richer experience, although I the rating is lower because of the price. And I don't see myself buying this, but the delicious experience that I had tonight for me justify the rating. It's really quite unique, exquisite in flavor, very memorable. This is something I won't ever forget, so I'm at a firm nine.
Senator:Well, it's a good thing that I don't forget some things. Weren't you the one that said that you don't factor price into your ratings? And I said that's impossible. Is
Chef Ricky:very expensive. This
Bam Bam:is just what is it, 300?
Gizmo:This is an evolution.
Bam Bam:Yeah, I can't not factor price with this particular model because
Gizmo:I agree. Don't
Senator:Price does better.
Bam Bam:But that Macallan 15, how much did it cost? 180?
Senator:150.
Bam Bam:Still quite expensive, but I think I gave that a 10.
Chef Ricky:Half the price. Yeah. Yeah. Alright, chef. Alright.
Chef Ricky:So, I love the richness of the spirit, the viscosity. I actually don't I didn't think it delivered as much flavor as a 12 or a 15. I think it delivered more richness, more body, but not same level of flavor. Me, I drank a lot drier. I would look, French sauces are delicious, right?
Chef Ricky:But they're extremely rich. Some people can add or some chefs can add a lot more butter than needed and sort of take it, you know, push it over the limit. For me, this scotch is that, especially at, you know, taking the price into account at $3.20 a bottle. I personally would much rather drink a 12 or 15, not only because of the price, but because of the flavor it delivers and how it delivers it.
Bam Bam:So this wasn't a rich experience for you.
Chef Ricky:The body is extremely rich. The viscosity, the texture is very rich. The flavor is not rich. I didn't find the flavor to be as rich in those other Wow, interesting. As much as in those other expressions.
Bam Bam:And the dryness was a big factor for you, which for me was not a factor.
Chef Ricky:Yeah. It's not my favorite part of scotch, that's why I love Macallan, especially the Sherry cask, it drinks a little bit sweeter, it drinks a little bit more balanced. This scotch feels more scotchy to me. Right. So, you know, but it paired amazingly well with the cigar.
Chef Ricky:I I did enjoy it. I love what it pulled out of the cigar. I love what the cigar pulled out of the scotch. So for that, I'm giving it an eight.
Gizmo:Alright. Pagoda.
Pagoda:Somebody needs to balance this out. It's the two hundred and fiftieth episode. I'm extremely happy with what it is. Listen, you know
Gizmo:Rating on nostalgia.
Pagoda:It is number it is. I'm gonna rate it as a 10. Wow. And the reasons are, firstly, you've got to really understand that when you're going into a Macallan 18, you're paying $300. You're paying $150 for a 15, you're paying about $80 for a 12.
Pagoda:Listen, you're already walking into it knowing that that's what you're paying. It's got nothing to do with, you know, that's the average price of all these stocks between scotched between 18 and 20. So price for me is a celebratory thing for me, right? I'm not gonna go and pull this every day. I do this once a year, once, maybe twice a year, you know?
Pagoda:And so leaving Price aside, for me, you know, it delivered, it was an excellent experience. For me, it's about the environment, it's about the experience. It did not take away from any of the experience I was feeling. It in fact added to it. I really enjoyed it.
Pagoda:Yes, I would have preferred it to be a little sweeter, but hey listen, at that point in time, I'm really enjoying the viscosity, the feeling, the deep richness, you know, like they were talking about the richness, it does feel like an expensive scotch. It does. There's no question about it. The texture, the way it was velvety, it was, you know, when I let it on my palate for some amount of time and just let it warm down a bit, I got those cocoa notes which I was seeking. I wish it was a bit sweeter.
Pagoda:There's no question about it. But for the experience, for the night we've had, for, you know, I'm always about, hey, listen, if it's a celebratory thing and you're feeling great and you're enjoying it, it's a 10 for me.
Bam Bam:All right.
Gizmo:So I really enjoyed the scotch tonight. For me, it's a nine. This is not a perfect scotch for me. I think I gave the 15. I don't remember.
Gizmo:You said something similar, Bam. I think I gave the 15 a 10. Mhmm. From the first sip, I I took this first sip tonight. I've never had Macallan 18 before.
Gizmo:Same. I took that first sip tonight. When I took the sip of Macallan 15 a couple weeks ago, the back of my head blew off. Tonight, I was like, okay. It's good.
Gizmo:It's Macallan. Mhmm. Really good. Excellent. Mhmm.
Gizmo:Refined. Smooth. Balanced. But it didn't have that extra
Bam Bam:Not as smooth as a 15.
Gizmo:It didn't have that x factor about it like the 15 did for me. Honestly, if you were to give me the choice of, you know, like that listener, you know, Lizard Nikos did, balance price out, 15 or 18, I'd take the 15. This was excellent. Really, really good. I think the price is outrageous at $3.20.
Gizmo:I'm not gonna punish it too much for that because it that is the class that it's in, for how crazy I think that is. But it was a really, really good spirit tonight. Not perfect for me. Not perfect, but it was a nine.
Chef Ricky:Giz, would you not take the 12 over the
Gizmo:18? No. I would take the 18 over the 12.
Pagoda:18 over
Gizmo:the 12.
Pagoda:I think it
Gizmo:would go fifteen, eighteen, 12 for me if price wasn't a factor. If price wasn't a factor. Senator.
Senator:So I'll start by saying you guys have heard me for the last five years almost say that I would take Macallan 12 and now 15 over the 18, and I've drank all the expressions for years now. I'm giving this a nine. I think it's an excellent single mom. My problem is within the Macallan line, I don't really know what it is trying to be. That's a good point.
Senator:You know? You talk about the flavor notes that it says it's supposed to have in it.
Bam Bam:Does he have a point?
Senator:He's got
Bam Bam:a point. He's got a point.
Senator:No. It's just look. If you analyze the actual flavor profile of the scotch, it mentions dark chocolate. Well, guess what? Macallan 12 has more chocolate notes than any single malt on the entire market.
Senator:Just forget Macallan, like, everything. That's what I love about Macallan 12. It's so unique, that finish. The fifteen year, the fruit notes that you get, that apple, it's so prominent and defining. You know what it's trying to be.
Senator:This is like got a little bit of all of those things, but none of those prominent enough that it, like, actually creates something so unique and differentiated that grabs you in a way that says, even at $320 a bottle, man, I gotta go out and get this for that special occasion.
Chef Ricky:Senator, it's almost like the richness mutes those flavor notes that you get. Would be okay with
Senator:the richness if it just skewed in in one direction enough to, like, be a defining note. But this is ginger. Yeah. That none of us
Rooster:Three got $100 ginger.
Senator:Mhmm. It's like
Chef Ricky:It has it has a texture
Senator:of dates. Like, I would love this if this was, a a twelve year on steroids with, like, more richness more refined, and the cocoa notes that are just as prominent there, or this was more rich than the fifteen year, but leaned even more heavily into the apple and fruit notes that we got. I'd be all about it. But it doesn't do that in a in a way that in any way makes a, like, defining mark on you. You're you're not saying to yourself like, man, I've gotta chase that particular flavor I got out of 18.
Senator:It's a little bit of all of them, not enough of any one of them to really bring me back to want this in that special moment. When you compare it to the category so I thought, you know, Pagoda's commentary was excellent around the price point. Like, yes, you you've signed up to pay this price point. So I I get that. I'm there.
Senator:The problem for me is that at this price point, in the $300 category of eighteen to twenty one years single malts, I would pick up Balvini 21, the Portwood, any day of the week Sub 300. Over no. No. It's $3.50. It's even
Bam Bam:more. It's
Senator:more. I mean, it's two
Pagoda:years I
Gizmo:think that's
Senator:three years older.
Gizmo:I think that's the best scotch we've ever done.
Senator:It is It's the most consistent. Outstanding. It is outstanding.
Bam Bam:It's never changed.
Senator:So I would take that forget if it's I'm just saying what it is, the flavor profile to me is a lot better than what this is. So for those reasons, I I don't view this as a perfect eighteen year expression. I think it's an excellent eighteen year expression. I enjoyed the flavor profile. I wish that it's made a claim to certain flavor notes more than it does.
Senator:And the last thing I'll say is at this price point, I'm looking for the most refined spirit that exists, period. Mhmm. And there is some heat that I just wish were delivered in a bit more refined way.
Bam Bam:Oh, it's very subtle though.
Senator:So for it is, but it should at $320, that's that's what you're paying for. It shouldn't be there. Like, it it it should be so you know, we talk we use the word nectar, like, when we're drinking something that is just amazing. It's so refined and goes down so easily. I mean, sure.
Senator:But that's my point. Like, it it doesn't hit that category. No one used that word when they drank it.
Gizmo:No. Nobody was talking about it like No.
Bam Bam:No. No. You're right.
Chef Ricky:It has the texture of nectar.
Senator:Right, but not the finish of nectar, and that's the problem.
Bam Bam:That's right.
Senator:And so for all those reasons, this is exactly what I have always felt about Macallan 18. I think it is way overhyped for what it is. I would any day of the week take the twelve or the fifteen year expression over it, but I do think it has gotten better. This finish on this, you know, I wish because it had some of the earlier years. Yeah.
Senator:I think the finish years ago was way more aggressive than this.
Pagoda:Very aggressive.
Senator:They've definitely tamed it, so they're moving in the right direction, but flavor profile wise, I still think they need more work. Now that they have these vintages on them,
Gizmo:maybe another Don't get the the traveling Yeah. Protective.
Senator:I hope to never see that.
Chef Ricky:Carboard. The travel condom. Yeah. Travel condom.
Gizmo:Hope it's A transit condom.
Senator:I hope some year they arrive at an actual perfect spirit, but for me, it's a nine. It's excellent. Would I drink it again? For sure. But is this something that in that category of eighteen to twenty one years I am going to pursue?
Senator:It's not because I do think there are better at its price point.
Bam Bam:Before you announce the official rating, you were at as far as ranking the three Macallans, you were at fifteen, eighteen, 12. Is that right? Yeah. I think I'm in lockstep with that. Would prefer I'd prefer the flavor profile of this over the 12.
Gizmo:I just think it's more balanced. It's more refined. I think that there's
Bam Bam:I can't get over the richness of this.
Gizmo:It's an excellent spirit.
Chef Ricky:The 12 is so much brighter.
Senator:I'm Fifteen, eighteen, 12. I'm still with chef in that. I'm fifteen, twelve, and 18.
Bam Bam:Fifteen, twelve, and 18.
Senator:The only reason I say that, I'm not disputing anything you guys just said. That's all true. This is more refined. It's more balanced than the 12. There's no question.
Senator:But flavor wise Okay. There it stakes a claim to notes that are so rare and hard to find in any spirit, let alone single malts, that I pursue that bottle because it's the only thing that delivers that. In that way, there's citrus and dark chocolate in such a compelling way, and this just doesn't have that in the same way. It's so faint. I'm wanting so much more, and the fact that in a twelve year, I'm getting more of that, it's just crazy.
Senator:Like, those things should be on steroids in this expression, and they're just not.
Bam Bam:So the two of us are at 151812. You guys are at 151218. Correct?
Senator:That's right.
Bam Bam:Where's Pagoda at?
Pagoda:Same. It's 15818, 12. 12.
Chef Ricky:Okay.
Gizmo:Yeah. Alright, boys. The former liquor rating tonight on the Macallan Sherry cask, 18 years old, is a 9.0.
Pagoda:Okay. Think that's a fair
Bam Bam:That's a great score.
Pagoda:Yeah. I think the eights would have been a bit low.
Bam Bam:Like I gave it a nine. I'm happy.
Chef Ricky:I can't wait to hear what the Macallan 12 rated.
Gizmo:Let's compare this to the other Macallans we've done on the podcast.
Bam Bam:Here we go.
Gizmo:On episode 11, we did the Macallan 12. Sherry Kask, we didn't rate it. Then on episode 64, we went back. We rated the Macallan fifteen years. Sherry Kask rated a 6.5.
Gizmo:Oh, that's the old 50.
Bam Bam:That's the old
Gizmo:one, yeah.
Bam Bam:That's old one. That's So
Gizmo:let's hold on to that. Then on episode 77, we did the Macallan, Sherry Cask, 12 years old, scored a 9.8.
Bam Bam:There we go.
Gizmo:Then we did the double cask, 12 years old, episode two zero six. Quite a while later, 8.3.
Pagoda:Mhmm. Yeah.
Gizmo:Then on episode 214, we did the Macallan, a night on earth. No. The first light, some bullshit marketing exercise, scored the same as this, a nine. And then finally on episode 239 alongside the Bond Roberts Dahlia, the Macallan 15 years old Sherry Cask scored a 9.8, the same as the Macallan 12
Bam Bam:Sherry Cask. Interesting.
Senator:Alright. So, chef, we were right.
Bam Bam:We're right.
Gizmo:Yeah. Alright. Alright. Right, boys, let's go to the formal list rating The
Senator:ratings never lie. On
Gizmo:the 2010, Partag is 8-9-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8-8.8 Cuba, Rooster Europe.
Pagoda:Rating can describe the Fabrica5. When
Rooster:you think of that elite class, you think of an MDO2, MDO4. You think of a Classico, Sir Winston Revegas Robain, a Classico '20 11, a Sir Winston. I mean, those are the cigars that are in that class. And this cigar, with this much age, I mean, you knew that it would not disappoint. I have not ever had a plugged eight ninety eight ever.
Rooster:I mean, it's been great. The cigar is definitely nostalgic. I mean, it's a fantastic smoke. The cigar was creamy. It had that graham cracker note.
Rooster:It had cocoa. It was sweet. It was savory. At the same time, it got a little bit more body towards the the second third of the cigar definitely had more oomph, more body. What can you say?
Rooster:This is a perfect cigar. Perfect cigar. The price is what it is.
Chef Ricky:Mean six years old. So
Rooster:I'm at a 10. I can't give this lower than that. I'm at a 10. Yeah.
Gizmo:Alright, senator.
Senator:So this was tough for me because there's arguably no one in the room that is as obsessed with Partagas as I am. I love this marca. I've always loved this cigar, and it was excellent. There's no debate there whatsoever. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
Senator:The challenge for me as I was debating between nine and a 10 is, was it perfect for me? And then especially at its price point at its price point, it damn well better be perfect. I'm giving it a nine. For me, the first two thirds were outstanding. The final third, I feel like the flavor, it got way more savory in the final third.
Senator:Like way more. I mentioned at the midway point, it started to get more savory than sweet. Not that there wasn't sweetness, that absolutely was there. But the final third got more savory than I wanted, and I lost some of what I loved in those first two thirds. The smoke output, you know, the funny thing is we were talking about, oh, it's got great smoke output.
Senator:You like this Fabrica5 cigar after it, and I'm sorry. This has more smoke output than that Partagas did. To me, there's no question, at least the one I have in my hand. When I got down to the nub, I didn't feel the same level of giddiness or enthusiasm that I had those first two thirds. So it was not a perfect cigar for me.
Senator:When I think of like celebratory sticks like a Vegas Rubena Classico, some of those other ones at these higher price points in the Cuban catalog that we really have become obsessive about, the whole way through, just didn't feel perfection. That is not taking away from though. It was excellent. It's a strong nine, as strong a nine as I will ever give. I think any listener that has never had an eight nine eight, it's an absolute must.
Bam Bam:Run out and get one.
Senator:No. But even a young one. Like, you could find one at like an LCDH, I mean, smoke you know, buy two. Smoke one young, and just tuck another one away for years. Just forget you even have it.
Senator:And based on the experience that we all just had, like, it's gonna pay dividends even though it requires a tremendous amount of patience. That's why literally put it somewhere you are gonna forget where it is and someday just stumble upon it. It's worth that time investment. There's no doubt about that. The flavor profile is awesome.
Senator:I think like the sweetness, the creaminess, the dessert notes that we got for most of it are exactly the kind of notes that we pursue in Partagas and Upman and Marcus like that. The aroma, I think Rooster kept commenting on this all the way through. Even the irony, when it got more savory than I wanted, the aroma, like, had the sweetness.
Chef Ricky:I just wish I perfume.
Senator:Yeah. Yeah. It was it was great. So for and the construction. You know, for a Cuban cigar to be really well constructed, you're always happy to see that.
Senator:This definitely fit that bill. So for all those reasons, a strong nine, and as much as it pains me to say, I really wish, believe me, wanted and expected I would give this the perfect 10. That final third is just where there were moments that didn't quite meet perfection for me, so that's why I'm at a strong nine.
Gizmo:So for me, and I'm not going to rate it on nostalgia, price, or anything else, right? I've had these in my tower well on four and a half, five years for sure. This cigar was perfect for me. It's a 10. There's no question about it.
Gizmo:I took it all the way down. My finger actually burned.
Bam Bam:Me too.
Gizmo:I had to put it down. I didn't have a perfect draw to poke it, to roach clip it. But this cigar was brilliant for me tonight. Actually exceeded my expectations in two ways. Number one, I was expecting there to be some Cuba being Cuba in the room, and I expected it on my cigar.
Gizmo:When I looked at the cigars, they look great. The feet look great. I crossed my fingers. I hope for the best. But my cigar performed brilliantly.
Gizmo:Construction was great. Draw was
Bam Bam:great. Think everyone's
Gizmo:start was about smoke output. Everything for me was great. And more importantly, most importantly, the flavor was perfect. The, you know, mature Cuban tobacco, this blend, it this blend really works for age. We've talked about other blends that might not, other blends that peak at three to five years.
Gizmo:At 16 years, I still think this has some legs. But for smoking it tonight in the room, the cigar I had, it was brilliant. It was perfect. I absolutely loved it. I can't say anything more.
Gizmo:It was really, really excellent for me. So it's a 10. Pagoda.
Pagoda:It's a 10 for me as well. Ten ten wins. Ten ten wins. It's the two fiftieth episode and ten ten wins. You know, for me, it's definitely very nostalgic, you know, from Rooster's Deck to even hanging out in the lounge with Lizard Bevealed, I've had such excellent experiences with cigars, one of my favorite cigars and you know, I think today's stick with a little more savory than the other ones I've had.
Pagoda:But you know, from the very beginning, it was very sweet on my lips.
Rooster:Those were 2,008, buddy.
Pagoda:Oh, those were excellent, man, those were excellent. You know, a bit of sweetness right in the front. Sure. And then it was savory, and then it left a really pleasant profile in my palate, you know, which I love. I, you know, and then I was able to retrohale it quite a few times, and I got the graham cracker y kind of sweet notes.
Rooster:Glucose.
Pagoda:It was just wonderful. Glucose biscuits. I think I have to get them. I keep saying it, but I have to go to an Indian
Chef Ricky:Please bring some.
Pagoda:Please. I
Gizmo:wanna try this thing.
Pagoda:Have to, yeah.
Gizmo:It's so ingrained in your memory.
Chef Ricky:I'm going to Parsippany just to find them.
Gizmo:Just get them.
Pagoda:They're about like 75¢ a little pack. So, but you know, having said that, you know, the smoke after it was great. I took it right to the last half inch and it's just a wonderful experience tonight. It was a lot of fun, a lot of laughter, you know, a great pairing with it. I think towards the end, I think Senator is right, it did get a lot more savory in the last third, but I think when I was having a sip of the Macallan, it turned even sweeter.
Pagoda:I think my Macallan was getting sweeter, so the pairing was excellent. Just overall a wonderful night, wonderful experience, and it's 10 wins, folks.
Gizmo:All right, chef.
Chef Ricky:Man, what a two fiftieth. This this this was incredible. This cigar was it's right there for me with the Sir Winston. This cigar was phenomenal. For every it triggered every sense.
Chef Ricky:Smell, taste. Well, maybe not sound or hearing, but it was you know, this was the cigar where the traditional draw, the retro, the aroma, the flavor, everything was just hitting all the time. And I mean, I smoked this thing till it turned inside out. Right. And I just it was a great experience, beautiful burn line, great aroma.
Chef Ricky:The wrapper before lighting it smelled great. The culture all was amazing. Everything about the cigar was perfect for me today. So or tonight. So for me, it's a 10.
Chef Ricky:I really, really enjoyed it. And just an honorable mention, I know we're not reviewing it, but lighting this Fabrica5 Lonsdale felt like an extension of what we were smoking prior to it.
Bam Bam:Well said. I like that.
Gizmo:Well said. All right, Bam.
Bam Bam:So I'm not usually a value man. I don't usually rate my cigars or my spirits based on price. What happened?
Senator:Welcome to the club.
Rooster:I think You have changed.
Bam Bam:The Cuban catalog
Senator:Me and him spent a lot of time with Madison Rose.
Pagoda:Well, listen.
Bam Bam:True. But I think the Cuban catalog requires a little punishment in the rating tonight from me. I'm gonna punish it a little bit. We've said it before many times. Are you going to spend more than $40 for a cigar on a consistent basis?
Bam Bam:No. This is a celebratory cigar just like this stir by. Yeah, know that. I know. Things have happened in the past.
Bam Bam:But for tonight, what is this cigar? About $200 is that true?
Gizmo:It would be. We're making up a number.
Bam Bam:Anywhere between $150 and 100 and dollars
Senator:if That's it's not what he 50 paid, but it could possibly be his $150
Bam Bam:Correct.
Gizmo:Exactly right.
Rooster:But that's not what he paid.
Senator:Know that. Doesn't matter.
Bam Bam:The pricing for me is outrageous in its lack of availability. I can't get that cigar. I'll never find that cigar. Looking back at the 2011 Vegas, Romania, for me, that's a holy grail cigar. I can't put this at that level.
Bam Bam:I just can't. I wouldn't call it a full step down, but it's a half a step. So for all those reasons, I'm gonna lie.
Gizmo:What if Rooster puts his box up on Bond Roberts? I won't.
Bam Bam:Box of?
Gizmo:2,000 eights.
Pagoda:Oh, those are excellent, by the way.
Chef Ricky:2,008, eight nine eights.
Senator:Well, actually
Bam Bam:actually, Ben, it's a cigar.
Gizmo:Oh, that's the one you said. Yes.
Senator:So what do you like?
Rooster:You have to give it a 10 if you want that cigar. No. No.
Gizmo:What was
Senator:what we smoked that and something else on your deck that night, and he didn't
Chef Ricky:have the eight.
Senator:He said the RAS was better than an o three nine eight.
Pagoda:He said RAS o
Bam Bam:eight. That's correct.
Rooster:Or was it the classic though?
Chef Ricky:So this tracks.
Pagoda:I don't know. It was a RAS. It was a RAS. Definitely a RAS. Remember.
Senator:For sure.
Rooster:Said the RAS was better than
Senator:o eight eight nine eight.
Rooster:So you should really give this an eight.
Gizmo:Alright? Alright, boys. Compared to
Pagoda:a rest.
Gizmo:The former lizard rating tonight.
Bam Bam:I've got my balls on a platter now. There you go.
Gizmo:Oh, la
Gizmo:la. On the Partagas eight nine eight from 2010 is a 9.7.
Rooster:Jesus Christ.
Gizmo:I think that's a perfect rating,
Rooster:honestly. Is it?
Gizmo:That's not the perfect rating.
Senator:Oh, it is.
Gizmo:I think it's a perfect rating for the cigar we had tonight. So I don't wanna go through every Partagas cigar we've done on this podcast. I think we've done 14 or 15 other ones. I'm just gonna hit a couple that are kind of in the range of this one rating wise. So first up, episode 64, the Partagas coronas gordos anejados scored the same as this, a 9.7.
Gizmo:On episode 82, the Siri e number two, the e two, scored a 9.3. On episode one forty nine, the Partagas Maduro number three scored 9.4. On episode 176, the new one, the Partagas Linea Maestra, the Rito scored a 9.2. On episode 211, the d four, the series d number four, scored a perfect 10. 10.
Gizmo:And finally, on episode 113, the other time we did the eight nine eight from twenty twenty,
Senator:scored a nine. Don't forget the p two.
Bam Bam:Oh, stop it. That's your favorite.
Gizmo:What did
Rooster:what did Bam rate that? Which one? Episode
Pagoda:one Probably.
Gizmo:We we all rated it a nine. It was all a nine.
Bam Bam:What cigar was that?
Gizmo:The Say, nine eight from 2020.
Bam Bam:Okay.
Gizmo:Ten years. So 2020,
Rooster:you gave it nine.
Bam Bam:I'm giving it a nine tonight.
Gizmo:Fair enough. All right. So boys, what a great night tonight. We have to thank Lizard Nikos with that. Prophecy Is that a great night?
Gizmo:Don't make me hit the clip. Alright. With that great question about how often we're smoking Cubans. It was a perfect tie in for episode 250, smoking the Fabrica5 after this 8-9-8. It was excellent.
Gizmo:So congratulations to him. He's gonna win a 10 count box of cigars from our friends at Bon Roberts. And, of course, we have to thank Bon Roberts for all of their support. They're amazing to us and for sponsoring our wizard of the week segment. Check out their cigars at fabrica005.com.
Gizmo:And boys, the exclusive retail partner of the Lounge Lizards podcast giving away three boxes this week on Instagram, small batch cigar.
Pagoda:Please tell us the rules.
Gizmo:They are amazing. You can't win because you are on the panel, Pagoda. I'm so sorry to say. So check out our Instagram this week and win one of the three boxes from Small Batch Cigar. It's gonna be very easy to do, and just check that out.
Gizmo:And finally, boys, our presenting sponsor, Fabrica5. We all just finished a Lonsdale. I think everybody's done. Right? Yeah.
Gizmo:How was the Lonsdale?
Rooster:Excellent. Amazing.
Bam Bam:Brilliant cigar. Right? Fantastic.
Gizmo:Very different than the the Robusto Trinity. Yes. But I think it's right there with it as far as the Porro des Nudo, I just think it's so excellent, that cigar.
Bam Bam:They're different completely, but great experience.
Gizmo:Yeah. Completely agree. So thanks to those guys. The support from them has been amazing. We really appreciate Rob and Hamlet and all the folks over there at fabrica5.com.
Gizmo:Use our code lizard pod for 10% off your entire order. Everything is available for 10% off using our code, including Bond Roberts. Boys, what a great night tonight. 250 episodes. Can you believe it?
Rooster:Amazing. Yes.
Pagoda:What? Two fifty already? Amazing. And
Gizmo:for folks who write in asking for three hour episodes, here you are. Yep. Yeah. And we're gonna do a big one for our five year in ten weeks. That's gonna be the big one.
Gizmo:Episode two sixty will be our five year coming early. Bam, overrated, eight. Depends
Chef Ricky:on the
Gizmo:cigar. We'll see what happens. Alright, boys. A great night, and we'll see everybody next week. Hope you enjoyed this episode.
Gizmo:Thanks for joining us. You could find our merch store and ratings archive at our brand new website, loungelizardspod.com. That's loungelizardspod.com. 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.
Gizmo:Hello at lounge lizards pod dot com. You can also find us on Instagram at lounge lizards pod. We really appreciate your time, and we'll, we'll see you next week.