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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 range from 60 to 90 minutes and feature a variety of different topics including food, travel, life, sports and work.
The podcast features seven members: Rooster, Poobah, Gizmo, Senator, Pagoda, Grinder and Bam Bam.
This is not your typical cigar podcast. We’re a group of friends who love sharing cigars, whiskey and a good laugh.
Join us and become a card-carrying lounge lizard yourself! Email us at hello@loungelizardspod.com to join the conversation and be featured on an upcoming episode!
**Gizmo:** [00:00:00] Welcome to the Lounge Lizards podcast. It's so good to have you here. It's a leisure and lifestyle podcast founded on our love of premium cigars, as well as whiskey, travel, food, work, and whatever else we feel like getting into. My name is Gizmo. Tonight I'm joined by Rooster Poobah, Senator Pagoda grinder, and bam bam a full house of lizards and we plan to smoke a cigar, drink some scotch, talk about life, and of course, have some laughs. So take this as your 91st official invitation to join us and become a card carrying lounge lizard. Plan to meet us here once a week. We are gonna smoke a new world cigar tonight. Share our thoughts on it and give you our formal lizard rating.
We discuss the long history of the Placencia family. We learn about a wood master named Billy Senator and pagoda detail their recent travel abroad. And we celebrate Bams birthday, all among a variety of other things for the next 90 minutes. So sit back, get your favorite drink, light up a cigar, and enjoy as we pair 12 year age.
Glen ay scotch with the Placencia Alma fuerte, generation five. A [00:01:00] asylums tonight from Nicaragua from Placencia. It's a 58 ring gauge cigar by seven inches long. Senator, do you wanna do the honors? Well, we're smoking
**Senator:** a very special cigar. The alma? Where? Day?
**Bam Bam:** Elma.
**Gizmo:** Oh yeah. So Poop's been saying a few Hail Mary's for the last 10 minutes when I pulled this cigar out of the. Yeah, out of the bag. You could throw this at someone. It's a weapon. Yeah. This thing is formidable. Bam. There was an allusion
**Grinder:** to Robert Plan's hog in his pants. Yeah.
**Poobah:** I mean, if you're like a rockstar, you could just like tuck this in your underwear.
**Gizmo:** It's like spinal tap when he goes through security and he has the cucumber wrapped in, uh, aluminum foil in his pants. Precisely. Precisely. And they're, and they're scanning them with the, uh, this is big, the metal detector. This is a big boy. This is a big boy. Oh yeah. Yeah. Did you say 58? 58 by seven gauge.
But it,
**Grinder:** but only on the tip. Yeah, it [00:02:00] tapers. Just the
**Gizmo:** tip. Just
**Poobah:** the tip.
**Gizmo:** Holy tip. That's it. Alright, so let's get, let's get on with it here boys. Let's cut this thing. See we're getting on the cold draw on the wrapper. This is, you know, it looks like a really well-made cigar. Mm-hmm. It's just, it's a commitment, man.
We have made a commitment tonight with this cigar.
**Senator:** Well, I just tried to cut four inches off to save myself some of the time.
**Gizmo:** Draws good. The, the cold draws delicious. Wow. Draws wide open. Lot of raisin
**Bam Bam:** dry fruit. Hmm. Definitely raisin some
**Senator:** coffee. Yeah. Yeah. We'll say for something that's got like this Fido shape where it gets really narrow at the end, the draw is really open.
**Gizmo:** Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it starts at a, you know, 58 is, is at its largest here at the, near the foot before it tapers down to the Fido shape. Um, I would say up by, you know, uh, where you're actually drawing the cigar at the head of the cigar, it's probably closer to like a 49 50 maybe. Yeah. And then it tapers down to 58.
Yeah. And then into the firo. So it's an interesting, interesting shape. And [00:03:00] then for being 58 ring gauge, the mouth feel is certainly more Yes. Palatable to me. Yes. Than it would be if it was just a straight 50. It's not a
**Grinder:** jawbreaker. No. So I'd be, I'd be, I'm gonna be very curious to, to hear how this cigar changes across each of you and what your perceptions are.
If it changes at as a, like, if it changes at all, like this is something that's so different across. As you're smoking it, you're gonna have some variability or not. You know, I, I'm, sometimes I've had these cigars and there it's the same. Mm-hmm. All
**Gizmo:** the way through. I'm getting a very distinct
**Rooster:** note on the cold
**Gizmo:** raw.
I'm getting
**Bam Bam:** raisin in dry fruit.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. Dry fruit. Fig. Yeah.
**Senator:** Figs good. I got
**Grinder:** the fig too. Fig Newton Strong.
**Gizmo:** Fig Newton. We call that out a lot. This is a Nicaraguan Pirro. This is a Nicaragua Piro. This is, it's certainly no exception. So. Alright boys, let's like this thing, the Placencia
**Senator:** alma sweater
**Gizmo:** Salamoni.
Now can
**Bam Bam:** listeners take a drink every time he
**Gizmo:** says that? Yeah. They're gonna be hammered. Yeah. They may need it. By, by the time we finish this episode [00:04:00] in four hours with the size of this cigar, very reminiscent of lighting the padron. 80th 80th. Mm-hmm. The figuera tip, you know it's gonna flare open as it burns.
We'll see how it does. It's very
**Senator:** pleasant. The key I will say with the Fido for the listener is we smoke a lot of the Pedro 80th. Sometimes when you light it and you start to draw, it actually tightens up. The draw just happened. Yeah. And you're worried that it's plugged or clogged and people will clip more off the thing.
With a Fido, you just gotta trust the process. That's true. Just take pups, they're gonna be, it's gonna feel clogged, but after you get through maybe a quarter or even a half an inch of ash on the cigar mm-hmm. It just opens wide up beautifully. So you just stick with it. Yeah, that's
**Bam Bam:** true. Wow. It's pleasant, isn't it?
Pretty good on the light. Yeah. It's not
**Gizmo:** overwhelming. I feel like, you know, it's gonna be hard to judge it because it's gonna flare open into that 58 ring gauge foot, but tastes pretty good on the light. What are you guys getting? [00:05:00]
**Poobah:** The anxiety you get before like an earthquake.
Oh yeah. It's like, it's like you're living in California and you're like, you know, you get, you get a little bit of shake and then you're like, what's gonna happen? You don't know.
**Gizmo:** I gotta say it's pretty damn good.
**Senator:** Yeah. I will say, yeah, it's off to a tasty start. I'm just getting a lot of like raisin and cocoa, which are flavors I enjoy
**Gizmo:** out of Nic cigars.
Mild.
**Bam Bam:** Mild now. So here's a question, Senator, you and I were on Rooster's deck a long time ago. We had one of these, oo was too
**Grinder:** Pobo
**Senator:** where he had his first home. Oh right. I'll never forget that
**Bam Bam:** day. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that cigar was absolutely different than this cigar. They must have remade it. They clearly went through a whole rebranding because honestly, this has the, been the
**Grinder:** only
**Bam Bam:** cigar.
I don't know. This is, you know, I've had this a, I had this a month ago. It's much more enjoyable than that episode that we had. What do, which [00:06:00] episode or the, uh, the moment that we had together on his
**Senator:** deck. That was when band was producing the podcast. That's right. The, the episode never came out. No one hit record.
**Bam Bam:** I forgot to hit the
**Grinder:** button. So, so my, my cigar just opened up wide up from when it was, uh, It was tight. It 'cause it, 'cause on the cold draw it was smooth and open. And then to senator's point, when I lit it, it tightened up real fast.
**Gizmo:** I mean, it has
**Grinder:** great flavors and now it's, yeah. Oh, the flavors are, I think the flavors are great.
**Senator:** No, I, I really, this is just important to Fido point on just how to smoke these because it really paints me and I did the same thing the first few I had where I didn't really know what to expect. With a Fido, you have an open draw and then it tightens up and you think something's wrong and it's not. And it pains me because I just watch sometimes guys light a Fido and it closes up once they light it.
So they light the hell out of it and are just burning the wrapper and you just really gotta just be patient. Or they
**Gizmo:** clip it. Or they clip it. Yeah. I've seen guys clip the 80th. Yeah. You know, the padron 80th, [00:07:00] it's just a cigar that you know, if you're gonna commit to sitting down and smoking this. It's a commitment of time.
You need to be patient with it as you light it, as it opens up poo. But this is, I'm talking to you. Yeah, I'm kidding. No,
**Poobah:** I mean this, I'm kidding. This is where you go like, well, like, how's life going? Every single
**Rooster:** one of us taking the foot band off.
**Gizmo:** Except you guess. Yeah. I, I, that's 'cause I was gonna talk about the bands.
So there are three bands on it. The foot band says Alma Fuerte, Alma Fuerte, uh, and then there's two bands at the top in a unique format. Actually the top band, kind of opposite of what you'd normally find on a cigar. Uh, the top band is smaller, just has a couple peas on it. And then under that it says Placencia alma Fuerte.
Um, nice bands, but, but yeah. So this is part of the classic, uh, Alma fuerte line that they have. Classic, I mean, the company's only been around since 2017, but they have six cigars in the line. The Eduardo one, the Reto, the 6 0 1 and 6 0 2, [00:08:00] and the nester, uh, and this one that we're smoking is the generation five.
You know, on the on the foot band,
**Rooster:** there's this little white sticker that they put on. It says Generon
**Gizmo:** five. That's the name of this cigar inside the line. Mm. So I guess this is a blend that is just for when they do a blend, you know, like Padron, when they do 1964, there's a ton of different cigars inside that line.
When they did Alma fuerte, each of the cigars has a very unique name, and there's only one size tied to that name. So the 6 0 1, the 6 0 2, the Rab Robusto, this is the generation five. There's no other cigars that are called the Generation Inside the Line. It's just the generation five.
**Senator:** Here's the thing that's the most confusing to me though.
When someone has, I've been at a lounge and someone's mentioned that they smoke placencia. And I'll always say the only placencia I've tried is the Alma Forte from Grindr and it has a black band on it. So I always assume that when they say they've had the Alma Forte, we're talking about the same thing.
And they'll pull out an alma forte and it has a green band. Yep. Yet it says Almo Forte. And it's just very [00:09:00] confusing because every other cigar brand, I feel like when something's within that one product line, it has the same band. It's just the size is different. So I don't know why they change the color for what's supposed to be the same cigar.
Hmm. And they also don't even look the same in the sense that this has a very dark wrapper. And this other alma fuerte, which says Alma fuerte on it with a green band, has like a lighter
**Gizmo:** natural looking wrapper. And there's two of them that share that green band, Eduardo one and the Sixto one share the green bands and all the other four.
Have the black bands, which makes no sense. 'cause they're all Nicaragua pss. Interesting. Everything in the cigar is Nicaragua. It's made in Nicaragua by the Placencia family. Everything's made and blended by them. So it is an interesting choice. And even the Sixto one and the Sixto two, which are both identical sizes, have two different bands.
That is so weird. So it's an interesting, interesting choices that they made here with this line. Yeah.
**Bam Bam:** I will say though, [00:10:00] the presentation of every box that they make is gorgeous. Now that box that Grindr has, it's wrapped in plastic. If you open that, it's exquisite. They've spent a lot of time, a lot of money designing their, their branding and their boxes.
The
**Grinder:** beautiful, the first version of this cigar, when that came out? Yeah. Um, it had, the inside was actually an ashtray. Ah, okay. And it was actually very beautiful. And uh, there was another member who was talking about that before the podcast, but he was, It was saying how he used it as a functional ashtray.
Oh, interesting. I didn't know
**Bam Bam:** that. Yeah. But that box that you have to your right. Beautiful, beautiful interior.
**Senator:** Beautiful. I gotta say the exterior looks very industrial. Yeah, it is very industrial.
**Gizmo:** Almost. Almost like Gizmo made it. What's interesting on the inside here is that to the shape of the cigars, they've cut the side of the boxes so they kind of fan mm-hmm.
When they sit in there. Um, it's an interesting presentation. When you gave me this box, I was, I'd never seen anything like that. Yeah. When
**Bam Bam:** it's full, they do flare out right from the center out. It's really quite
**Gizmo:** nice. Yeah. It's a [00:11:00] really nice heavy box here. Yeah. And I guess they come in boxes of 10. Right?
Right. So
**Senator:** Grinder, I remember you said you had a lot of boxes. These, how many of these did you buy?
**Grinder:** Um, I think I only actually bought maybe four.
**Gizmo:** Um, did you smoke 'em all? Uh,
**Grinder:** I have half a box and then this box, so I have a box and
**Gizmo:** half. Nice. So I see. What's interesting about these is for a non Cuban cigar, it has a box date on it.
That's true. On the back it says December, 2022. I don't know if yours does or not. It's weird. Grinders
**Senator:** doesn't. Mm-hmm. Alright. So one of these is fake.
**Grinder:** I'll have to tell Atlantic I don't remember
**Bam Bam:** what I paid for these.
**Gizmo:** Honestly, I feel like you told me they were about 20, 25 a piece, but probably something like that. I mean for the amount of tobacco that's in this thing. Yeah, it makes sense. It would make sense that it's kind of in that price range. Yeah.
**Grinder:** You guys getting odd burns? 'cause mine is pretty wonky right now.
**Gizmo:** [00:12:00] Oh, well, I think we're pretty good. Pretty's burning pretty good. The shape itself makes it burn and mine's starting to open up like nicely. Yeah. But mm-hmm. I mean,
**Senator:** the only thing I will say again, to my point earlier with the fi out, you do have to smoke slowly at first.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
**Gizmo:** Right there with you. It's a delicious cigar. It's very good, isn't it? And for the size, I mean, you would think like Puba, you know, thinking that it's gonna knock you around. I mean, it's not doing that. No, it's
**Bam Bam:** not a nicotine bomb yet.
**Gizmo:** You do
**Rooster:** get a mustiness,
**Gizmo:** like a barnyard, like a musty flavor earth,
**Bam Bam:** earthy, earthy.
A little bit, a bit. Yeah. I,
**Grinder:** I, I think I like those flavors. That's fine.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. Yeah. Well, you are the petro chore man. I think the mustiness comes from what they say is a 10 year aging process on all of the alma fuerte cigars. Interesting. Wow. So there's tobacco in here that's 10 years aged. Wow. Or has been aging for 10 years in some capacity or another.
Maybe like, uh, wine vintages, maybe they're combining, you know, [00:13:00] older tobacco that's been aging in younger stuff to make the blend. Who knows? But. The components of this are definitely, you can taste the age. Mm, I will
**Senator:** say we will, we'll get into our pairing later, but just take a sip of what we're drinking and then take a draw of the cigar.
It's nice, it really accentuates the flavor in a good way.
**Gizmo:** Yeah, the cigar, it's pretty good. Let's talk about it. What do we have here?
**Senator:** So, I'm not su, I'm not at all super, uh, familiar with this, but I can't wait to hear pronunciation. Uh, the Glen Lacey, 12 year, Glen
**Gizmo:** Lacey, Glen
**Senator:** Lache, there's a whole story on the back.
So no homework was needed. They've done it all for us. It says, we are one of Scotland's few independent distilleries led by iconic master distiller Billy Walker, who boasts over a half century's tenure in whiskey. With an exceptional passion for wood policy, Billy seeks out the world's finest cast to elevate the spirit to its optimum.
Now, the thing that I have a hard time with when they talk about wood innovation and a passion for [00:14:00] wood policy, We were noticed, and I was talking to Grindr about this before we hit record. We were noting how dark the spirit is and we're looking on the cask. I think Grindr said like, is it aged in a port barrel or something?
And what's really bizarre for someone so passionate about wood? Nowhere on this box that has tons of text, does it say what type of wood cask this was aged in? Yeah. Not good.
**Gizmo:** Very bizarre. Now why would that be? Is that like an secret? Does secret, does anybody else do that secret? Secret? Yeah.
**Senator:** So like the balcony, the ny double wood says half of it's aged in, uh, sherry, half iss Asian American oak.
Um, some will just say it's all American Oak. They usually tell you, I don't know why this wouldn't be on here, but it says, each cask held within our 16 onsite warehouses is frequently monitored and re reacted into different cast types until Billy deems that the perfect balance between distillery character and influence from the wood has been achieved.
We proudly present the Glen Acky 12 year. At natural color, which they emphasize even on the [00:15:00] front of the box. And I have to assume because it's insanely dark. It is. I mean this, this looks like a, an age cognac. Yeah. Even in the bottle. Oh yeah. And the thing I'm most surprised by, it says at strength of 46% alcohol by volume, which when you drink this, this doesn't taste higher than 40%.
So I'm actually surprised by that. Well, you do have ice in your glass. I tried it neat first and it was fine. Neat. Yeah. I'm having
**Bam Bam:** it neat now. I'll probably keep it neat. I like this. The finish I love on the front there is a burn, but the finish, I'm getting plum honey. Hmm? There is a burn though. Up front.
**Poobah:** It's a little
**Gizmo:** hot for me. Yeah. Try it with a little ice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have mine with ice. It's very good. Mm-hmm. It doesn't taste, you know, that dissimilar from other 12 years with ice. I mean, and where, what region is this from? In Scotland?
**Senator:** I'm sorry, I believe space side, but let me confirm that. Yeah.
Space
**Bam Bam:** side. Okay. Puo, what are you
**Poobah:** thinking about this? Um, I
**Grinder:** don't love it. [00:16:00] Alright. It's very sweet. Is anyone else getting a little
**Gizmo:** sweet? Yeah, it's sweet. Mm-hmm. It's, it's hot. I'm surprised to hear that it's 46 proof. Yeah. For how's sweet. It
**Grinder:** tastes, it's, it's, it's, it's sweet on the palate and the aftertaste.
Aftertaste it, finish. Mm-hmm. The afterbirth. Um, no, I think it's, it's, it's, it's a, it's a reasonable scotch. I think it, it actually, with the mustiness of the aged tobacco, it kind of adds like a nice balance to the, to the cigar. Um, and it kind of like coats your mouth a little bit, which I like. And that sweetness just really kind of ties in the, the, the musty.
Flavor of
**Senator:** the cigar. I agree with that. And I think like love, hate or fall somewhere in between on the scotch. I do think it pairs well with the cigar in the sense that this is a very full flavored scotch. Like honestly, one of the like darkest scotches, we've 12 years we've ever reviewed and this is a very full flavored cigar.
So I do think that it holds up to that. [00:17:00] Um, I'm also reading on the box, uh, we have an explanation behind the name Grinder. I've, did you say, do you know Gaelic? I don't know Gaelic. Oh, okay. Well it says Glen Lacey from the Gaelic Glen. Oh, I not, no, it's a different, lemme
**Grinder:** see. I love it.
**Bam Bam:** Love. Can't pronounce something.
**Gizmo:** It's not me tonight. The last word there.
**Grinder:** See how long it's taking. It is Glenn Ade. Oh my gosh. See
**Gizmo:** why I handed him the box? I think you just have to say it with a little phlegm in your throat. You nail it from that. You try. Yeah. Gimme that box
**Senator:** from those, from those two Gaelic words, meaning Valley of the Rocks.
The geology here is dominated by ancient rock formations, not any old stone. And so apparently that's why they named it Glen Acky. You,
**Gizmo:** you don't wanna, which are the rocks? The rocks.
**Poobah:** It's a little hot. So, so it's a little hot for me. Um, so, so it's [00:18:00] not a green me totally. But it does pair well with the cigar.
Yeah. 'cause the cigars big. Yeah. And full. It's a big, it's a big full flavored
**Gizmo:** cigar.
**Pagoda:** You know, what I find interesting is like when you have regular scotches, you get a very prominent flavor of scotches. Like, you know, it's a scotch. I don't get that with this. Yeah.
**Grinder:** It's funny you say that. It's unusual. I, I agree.
It's true. It doesn't, it tastes like a, it, it tastes like a blended scotch, I'll be honest. It doesn't, it does, it doesn't taste like a, like a single scotch.
**Bam Bam:** I agree. Or a low grade
**Pagoda:** cognac. I, yeah, a low grade cognac, I think. Is it, is it a single,
**Grinder:** like, I mean,
**Gizmo:** is it blended?
**Senator:** It says it's one of the only independent distilleries in Scotland.
It's gotta be so,
**Grinder:** so every scotch is essentially blended, but the single malt means it should, it's just means it's from the same distiller. Um. So I wouldn't be surprised if he's so keen
**Gizmo:** on, you're talking about Billy, Billy the man
**Grinder:** with the power. If Billy's so keen on, uh, the wood master, you know, having a policy around wood, he might be doing some other [00:19:00] machinations in the background with the
**Gizmo:** blend.
I don't dunno. I think there's something going on there because it's 46, you know, 46%. It's as sweet as it
**Grinder:** is when you have to, when you have to like, put a disclaimer on the box that it's, that's natural coloring you, you immediately say, oh really? Are you sure about that? It's true.
**Gizmo:** It's a
**Senator:** question mark.
Yeah. It's like any product, natural flavor. Obviously there's adding shit then
**Poobah:** like I'm not getting, I'm not getting sherry, I'm not getting, I'm not
**Grinder:** even getting the oak. Like I don't get like the oak
**Poobah:** or the wood. Yeah. Like I'm not getting something from it that's delivering anything that's that distinct.
So I'm, I'm having a hard time putting my finger on exactly what this stands for.
**Senator:** I will say I agree with everyone in the sense that if, if I were to drink this blind, my first guess would not be scotch. It drinks more like, uh, a bourbon or a cognac. Yeah. Something sweeter. Yeah.
**Pagoda:** Yeah. Mm-hmm.
**Poobah:** Or a cognac, really.
Yeah. I think co, I think a co, [00:20:00] well, like a low grade cognac. That's exactly
**Bam Bam:** right. Yeah.
**Pagoda:** You'll see Bams right
**Gizmo:** there. You know what I'm saying? Oh, agree. Like a vs. Completely agree. Like a vs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like a vs I'm just confused by the whole thing. I'm confused by the, the, the, the scotch period. It, it's, it doesn't, it's not lining up weird.
The story doesn't align with the taste. It's weird. It's right. It doesn't, it's a weird Scott, it doesn't taste, it's a, but it's not bad. It's
**Senator:** not offensive. Like, I'm not drinking this saying I can't drink it. It's just, uh, The color threw me off. And then as Grindr says, the fact that it emphasizes natural color is just very weird.
Um, the fact that it talks about how this guy's passion for wood, and I still don't know what exact type of cask this was aged in. It seems
**Grinder:** like the marketing is a little contrived, that's all. Mm-hmm. And if, and whenever there's any, you know, when you're contrived and it's, when it's like that, you, you kind of just second guess it.
What do you guys think of the cigar though? I mean, we haven't,
**Gizmo:** I'm enjoying it, man. It's kind of pleasant. Is it? It's not bad at all. So I've opened up, mine's opened up to the full 58 ring gauge. Mm-hmm. Kind of point. Yep. Right there [00:21:00] with you. Now and I don't even, this may be a crazy statement. I don't even think this is a full cigar.
Like this isn't, it's firmly medium. I would say it's medium, yes. It's, it's not packing up punch that I recall. Medium full, but I think it's medium. Yeah, I agree. And, and when you look at the cigar, that's fully Nicaraguan. At this size, it's surprising to me that it's not knocking you around. Yeah, it's true.
I maybe the age has helped it.
**Grinder:** I think I, my cigar, I don't know about you guys, but my cigar has this slight little, I wouldn't even call it patina, but let's call it patina of like this slight like oil residue on the wrapper, which to me says this thing is certainly aged. Like you definitely have that aging mm-hmm.
Profile on it. And I think that, I think maybe Gizmo mentioned it kind of tones down a lot of the strength in a cigar and it rounds out those rough edges. And if it is as aged as they say, I'm not surprised it's smoking like this.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. I'm just surprised. 'cause you think about family reserve from Padron, right?
Which is also, is that eight [00:22:00] years or 10 years Family reserve? I'm not a big family reserve all eight. I think it's eight or 10. Mm-hmm. And you think about how much oomph those still have with that blend. Oh yeah. Obviously, you know, this is on purpose. Maybe they, they were trying to make a medium, medium, full cigar.
Mm-hmm. But I would think that 10 years age on Nicaragua tobacco is giving you a much smoother, more balanced, not kicking you in the face experience. Yeah. Honestly, the
**Bam Bam:** family reserve per drones are much fuller than this cigar. A hundred
**Grinder:** percent. No doubt about it. What's the, uh, wrapper? Crayola Crayola Crayola
**Bam Bam:** cre Crayola Crayola
**Gizmo:** Crayola Crayola
**Senator:** Crayola.
**Gizmo:** I can pronounce the cobalt.
**Bam Bam:** I can
**Gizmo:** pronounce the gala. Yeah. You're, you're good on the gala, but
**Poobah:** not the cobalt. Cobalt blue.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. Gimme the font color please. I think it's co, that's the R B G car. Rojo is a
**Grinder:** good, yeah.
**Gizmo:** Roho, that's it. Roho. But it's, yeah, it's a Nicaragua, it's kind of like a reddish, but, but, but
**Pagoda:** grinder.
For somebody who, you know, for whom, uh, English is a second language, what is [00:23:00] patina sheen?
**Grinder:** It's, uh, it's, it's not a sheen. It's like a characteristic that comes, especially with metals, with age that's like, oh, that's
**Gizmo:** exactly, it's not rust, but it's, it's like a.
**Grinder:** It's a, it's an oxid, oxid, oxidization of, of the metal.
So like copper sure has this, it turns from copper to green. Like that green, green. Yeah. Well done. But, but well done. When it, when it ages it, it shows that it's like real and it's authentic. And that's when people say there's patina. It's like, oh, it's true though. You know? No, thank you. It's not fake copper.
**Pagoda:** No, but you know why I say that? Because my vocabulary keeps increasing from Petco.
**Bam Bam:** I'm very proud. I love grind. Right now. I'm, I
**Senator:** just, I, I've never seen this big a smile on Bev's face. The architect of the room is sitting there so proud of grind.
**Grinder:** I'm very proud of grind. Very proud of you.
**Poobah:** That's right. It's impressive.
Well, I was, a few weeks ago, I was driving down the road and it, and it had rained and I was coming back from the deli over here, and I swear to God, I swear [00:24:00] it was Petco. It was, it was Petco. Mm-hmm. Like it was dry. It, it hadn't rained, and then rain came down and then it stopped and it was, and I walked out of the deli and I was like, holy shit,
**Bam Bam:** it's real.
That's pet. It's happening.
**Poobah:** It's, this is like real petro. It's like a Star Wars. When Harrison Ford says to
**Grinder:** the young, to the young guy, he says, it's all real. All the stories you've heard. That's
**Poobah:** what it was like. I go, oh my God, this is actually, this is Petco
**Pagoda:** by the way. I kid you not this Friday we were driving, uh, to Montreal and on the way it started raining, uh, pretty heavily.
And uh, you know, we had stopped it by Shoon Lake or something on the way there, and you could really melt screw, maybe. Yeah. And you could smell and you know, like in our language we would say Kush b Beanie, beanie. We were just talking, we were just laughing. But it's really Petco. And I'll tell you, we talked about [00:25:00] Petco for literally a few minutes because, uh, a, a lot, a lot, a lot of my buddies listened to the podcast and it was just funny.
It's, it's great. It was so real.
**Poobah:** It is real. Like I, I, I, I had texted the group, I'm like, I'm really actually in real time experiencing this, but it's fleeting. Like, it's, it, it, it, it, it's magic in a bottle. You gotta fucking, it was like magic in a bottle. It was like, oh my God, this is actually happening.
Breathe it
**Gizmo:** in. I would say it's magic in a bottle too. With cigars. It doesn't, it's not a flavor note that often. Mm-hmm. But when Grinder tastes it, It's special. Only, only, only, only Grindr tasted
**Grinder:** I, so I don't think there's much Petco in this, by the way. No, no,
**Pagoda:** no, no. There isn't. People just don't. I'm
**Senator:** glad you clarified.
I thought I was getting it. No,
**Poobah:** no. There's no Petco in this. This is, this is, uh, this is the, uh, this is the paddock at, at, at uh, at, at Belmont in terms of earth [00:26:00] barnyard. Yeah. This is notes of horseman poop. Yeah. I mean horses, right? I, I mean, no, not a bad thing. It's, it's a lot more, uh, earth, deep earth.
Mm-hmm. Than fresh.
**Pagoda:** Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's earth than cocoa. I think that's what
**Grinder:** I'm getting. I'm getting like, Now I'm getting a lot of spice, a lot of like spicy, like cinnamon spice. I haven't
**Pagoda:** just that.
**Senator:** Okay. Baking spice. I'm with you, but not like regular spice. Yeah,
**Grinder:** like cinnamon. That's Yeah. Spice as a general term
**Gizmo:** on the, on the cinnamon nutmeg type.
Exactly.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah. I get that on the retro hill of this guy on the finish and on the retro hill. That's where I'm, that's where I get it exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's unusual because the only part of the scotch that we're drinking, For me on the fin, on the very end of it where I get a little honey and plum, the rest of it's tough to drink.
The front, the front's brutal. I
**Grinder:** could not tell you what plum tastes like. I don't, I don't think I've had a plum in like since I was like, three plums are great.
**Gizmo:** Yeah, I haven't had a plum in a long, like that orange
**Bam Bam:** center. I am having it meat. I won't put ice in it because I want [00:27:00] continue that.
**Senator:** Because I know, yeah, you really should put serious.
I would think you're, it's dramatically better with ice. And I actually get some like cocoa on the finish of scotch with
**Gizmo:** ice. I, I'll take some ice because I would say, dude, when you cocoa on the finish with the s, when you say the rest of it's not palatable, bam, get poop. The chaos. The chaos. That just, what the hell's going
**Bam Bam:** on, Coco?
On the finish with the scotch.
**Senator:** He's in disbelief.
**Poobah:** I don't,
**Grinder:** I I think that's a little egregious, but
**Senator:** No, it's not because I'm deadly serious. Macallan 12, if you notice very faintly on the finish, you'll get dark chocolate. No, you will get on the Macallan 12 for sure. Yes. Which is very dark and color like this.
I'll give you a
**Poobah:** little bit of, it has a little bit of a dry finish with some ice in it. I'll give you that, which kind of can lend it, lend itself to some cocoa. But there's something with the scotch. That's weird.
**Gizmo:** Um, I would say this though. I, it is, it's not a kott for me. It's certainly weird. But bam, I think when you, what you're gonna find with ice in it, okay.
That it's not. I think it's totally [00:28:00] drinkable, and I think it's totally serviceable. I think without the ice, certainly at 46%. Okay. The way that Billy makes this thing, Billy, Billy, you know what's funny though,
**Poobah:** Billy? Yo. Yo yo. If you, if you took Billy and like, in like, Kirkland Manufacturing and put them head to head mm-hmm.
I'd like to see where this
**Gizmo:** rocks and stacks we're gonna find out tonight. He's not wrong. He's not wrong. I,
**Pagoda:** I don't know. I, I dunno what Billy has done, but that doesn't taste like scotch to me. It doesn't like s whiskeys. Let's, I'd rather say that,
**Grinder:** that, so I think that's when you have everyone in the room, they'd be like, you know, is this actually a scotch?
You know, something is, you know, to use the word's True. It's weird. Something's off, something's off, something's off. It's weird. You
**Gizmo:** know, the thing
**Senator:** that's bizarre is people really pursue this. The only reason, I mean, we've done so much scotch, this is probably the hardest thing for us to find new scotches.
**Gizmo:** So actually I'm gonna start, yeah. We're, we're deeper in the scotch aisle than we've been. Yeah. So I'm
**Senator:** gonna start with a call out to all lizards that are listening, please send us scotch recommendations that we have not done. Mm-hmm. 'cause we've done so many, and the only reason [00:29:00] I picked this up when I was just buying a ton of random stuff for us to try there, I've seen guys post on like Facebook groups and other things mm-hmm.
We're members of mm-hmm. A photo of a cigar with this bottle right next to it. And I looked at it, I said, I've never heard of it. I've never seen that. There are no words on it, sorry. Bill O'Reilly referenced. I just had to buy it to try it. And it, it's, uh, it's very different than anything we've
**Bam Bam:** done. I'll be, now that I've put ice in it for me, the, the middle is more enjoyable.
I'm not getting anything on the front or the finish at all. But the middle's actually quite nice without the ice. It was all finished for me and I was desperately looking for something at the end. But it's not bad with ice
**Pagoda:** in the middle. Middle. So no more plumbing, honey? No,
**Bam Bam:** it's just, it, there actually is no front, like, uh, there's no, there's no, it's a little, I'm not gonna use the word muddled, but I'm not capturing
**Senator:** anything specific.
So I got exactly what you're saying. Yeah. When I first put ice in it and I tried it. Mm-hmm. And then I just let it sit for a few minutes and I forgot about it. I was smoking the cigar. Mm-hmm. And it's weird [00:30:00] as it sits and I guess a little more of the ice melts and mm-hmm. Something happens. I got a much more complete experience.
Interesting. So just give it a few minutes and I'm curious than what you get.
**Gizmo:** Uh, it's, it's, I'm going back and forth between, this is weird. This is odd. And then when I, it hits my palate the right way with the draw of the cigar, I'm like, this is pretty good. And then it gets weird again. And the stick itself, the, the scot Oh, I see.
The scotch with the cigar. The scar's been very, very good. It's very good. This is the winner so far tonight. Yeah. Out of the two.
**Poobah:** Yeah. The, the scotch doesn't have a, it doesn't have a finish. That's, it's not there. It's not there. But you're right, like in the middle it's like kind of Okay. But it's, it's confusing.
It's very, that's why when you asked me before and I was like, I didn't even know what to say because it was just, it, it almost doesn't taste like a traditional scotch to me.
**Grinder:** Um, there's, there's definitely that s [00:31:00] Scottish like multi flavor that you, that is, that is part of the d n a of a lot of scotches, uh, UBA and I, I'm missing that d n A right now for sure.
**Gizmo:** Yeah.
**Grinder:** Yeah, like the taste of Scotland. I'm not getting the taste of Scotland right now. It's not an awful drink though. No, it's not. It's not by any means. It's just, it's just so much sweeter. It is pretty sweet. And it's, and it's like, I mean, usually I don't drink scotch with this much infinite, so I think those things together and then, you know, the, the odd marketing is just kind of puts a bias in my mind that I can't dispel.
Yeah. Billy, you know, Billy, come on Billy. Why are you doing this
**Gizmo:** to me? Why?
**Poobah:** Can I ask a question? Billy? Billy uses select wood from his backyard. Can
**Gizmo:** I ask a question? The wood master, if you're, you're making scotch in Scotland, why not call him William Or Will? Why are we calling him Billy? Like, it, it just,
**Senator:** it's like
**Gizmo:** got a very American, almost connotation.
It just like, just like it, it's just the whole thing about this is weird. Like, I wanna send like, what's the guy from Dateline Keith? [00:32:00] Uh, Keith Morrison. Keith Morrison. I wanna send Keith Morrison to this distillery. Mm-hmm. I want to get to the bottom of this. Do some reconnaissance. Yeah. In Scotland.
**Poobah:** But the man behind the scotch Billy is a mystery Billy, when you, they call him Billy, the
**Senator:** wood master.
The fact that they're exclaiming
**Pagoda:** the wood master. The fact that
**Gizmo:** there, but there was more,
**Poobah:** there was more to Billy. Come on than we ever knew. The
**Gizmo:** guy's
**Bam Bam:** got a lot of wood.
**Gizmo:** It's just pallets. It's only pallets. Oh man.
**Senator:** It's also not that old. So I just finally found, it says it was established in 1967, which for Scotland, that's not, that's not old.
Hmm.
**Grinder:** But yeah, I mean, the fact that they're, they have to extol the virtues of the founder and point to a, a wood policy makes
**Pagoda:** you wonder. I bet you Billy moved from the us He's trying Patterson, Tennessee. Yeah. [00:33:00]
**Gizmo:** He grew up, he grew up next to BAM in Patterson. Come to find
**Bam Bam:** out Billy's
**Poobah:** scotch. Billy Billy grew up in Trenton.
**Gizmo:** So unlike the scotch barring tonight, the Placencia family has a shockingly long history. Mm. You know, the Placencia itself as a cigar brand was founded less than 10 years ago, like we said, 2017. But Don Eduardo Placencia, his story started in the 1860s, which I mean, for New world cigars, for how young this brand in and of itself is, is shocking that it's almost 200 years of history.
In this family. Wow. You know, uh, he left the Canary Islands, went to Cuba, started growing in Weta Abajo, which we talk about on almost every Cuban episode, you know, which is where all of the, the great tobacco's grown in Bernard Del Rio. The
**Senator:** Alma Fuerte, born in [00:34:00] Weta. Abajo listener. Take a drink.
**Grinder:** Can we make that in an A S M R?
**Gizmo:** Like, uh, yeah, we can, we'll just do a senator as s m r Alma.
**Senator:** Alma, you know what it reminds me of every time I do it, it reminds me of like, when, uh, Puerto Rico, that horrible hurricane, and Trump was like throwing toilet paper, like he was shooting basketballs and he just kept going, Rico, he just kept saying it like that.
He just cracked me up. That's creepy.
**Grinder:** It's the best.
**Poobah:** It's a good boat name. Like, like, Like, uh, uh, Pompano, Pompano, uh, Pompano Bridge. Pompano Bridge Crossing. This is the fuerte. This is the ammo. This is, this is the fuerte looking for passage. You know, you have fuerte. This is Coast Guard.
**Grinder:** You have a certain trope of, of attendees when you, when the first thing you can harken back to is a boat reference.
**Gizmo:** Yes. He's a big boat
**Poobah:** guy. He's a big boat guy. Guy. [00:35:00] This is the Amma fuerte boats and bikinis.
**Pagoda:** It doesn't mean strong soul, by the way, Alma
**Gizmo:** Forte. Is that what means? That's exactly what it means. Look at this pagoda.
**Senator:** Look at pagoda. Is your Babel's really behind
**Gizmo:** babble? Well, he, he, he's a little ahead of me. I, I've been a little busy the last few weeks.
He's on course 10. So, uh, Don Eduardo's nephew, Sixto Placencia Juarez, which, that's an important name to remember in the future here, right before 1900, expanded the business and opened a Carroll Hall farm in Cuba. And then they had a long history up until. Castro, 1963, Castro's regime, uh, regime confiscated all of the farms.
They all fled to Mexico and then went to Nicaragua, starting from scratch again. 65. They had 15 years or so, uh, successful history in Nicaragua growing tobacco for other folks, and then the Sandinistas burned the farms, and then they had to go to Honduras. Is this all true? [00:36:00] Yes, this is all true. It's amazing.
All true, and it's terrible. It's how many times crazy this poor family has had to restart their entire existence. This story is
**Senator:** exactly like the
**Gizmo:** story of Poron and Fuente. Absolutely. That's right. Same thing. Absolutely. You know, to go to Nicaragua after being booted outta Cuba, then having everything taken again, moving to Honduras.
To start again. I mean, it's unbelievable.
**Senator:** The only thing missing from his story that's like Pedro and Fuente is there's no involvement it sounds like, of a fire burning everything down.
**Gizmo:** That's true. Well, I mean, the Sandis, the Sandis was burned. That's true. There you go. They burned everything. Sandis burned everything in 78.
And then in 1986, Nestor Lencia, uh, Placencia, excuse me, entered the cigar business, uh, and ended up manufacturing a million cigars a year. And by 1990 went from 1 million cigars a year to 33 million cigars a year. Oh my gosh. All for different brands. So they, that
**Grinder:** that's where they made for different brands.
That's where they made their mark Exactly. Is is, uh, [00:37:00] like the cigar boom when, you know, there were brands popping up all the time and they needed manufacturers. And he said, I'm gonna be a contract manufacturer. And that's how he expanded so quickly. He said, I'm not, I don't need to make a brand. I just need to grow the tobacco.
And then you have, like, you know, Rocky Patel is a heavy consumer. Of Placencia, Alec Bradley, like those names that they're not really, they're not really tobacconists. They're not really cigar. They're marketers. They're marketers. Yeah. And, um, and they like to say that their master blenders are all this other bullshit, but they're not.
They're going to nester and saying, help make me a blend. And he'll, he'll make 'em a blend. And then that's, he saw that success and he had such a great, you know, following and a lot of, you know, a lot of name recognition in the industry. Said, I can just make my own
**Gizmo:** guy, nester is well respected in the Yeah.
Cigar. He's, he's one of those guys, you know, it's almost like Amazon Fulfillment. This guy has been delivering cigars that everybody knows, and so many people smoke and they have [00:38:00] no idea who he is. So
**Senator:** does he blend, is he a
**Gizmo:** blender or Just blender and manufacturer? He's a grower and assistance grower.
Everything. And then, so he, he's gotta be similar like an AJ Fernandez. Exactly. Mm-hmm. But he, this, he has been one of the most successful ever. He had 30 different. 30 plus different brands, contracting him to manufacture and build hi their cigars. And that's in the year 2000. And that was also during the boom.
That's all during the booms. Right.
**Grinder:** That's and that's, this is not like operationally that's hard to do because you have, if you have that many customers and it's all made to order and it's all made to spec and you're doing that across so many different customers, that's impressive. You know? Oh yeah.
**Gizmo:** That's really from a quality control standpoint. Yeah. And consistency standpoint. It's tremendous. It sounds terribly challenging.
**Poobah:** Yeah. Well, yeah, it is. And I think some of that played into like during the cigar boom, and I remember it [00:39:00] vividly, like there was a lot of awful, awful stuff. And that's where we, where where I remember just go like relying on actually Nat Sherman to go to, to go there.
And you could actually. Buy a good cigar and it, they were pretty consistent, like in the city. I mean, I, I'd be at local cigar shops in the early two thousands. I mean, just flooded with in the late nineties mediocrity, I mean, and it was flooded with just with, with, with pretty awful stuff. I mean, Ashton was, was, you know, they were, the Levins were putting out like, like pretty good, pretty good cigars.
But I mean, it was tough. It was, there was a lot of weird, bad cigars out there. Um, You'd have to parse through it. I mean, the pagoda, I don't know if you, you know, I, I, I remember [00:40:00] Nat Sherman being a place where you could go and get a good, good cigar. Absolutely.
**Pagoda:** But by the way, you know what I loved about Nat Sherman is in the boom, you could walk in and if you were buying a cigar or two, because you would go and you would buy a cigar or two and just hang out there, they got to know you so well that they would keep suggesting different cigars within your flavor profile every time they were.
So if you walked in, there were like five or six or seven guys working in the small little store. One of them would walk up to you. You could only go to the humid or with somebody. They would, you would have a conversation with them. What is it that you want? If you knew exactly what you wanted, they'd give it to you.
If not, they would discuss with you and they would go all the way back and they would like, they would, you know, charge you for the cigar. So you had a complete experience in terms of as soon as you walked in, somebody would come to you and they would give you the whole experience. But [00:41:00] as a result, you tried so many different cigars, um, within your flavor profiles.
Especially because I used to smoke them for years and they knew exactly what we liked and, and we all used to discuss and share cigars over there. It was, it was a great place for sure. I
**Grinder:** wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised if, I mean, is Nat contracting with Placencia? I mean, I. Are they making their own cigars or, well, now
**Pagoda:** it's
**Gizmo:** Figo, fer, Ortego, fer.
Ortego. Well, yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure.
**Rooster:** I don't think that German used Nicaraguan
**Gizmo:** tobacco. I think it was Dominican. And Placencia
**Rooster:** was predominantly Nicaraguan tobacco in Honduran.
**Poobah:** Yep.
**Gizmo:** Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. So to that point, by 2015 I found this fascinating. They became, Placencia became the largest grower of tobacco in the world with 6,000 employees.
Are you kidding me? Now? Four factories, incredible. Eight plantations in Honduras in Nicaragua producing over 40 million cigars a year. [00:42:00] Unbelievable. They,
**Poobah:** they're a C M O. I mean, they're a contract manufacturing organization. That's crazy.
**Gizmo:** It's, yeah, that's crazy numbers.
**Poobah:** It's crazy numbers, but it's also like, How are you like sorting those prims and how are you?
Yeah, like quality control. Yeah. Yeah. It's like release to release to
**Gizmo:** but at, but you have to figure that, you have to figure that the people who are contract contracting them are really obviously concerned about the quality control and they're living up to it to have such a history of serving so many different, you know, brands of cigars that are asking them to manufacture, I mean, That's a, the 40 million cigars a year.
That's, well, that's, that's more than, that's kind of like what Cuba, that's ar arguably more than that, might be more than Cuba. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's more than the entire island of Cuba's
**Grinder:** producing. They're they're, they're also making some shit brands too.
**Poobah:** They are. That's, that's where I'm going. That they're, of course they are.
Right. I mean, of course.
**Senator:** What are some of the brand, do we know the brands that [00:43:00] they make Villager?
**Poobah:** I don't think, I think you would. I don't have, you probably wouldn't
**Gizmo:** know. I think that might be on the down low, some of them. Yeah. Mm. Because I would think a lot of these brands are trying to front, you know, the front facing, there's, they're trying to put it out.
Right. Almost like Billy. Yeah. That they're doing it all themselves. Right. That they're doing it all themselves. But Billy with the scotch, they're, they're
**Poobah:** making everything, probably they're cultivating tobacco and then they're, they're doing blends from the premium all the way down to probably, you know, factory second type stuff.
I think grinder's got
a
**Bam Bam:** list
**Grinder:** here, so, I mean, it's a long list, but some of the noteworthy ones, I mean, well, they're not even noteworthy. I mean, rock Patel, five Vegas. St. Cove.
**Gizmo:** They sell a lot of those man, uh, cigars,
**Grinder:** international cua, Cuba, Lere, GCA
**Gizmo:** ones, Christ Gir. What? Yeah,
**Senator:** but I'm
**Grinder:** out. But Gca Noka, they, they go with everyone though.
That's, oh,
**Poobah:** that's car. It's, [00:44:00] it's, it's, it's notes of cardboard.
**Grinder:** So all of all the Connecticut, the balls of wood, all the Connecticut, all the decade, all the edge, all the Sungrown, uh, Rocky Patels. And those are like good. Those are actually decent cigars. Wow. Yeah. They're, those are
**Gizmo:** all Rock. They are a lot of those are they?
Roosters are big. Rocky Man. Will you go to, go ahead. Who else is on the list? Biggest,
**Grinder:** I mean, this, this is not a comprehensive list, so I don't know if I trust it. Got it. But I mean, crux Cigar Company, bonty 2 6 2, Revere ca. Lot of no names,
**Senator:** but this is what, sad to me, I'm sorry. Look, I'm listening to this story and I'm very impressed by the numbers.
But then hearing that these are not premium brands, they're sorry, they're just not.
**Gizmo:** But I gotta say, you know, they launched their own brand in 2017. We're smoking one of them now. This is a damn good cigar. Yeah. Right now it's pretty damn good. Mm-hmm. What we're halfway through. Yep. Like I, I'm finding this to be very [00:45:00] decent.
Yeah. I wouldn't buy a box. I wouldn't buy a box either. This is not my thing, but flavor wise it's not bad.
**Senator:** Yeah. But to gizmo's point, I mean, it's got a lot of flavor. It's full flavor. It's not full strength, but full flavor. And, um, the construction is held up well.
**Bam Bam:** Oh yeah. I mean, the combustion is incredible.
**Gizmo:** It's not a, it's not a bad cigar. Yeah. I mean, somebody gave you one cigar. That's exactly where I was gonna go. You would light it up, you would course you would, right. Yeah. Right.
**Senator:** This is no
**Gizmo:** lass. It's, no, I would, that's better. I would not complain if someone handed me this cigar, other than the shock of the size.
Had I not smoked it prior like I'm doing tonight, but, I mean, this blend is, is totally
**Grinder:** serviceable. I don't even want to tell you the other names I just found. Please do. Jr. Oh boy. So it's factory second stuff. So all those JR. Cigars, Swisher International, they're not premium seconds.
**Gizmo:** Swisher, oh God, what else?
Rocky er and Rocky. A lot of rocky.
**Grinder:** I think like pretty, I would, I would surmise that [00:46:00] pretty much most of his portfolio is probably placencia.
**Bam Bam:** Interesting. Someone welding steel over there.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. Really poop's,
**Bam Bam:** relighting. His, uh, that lighter is awesome. It's,
**Gizmo:** can I get a crumble layer of raspberry please? I know.
**Pagoda:** Please don't leave it on.
**Poobah:** I, I, I'm, I'm dizzy from this thing.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah, this is,
**Grinder:** uh, it's
**Bam Bam:** hard to keep your eyes open.
**Pagoda:** Puma sits in one corner and all the smoke really somehow just end up right there.
**Gizmo:** So I, I have an issue with the size of the cigar. I agree. Yeah. I think if this
**Rooster:** cigar was like a rib robusto, it would be a lot more
**Gizmo:** pleasurable to smoke.
Yeah, I agree. Because it's
**Senator:** so, it's got a, it's not bad. A ton of flavors, a lot of smoke output. You don't need it to be this big to enjoy it. That's true. It's like, it'd be better in a smaller format. Like
**Grinder:** you say's, if, if a cat were a dog, you'd actually enjoy having cats around. Like, this is, I have a cat.
**Gizmo:** They're very different
**Poobah:** for a reason [00:47:00]
**Bam Bam:** now. The, uh, honestly also the retro hale in the cigar is actually enjoyable. It's nice.
**Grinder:** I don't think you'd have this kind of flavor, not that this is a very noteworthy flavor, but I don't think you, I don't think you capture it in a, in a re robusto. You don't think so because it's different size.
I mean, it's, it, it, it, it dictates
**Gizmo:** so much of the flavor profile. Well, I mean, if,
**Rooster:** if you're gonna make a cigar this size, then the flavor should kind of change. You know what I mean? This is kind of one dimensional, the flavor hasn't changed. We are getting the, we're getting the same notes that I was getting in the
**Gizmo:** beginning, and now I would argue that the flavor has changed slightly in that.
What we were getting at the beginning is more muddled now. Mm-hmm. And is less interesting to me. Hmm. Maybe it's because you've been drawn it and, and your, your palate's used to it, or, you know, you've been just tasting it for 45, 50 minutes, but it's just the middle third here has been mediocre. Wow. I, it's not terrible.
It's not offensive. I think, I think it's just stayed the same. Yeah. It's just not [00:48:00] been Well, that's, I'm hoping that something changes. Well, that's, the cigar was a little shorter. Mm-hmm. It would be more enjoyable. You may get a different experience though.
**Senator:** Yeah. I'm sorry I, I'm very much though in agreement with Rooster that if this was smaller, this would be better.
Yeah. I mean, I say that because
**Gizmo:** you're effectively halfway through holding like a short RAB Robusto in your hand. Exactly. It's like
**Senator:** at this end, you know it, it's bigger than a Rab robusto and at this end it's just a little smaller than a Rab robusto. And so if you just made this RAB robusto size, the flavor profile sure would change a little bit.
But I don't think dramatically, and I don't, to rooster's point, I don't need this much of the exact same flavor that is not all that complex. A shorter format. I'd probably even score this higher if it were in a shorter
**Gizmo:** format.
**Bam Bam:** Mm-hmm. Yeah. I could use a per
**Gizmo:** goggles right now. Yeah, same here. Smoke outputs.
It's definitely smokey. Yeah. The smoke output's great.
**Bam Bam:** I can't open my eyes.
**Gizmo:** So pagoda, you said you went to Montreal? Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. So what was the, obviously I'm, I'm gearing it [00:49:00] toward the cigar situation. I want to hear all of it, but people
**Pagoda:** are just so much more happier and friendlier and welcoming. You know, you're going, it was a jazz fest. Mm-hmm. You know, wherever you went.
Oh, right. Montreal. People were friendly. Yeah. And, uh, it's a, it's a great short trip from New York City. You know, it's a five and a half hour drive. You get in there. And you know what's so wonderful about it is, so I've been to the L C D H, uh, prior, in my prior visits, but this, uh, visit, we just went for a couple of days.
We ended up in, uh, a excellent lounge, uh, called Stogie. And it's right of, uh, it's close to St. Catherine's and Crean. Um, and STOs is such a fantastic lounge. You go in, there's no cutting fees. You can buy a lot of Cuban cigars. They seem to get, uh, a delivery of Cuban cigars every Wednesdays. Wow. But you know what, the funny thing is that you can
**Bam Bam:** actually sit in a.
Canadian Cigar Lounge.
**Gizmo:** Montreal is carved out. That right? Montreal is Quebec to the Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, it's totally [00:50:00] carved out from everything else. Interesting. It
**Pagoda:** is, and it was a, a really good experience. The drinks are not that expensive, although I must say that I, I have an opinion to bad Manhattans and Old fashioned and they, they seem to use a little bit of, uh, you know, the, like, I prefer, uh, you know, my old fashioned and Manhattans with Sweet Remove over there, they use a bit of half and half or, you know, they would even go and, you know, use, uh, the, what do you call it?
Uh, the, the dryer remove, which did not make sense with Manhattans or thing. So, but, but having said that, I think the cocktails could, uh, you know, uh, at least at this particular land, because we did go to a place. Uh, which is one of the world's, uh, best known cocktail lounge, which I can discuss later. But I do want to talk about the cigars over there.
So the Cuban cigars, which were available in the humidor, you could walk into the humidor and pick one. Firstly, they were all bandaid by. Yep.
**Grinder:** Uh, the generic
**Gizmo:** bands
**Pagoda:** [00:51:00] neutral. They're covered. Generic. They're covered. Now. Concealed. They concealed. Wow. Yeah, and I've never understood why, because why would a government say, Hey, listen, you have all these cigars, and it's for they don't want to.
Uh, it's really from a marketing perspective, they want to really subdue the marketing so that people are not attracted to smoking. That's the reason we got, oh boy. But every Cuban cigar. Was covered with like a brown plain wrap.
**Gizmo:** It's dumb. It's dumb. It really is dumb. It has like a, it has like a dark green light brown band, right?
Yeah, yeah. It is a generic font and they cover all the bands, but they, they
**Bam Bam:** label the cigar name, right.
**Gizmo:** So, you know, this is the name and the, and the, and the, and the, and the vital
**Pagoda:** and, and the original. And the original label is below it. So it's like really strange. So here's a question. They would go through the effort to do that.
Let's say
**Bam Bam:** you buy one of those cigars. Can you take that generic band off and you have to smoke it with it on? They do
**Pagoda:** remove the band.
**Poobah:** Oh, good. They do. Yeah. I mean, Canadian people that's crazy. Are Canadian. Canadian people are so wonderful. Mm-hmm. [00:52:00] They're so, they are really wonderful people. However, the government, and you can quote me and print it, is, is absolutely, completely.
Completely
**Pagoda:** crazy the amount of resources that are going into just doing that. I was like shocked. I was
**Gizmo:** like, what's crazy? Do you know what's crazy about it? Is they make, they make haos do it prior to import. Oh really? Oh wow. And what that's done now is, and I'm cur this is gonna be a setup to a question for you, is it's actually cut down the number of OLAS that Haos is willing to import into the country.
So instead of having the whole catalog mm-hmm. They've reduced it to 20 or 30 cigars that they banned in Cuba with those bands. They add the additional band as required by the the Canadian government. That's kind of what they want
**Poobah:** and important. I know that. But that's kind of what they want. That's kind of like what?
They
**Gizmo:** wanna limit the market. But
**Pagoda:** [00:53:00] having said that, I'll tell you, you would go there and you knew, I knew every cigar there, there were the, there was H Chop and twos, Montes, all the, you know, I guess, uh, you know, the major brands of the top six brands, how much they're all available. What did you pay for a cigar?
So, so now, now, now this is where it gets really interesting from the pricing perspective. The tax, like money two was 82 Canadian dollars.
**Gizmo:** Wow. What? It's like $70. That's like what? 60, 70 us 67. Wow.
**Pagoda:** What? Um,
**Gizmo:** The, the taxes.
**Pagoda:** Yeah. So, oh my God. The, uh, they had, they did have the Maduro number 180 5. Oh my God. Man, the, that's a killer.
So most of them were between 80 and 90 Canadian dollars
**Poobah:** of the, it's killing. They kill, they kill things. This is a, it's where things go to die. Yeah. I mean like, like, like for real. I mean, I'm not trying to like be harsh, but it [00:54:00] is, think about it. Canada has their entire armed forces. Okay, take all their military branches and put 'em together.
It's 50,000. The N Y P D has has 60,000. The N Y P D alone. 60, the city cops can beat up the Canadian Army. In other words, like, like, like, you know, just the mt. And by the way, I, Hey, but my, my father had two, oh, had two. Toronto and Montreal had two offices, businesses, private businesses in Canada. Um, listen, great country.
But, and the people are fantastic. However, uh, making money there is virtually impossible. Um, it's very, very difficult. Wow. And, um, it's, it's, uh,
**Pagoda:** but now, but [00:55:00] now I do have to tell you this. The lounges were backed. I was about to ask how crowded were the lounges? They crazy, right? And now the other interesting story was, We saw a lot of young people buying the cigars, spending that kind of money.
Wow. And now, now I'll be very honest, I saw there were grips of five. They were buying two or three cigars and they were splitting it. Wait a minute. What? Wait, so I saw a lot of young crowd cutting 'em in half. No, they were just, they were sharing, they were
**Bam Bam:** half
**Pagoda:** cutting them in half. No, they were sharing it.
Right. So instead of like, if there a grip of five was six, that's, that's
**Bam Bam:** awful. This is anti cigar. I mean like anti everything we
**Poobah:** stand for. Like if Russia decided to like, in like, like, like not every
**Pagoda:** grip, but I'm just saying is you did
**Poobah:** see that. I hear you. But if like Russia decided to invade, Canada, they're just like, depending on us to just come on in and just help them.
It's almost like they're grubbing on us. Like, like, like my whole, like, it's true. I'm not trying, I mean dick, but, but, but it's like, that's [00:56:00] the whole point, okay, you're only gonna have 40, 50,000, but people in your military, it'd completely be underfunded just to know. But if that, that, that, if anybody, like, if, if like, like if, if it was Red Dawn and just you had people parachuting into your country and, and ships rolling in, who would, who are
**Gizmo:** they coming to?
United States baby. But
**Grinder:** that's the point. You want, uh, you want an ally who's dependent
**Gizmo:** on you. It's genius, I guess. So here's, so here's my thing, but what, what's interesting, but I don't think it's OSes. Well, I think it, what's interesting about your experience is that you had the best experience that you could possibly have in Canada as far as procuring and smoking cigars, because outside of Quebec, You can't smoke anywhere in public at any time for any reason.
Even if you're sitting in your driveway, it's a problem. Really. I didn't know that. I have Canadian friends through the hobby [00:57:00] here, through the podcast. Mm-hmm. That I've met. These guys smoke in their garage and they're like nervous that a neighbor's gonna report them. Oh my god. Goodness for smelling smoke.
My goodness.
**Poobah:** This is, this is lunacy. It's lunacy. This is, this is it. It it's a country.
**Gizmo:** It's so, it's, it's, it's crazy. And it's like, so to hear what the experience you had despite the prices, I mean, that's obviously a, a, a mark in the, the, the positive box. But most of Canada, I mean, it's terribly prohibitive.
So I
**Pagoda:** do, I do have to tell you that they did have a lot of neguin as well, and they were also covered. So they changed from the boxes and they put them in really. Bare minimum boxes. They were telling us that a lot of the cigars come in these packs. You know how you get these 10 packs without a box? Yeah.
And they'll displace them. That's what's happening over there. Uh, the raan and all way around 30 Canadians. So there was a little bit of affordability there, but I think people just gravitated towards the Cubans regardless, because people like to experience [00:58:00] that. But, but the lounges were packed, meaning it was busy.
I have a que I have a question. A lot of women, a lot of women smoking cigars.
**Gizmo:** Wow, that's great. Wow. That's the other thing. That's great. I have a question for you on Nicaraguans and Dominicans, did you see most of the brands that, that you would reach for? Did you see Padron? No. Did you see Placencia? Did you see?
Davi off what? Like,
**Pagoda:** no, Ente, there were none. There were none of the premium, uh, brands, which we smoke over here, but Interesting. You know, there were a few that we obviously recognize.
**Bam Bam:** Well, uh, you mentioned Mond twos and so on, that's pretty premium. So, so
**Pagoda:** by the way, the H Mond two was uh, probably one of the cheapest Cubans over there.
What, around 55 or 60 bucks? The up man
**Rooster:** two
**Gizmo:** was Canadian. Yeah. Yeah, that makes no sense. And how much was the Mon
**Senator:** two?
**Rooster:** Mon
**Pagoda:** two was 82. Wow. 82, 80 95. Actually, maybe. That is crazy. Or 81
**Gizmo:** 95. That's crazy. Man. Smoke Better Young.
**Poobah:** I don't know.
**Pagoda:** I don't know. But, but they say, but you know, I asked them, are you selling cigars?
Right? And the guy [00:59:00] said, yeah, wouldn't you'd be surprised that, you know, they get shipments every Wednesday to, you know, replenish their stock.
**Gizmo:** What? You know, what bums me out for, you know, Canadian lizards, right? Is let's say you're a fan of a certain, you know, uh, Parus or a, certainly a Chapman CU Cigar.
You know, like the 8, 9, 8, like, those cigars are just not being imported to you anymore. And if you for some reason decide to buy them from a private seller and import them, like just like Miami coming in or shipping into Miami, they're gonna find those cigars. You're gonna pay the 200, two or 300% import tax on them.
And you've, you create like this situation where it's like so prohibitive to not only get but to pay for the cigars you wanna smoke. And by the way, Cuban cigars are legal there. Here we are in the United States where they're, yeah, there's an embargo and it's illegal and we can get them for [01:00:00] nearly a third of the price.
We're, we're very
**Bam Bam:** fortunate.
**Pagoda:** It's crazy. No, we are, although I do have to say we, we, we went to a bar called the clo, which is one of the. Really well known, uh, you know, uh, bars for cocktails, it's like the very small seating, like only 25 seats, but over there, there's no menu. You go there and you say, Hey, listen, the, the guy comes to you.
He asks you what are the flavors you like, and I mix something for you and bring it back. Wow. It was fantastic. Fantastic.
**Poobah:** Yeah, the food there is really good. The food was great and the people are just friendlier, they're so friendly and that the people are so fantastic and, but, but you know, the, some of these rules and regulations are just, uh, I think over the top,
**Gizmo:** you know?
Well, I'm glad you had a good trip, pagoda. No, thank you. Despite everything. Yeah. I'm, and
**Pagoda:** I think, I think, you know, the lizards should go down there like for a weekend. It's a great [01:01:00] weekend trip because there's really good food. I'll bring my
**Grinder:** own cigars. There's
**Pagoda:** good cigars. No, and by the way, so you can bring your own cigars and no cutting fee.
Wow.
**Bam Bam:** So I must say that. Great. That's, that's
**Pagoda:** great. Now we're gonna, the drinks are cheap, right. And, you know, uh, I think the Canadian dollars around one 30 or 1 35, 1 40 to a dollar. So it's significantly cheaper for, for the Americans anyway.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. So boys, we're in the second half now of the Placencia, fuerte, salamoni, generation five.
What are you guys thinking? It's leveled off. Yeah, mine's taken a turn for the better. Yeah,
**Bam Bam:** it's, at this point it had wasn't never bad for me. It's kind of leveled and it's
**Gizmo:** coast thing right now. There were about two inches of it that were kind of, eh, for me. But it's definitely picked, it's definitely in the better direction now.
Okay. Yeah, I,
**Senator:** I think to gizmo's point, the first third was very full in flavor. The second, third, the start of it, the flavor's getting muddled and then now it's kind of
**Rooster:** picked up to being
**Senator:** more pronounced. Uh, but as I think we've been [01:02:00] saying, it's very. Kind of one, one note. One note throughout. Yeah. A long cigar.
Yeah. Oh yeah.
**Pagoda:** So Senator, how was your trip, uh, to Jamaica? Oh,
**Senator:** yeah. Oh, Jamaica was fantastic, dude. Um, that was my first time there. Uh, I mean, the island itself just, just beautiful. Um, went with my family. Um, my, uh, my young son, that was kind of our, our first vacation with him, so that was an experience he did, thankfully, remarkably well.
Um, but we rented a, a villa and, uh, just had stunning views and just a great time. Um, the people there, I mean, my God, like the hospitality, yaman, yaman respect, man. I mean, just, it's so great. Like you leave a tip for someone there and they just, I mean, respect, man. Like, they're just so polite. It, it's, that's, it's so refreshing when you come from, that was the first time you were there.
That's a wonderful place. Yeah, that's cool. Um, I went with my wife and son and uh, my parents came, which was great, but, uh, we had a blast. Um, [01:03:00] I was so surprised. So, uh, we were in the Montego Bay area and, uh, there's an L C D H there. I was looking this up. There are actually three L C DHS in Jamaica. Wow.
Which is insane because I have visited a ton of places in the Caribbean and you will never see more than one L C D H on an entire island. Mm-hmm. China. China
**Grinder:** buddy. They've infiltrated
**Senator:** the entire island. That is true. There's a, there's a big Chinese influence. There's been a lot of, I mean, there, there are lots of like Chinese Jamaicans.
What? Um, in the sense that, oh yeah, J Jamaica's like a melting pot. It's like really crazy. It's goodness in some ways. Like India, Indian,
**Grinder:** Indian Jamaicans,
**Rooster:** Indian Jamaicans, Irish Jamaicans. It's exactly Irish.
**Senator:** You just named like the top three. Heck outside of
**Grinder:** whats Irish? Irish and, uh, Chinese. Chinese,
**Senator:** yeah.
There's a ton. Just historically over many, many, many years time.
**Rooster:** Generational ton of immigration. I didn't
**Senator:** know that. In Jamaica. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. But um, when we were in Montego Bay, I saw there was an L C D H right down the street from, it was a cigar lounge. This like cool, like blacked [01:04:00] out place like cigar lounge.
It was hard because with my very young son and just finding time to be able to slip out to go to these places mm-hmm. Is not so easy. But, um, the funny thing, I was looking up the lc, dhs, so. Uh, uh, rooster and Pagoda will appreciate this. The, um, I mentioned there's three of them. There's one in Montego Bay, one at right where we were staying, um, at Half Moon Resort, which is this beautiful resort.
And we were at these villas just like kind of looking, uh, over it. And then the third is in Falmouth, but apparently one guy owns two of these lc, DHS in Jamaica, and he's Indian. Uh, the guy's name is Raj Ani. Uh, Cindy,
**Pagoda:** right? Ani. We love to call Danny for this. Ani.
**Senator:** Yeah. Yeah. So he's been in the cigar business for over 20 years.
It says he's attended all of the Haos Festival since it's first one. You want
**Gizmo:** a crazy story. Uh, oh. You met him. Did you meet him? I sat next to him. Amazing. Wow. At the gala
**Rooster:** dinner. Amazing. Get outta
**Senator:** town. Swear to God. Amazing. So he owns two of the three LCDs in Jamaica, and it says [01:05:00] he met with Fidel Castro several times, has served on tasting panels of new cigars introduced by Haos.
Cool. He's like a, a pretty big deal industry. He's so awesome.
**Gizmo:** Oh, that's great. So chill. Yeah, he was at my table.
**Bam Bam:** That's great. You are, you are a global cigar inside
**Gizmo:** you from Australia. I'm, I'm dead serious. I sat right, like he was literally to my left. Wow.
**Rooster:** That is awesome. It's
**Bam Bam:** for the, the
**Gizmo:** Kaba Festival.
Yeah, at the gala dinner for the Banno Festival. There you go. In March. Yeah.
**Senator:** Yeah. So yeah, there's a big cigar culture, uh, in Jamaica, which is nice. Very smoke friendly. I mean, the vow we stayed at, like, you could basically smoke anywhere you want except inside, of course, but tons of outdoor space for it, which is nice.
Um, so yeah, I hope to visit again. I I had a blast. The pictures you sent
**Bam Bam:** were I was about amazing, beautiful
**Grinder:** photos. Stunning. I love Jamaica. That's where we did our honeymoon. Oh, cool. It was so awesome. That's great. And like the, to echoing your comments, just the hospitality, the, you know, everyone was so just the vibes were, [01:06:00] were, were, were just awesome.
And you mentioned the food senator, Senator was awesome, right? Oh, oh, backtracking a little bit. Have you ever heard an Irish. Jamaican accent. No, it's
**Rooster:** the funniest thing you'll ever hear in your life. It's so hilarious.
**Grinder:** Look it up on YouTube. It's so funny. Sorry, I had to get that in there.
**Gizmo:** He said YouTube, by
**Rooster:** the way.
I know.
**Gizmo:** But to Rooster got excited when he said that. He did. He lit up like a Christmas tree over there.
**Senator:** Yeah.
**Pagoda:** I should, I, I should be talking about a joke over here, but I, I was in the other lounge, uh, Matador, which is in around the Rosalyn area. Rosalyn ninth Long Island, and. You know, we were talking and then one of the guys over there starts speaking the Jamaican accent and he, he starts to talk about a joke and he says, apparently, um, this guy asked a Jamaican guy.
He says, Hey, do you, can you use, uh, dandelion in the sentence? Have you heard of the joke? It's, it's like one of those things. And the Jamaican guy comes up [01:07:00] and he says, yeah, man, it's, uh, the cheetah run faster. Dandelion.
I'm sorry. You know why the Jamaican
**Gizmo:** dad joke?
**Rooster:** I'm not
**Pagoda:** very funny at this, but you know, it's, it's a lot of cigar smokers at the lounge who'll appreciate this joke. And they do listen to our podcast. So, you know, uh, cheers to you guys. Uh, The Murdo Lounge.
**Senator:** That's great. But yeah, highly recommend visiting it.
It was absolutely. So
**Gizmo:** you were in Montego Bay, right?
**Senator:** That's where you were? Yeah, we were in this place that's called, uh, spring Farm Estates. It's um, like this gated community of, uh, villas that are mostly for, uh, for rental and, uh, oh my God, just the views. Absolutely stunning. Cool. And we've been very, I mean, we've been to the Maldives, Greece, so many different and tons of places in the Caribbean.
Easily one of my favorite places. Did you get to have any, uh, Appleton? Oh yeah. Plenty of Appleton. Um, I mean, the rum we've done the 12 year, which is obviously excellent. [01:08:00] Um, and then, you know, so j Jamaica Rum Punch is a uhhuh very popular drink. I love
**Rooster:** Rum Punch
**Gizmo:** too. Oh, it's great. It's one of my favorite drinks.
Me too. It's great. I hate
**Grinder:** it so much. Come on. Oh God. I mean, it's, you've
**Senator:** had bad
**Rooster:** Oh, I love it. No, it's just, well, the rum, it's just
**Grinder:** they use dark, dark rum
**Senator:** in the, no, no, no. Jamaica's supposed to be clear. So they use two kinds of rum. So a Jamaican rum, they're, every island has their own rum punch, but like real rum punch is Jamaican rum punch and it's two kinds of rum.
It's a white rum, which imparts actually most of the flavor in it. And it's a brand called Raya Nephew, which actually owns Appleton. It's like the biggest rum distiller in Jamaica. The thing with Ray and Nephew, when you have real Ray Nephew rum, it's highly over proof Uhhuh. It's very strong. So you gotta be careful when you're drinking rum Punch in Jamaica in the sun.
Oh my God, it's dehydrated. So they do, they do Ray and Nephew white rum. I'm getting sick a little.
**Gizmo:** Can somebody get grinder a bucket
**Senator:** please? [01:09:00] And then some Appleton aged dark rum to smooth it out. Um, and then everything else that obviously goes into Rum Punch, but, uh, Ray and nephew's kind of the, the secret and uh, yeah, it'll, you'll get tuned up very fast.
I like it. And the Blue Mountain coffee, oh my God, the coffee is incredible. So you bring any back? So, no, and I'm an idiot because I
**Gizmo:** didn't wanna say it, but go ahead.
**Senator:** Number one, blue Mound Coffee is absolutely incredible. And it's so funny because like, you know, all these hipsters that are, you know, big on these coffee shops and stuff here, rooster,
**Rooster:** spoiled Rooster.
I love it.
**Senator:** And it's like, you know, many years ago, all of a sudden it was like Blue Mountain Coffee was like this big discovery. Like it, you know, it's like anyone that's been to Jamaica or any of these places, like Blue Mountain Coffee's been a big thing for a very, very long time. It is the thing about Blue Mountain Coffee, if you like, like a, a, a nice, like rich flavored coffee, but super smooth.
There is not an ounce of bitter, it's not a acidic at all. Right. At all. It's [01:10:00] so smooth. Wow. I even, because I mostly drink decaf, I've gotten a decaf, uh, blue Mound coffee. It was incredible. I
**Rooster:** honestly, some of the
**Senator:** best coffee in the world, um, right there. So everything from the drinks, the food was amazing.
We went to this place, um, sugar Mill. It's at the Half Moon Resort, which is where one of this guy's L C D H's is. And, um, oh my God, it's like total fine dining experience. I couldn't believe you walk in there, you literally feel like you're in a Bond movie. Like my wife just looked at the bar, she's like, this looks straight out of a movie.
Like everybody's in bow ties. That's cool. The manager's in a white jacket with a bow tie. It, it's just, I'm in a black
**Rooster:** t-shirt.
**Senator:** It's like super high end and it's built on this old sugar mill and this all outdoor seating. Just the food was incredible. Um, we had a really great time, so I, I can't recommend it enough.
That's awesome. Cool.
**Gizmo:** Good for you. Oh yeah. So I gotta ask you a question because we've, we talked about Cuban coffee when we did our Cuban Recap episodes. [01:11:00] How would you compare Cuban Coffee to Jamaican coffee?
**Senator:** So Cuban coffee, I would describe as stronger than Jamaican coffee. Jamaican coffee is much smoother.
Um, I think like Cuban coffee's meant to be drank in small quantities and like Jamaican coffee, you could drink like any time of day. It just, the versatility is much different. The strength
**Rooster:** varies. Also, the Cuban coffee, you know, like you said,
**Gizmo:** it's typically espressos. Yeah, doubles, cortado. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
And, and the, it's
**Rooster:** more acidic. Mm-hmm. It is. The Blue Mountain coffee is very
**Gizmo:** little
**Senator:** smooth. I mean, man, I can't e it. It's just delicious.
**Gizmo:** So when you were smoking cigars, what were you pairing with it in the morning versus at
**Senator:** night? So in the morning, always coffee. So I'd have coffee in like a cutie 50 or like some small parus.
Um, in the afternoon, you know, some rum punch or I was making painkillers, which if anyone's been [01:12:00] to the, uh, British or US Virgin Islands, uh, the drink was in, was created in the British Virgin Islands at a bar called the Soggy Dollar Bar. St. John's? Uh, no, no, the British Virgin Islands. Oh, the British. Okay.
Uh, this is, um, I think it's in, uh, Tor Yos Van Dyke. Oh, okay. Um, and it's a saki dollar bar because basically like the way most people come to visit it, you have to take a boat in. So like we had chartered a boat from St. John and the US Virgin Islands out to B v I. The boat pulls up, you swim to the bar, which is on the beach.
Oh, that's pretty sick. That's awesome. And you can only pay in cash. So like, literally like bills, it's like wet. So the soggy dollar bar, everybody rolls up with wets money and, uh, they created the, uh, the painkiller, which is, uh, dark rum, pineapple juice, orange juice, creme de coconut, and fresh grated nutmeg on top.
Oh my God. And um, They use Pusser rum. That's kind of how it was created. Um, on St. John. Uh, cruise on is usually their [01:13:00] rum because that's distilled in St. Croix that I was making in Jamaica with Appleton 12. And oh my God, it was incredible.
**Gizmo:** See, the problem at the Soggy Bill, whatever it is, stocky dollar.
Soggy dollar, the problem is swimming back to the boat after seven
**Rooster:** painkillers. You're not gonna seven seven's. Exactly. Am I wrong? Am I wrong? Because the thing is,
**Senator:** the happy hours are crazy in the, in the Caribbean. Like when I'm in St. John or in the, even in B V I. Like normally, let's say, and they're still not expensive, the normal price is like $10 for a painkiller, but during happy hour they have 'em for like $3.
Mm-hmm. So you's end up having seven of them and
**Gizmo:** there's like a, there's like a 20% shrinkage rate of the customers coming back from that, from the bar. 'cause they, they drowned when they were swimming back. Oh boy.
**Bam Bam:** They need assistance.
**Senator:** So usually that, and then at night, just some, um, like Appleton, like neater on the rocks, uh, with uh, a new world.
Something a little fuller, but, uh oh yeah, a lot of smoking there. I brought 60 cigars for the week. [01:14:00] It was great. Wow.
**Gizmo:** But that was for you and your dad. That's right. 30 a piece. Yeah. That's
**Rooster:** awesome. Ooh, good for
**Bam Bam:** you. Senator Senior Partake. Oh yeah.
**Pagoda:** And, and any, this is your homeland as well.
**Rooster:** That's right. Yeah, that's right.
Yeah. Jamaican heritage. That's right. Did
**Senator:** you have any, uh, jerk chicken? Oh yeah. Oh my God. So we had, uh, it was a fully staffed villa, so we had like a staff of six for everything. It was a, it was a butler chef. He was slumming a bam. I know. He was driver. It was incredible. And the chef was awesome. Oh my God.
The jerk chicken. Incredible. Incredible. Wow. I love incredible, I
**Grinder:** love jerk flavor, like
**Senator:** seasoning.
**Gizmo:** Oh yeah. So in that situation, can you literally, like, you wake up in the morning, you have your breakfast and then you say, Hey, we want lobster tonight. Yes.
**Senator:** Like, that's what you're able to do. That's what you're able to do.
And then the butler, he goes to the market, he gets fresh lobster. Whatever else you want, we're gonna Jamaica. Oh dude. I'm
**Rooster:** all in. Jeff makes it. It's
**Senator:** incredible. I'm all in. Wow. It's
**Gizmo:** incredible. That sounds amazing.
**Bam Bam:** That's fantastic. Yeah. We need a
**Pagoda:** family vacation anyway. Yeah.
**Bam Bam:** They, they do
**Grinder:** service. They do [01:15:00] service very well.
And like their butlers are all like professionally trained butlers, like, they have like accreditation services and like, everyone's like, they have Butler schools there and everything. Well,
**Senator:** I, I was the Butler school when we were at ville up. Oh boy. We, we had,
**Gizmo:** we had some issues. Is anyone in the room surprised?
I am not, man. We
**Rooster:** had some issues. Good man. Good
**Senator:** man. We had some issues. The owner of the villa though was this incredibly nice, uh, woman who. Uh, she's got a great story. I won't get into it, but, uh, we had a few hiccups early on just with the, the chef outstanding. I gave her the biggest tip. So you basically, you tip the staff.
Um, it's kind of like, you know, for Greg and I have talked about this show, uh, uh, oh. At least my wife got, uh, me watching during the pandemic, uh, below deck
**Gizmo:** Don't couch. Bravo. You watch. Yes. How many times has he texted? I'm watching Below
**Senator:** Deck. Many times every person that's watched it said it's entertaining.
But anyway,
**Bam Bam:** with a notebook next to him, um,
**Senator:** if you charter a yacht on Below Deck, basically whatever you pay for the charter usually tip like 15% of what you pay. It's the same when you rent a villa like this that's like [01:16:00] fully staffed. So like the tip is 15% of the total value. So it's a very significant tip.
Um, like obviously, you know, four figures plus, and the, the staff based on their position gets a, a percentage of it. So like the butler and Chef get the highest percentage of the tip, they get 30%. This is when you're renting a
**Gizmo:** yacht,
**Senator:** right? Same as when you're renting the villa? No, but four figures on a
**Gizmo:** tip.
Yeah.
**Senator:** For the villa. Yeah. Yeah.
**Rooster:** Overall.
**Senator:** Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. It's a staff of six people. Six people renting a
**Gizmo:** yacht is like $50,000. Yeah, I know. You're not worried about a tip if you're renting a yacht.
**Senator:** Yeah. Uh, well, sorry, the yacht tip, it's a smaller percentage on a yacht 'cause you're not actually tipping 15% of what those go for.
But when you're staying in a bill like this, you're tipping at least 15% on like the total price that you've paid. Okay. Um, but the, the chef was outstanding. Uh, she got the biggest tip by far, uh, chef Beverly, but the butler, we had some hiccups. I spoke to the owner, we had to have some things straightened out.
Oh boy. So I provided a lot of the training. Oh boy. But to your point, 'cause you're asking like how this works. Like, you basically, like, you wake up in the morning, you tell the butler like, I want breakfast at nine. I want lunch at one. I want dinner at [01:17:00] seven. Here's what I want. You like, build a menu with him based on your preferences.
Um, they bring you drinks. I love that love. You're sitting out at the pool. You know, Desmond, another rum punch. I
**Rooster:** love Oh my punch. Oh my God. It's amazing. I need this.
**Pagoda:** I like the way you said Desmond
**Bam Bam:** Desmond Barrel in the marketplace.
**Grinder:** So my, my, my butler's name was Jermaine. He used to go, Jermaine the Butler.
**Poobah:** Then he'd like,
**Rooster:** we'd
**Grinder:** called him up and, and be like, Jermaine. He'd say, Jermaine, you're Butler. And he would
**Rooster:** be so happy to serve
**Gizmo:** us. It was the best. Crazy, my luck, my, my luck. My guy would be named Billy.
**Senator:** It's crazy 'cause there's even a gardener and like a pool guy and there was this beautiful mango tree there.
And, uh, he was telling us, he's like, oh man, we just, he's like, the guests that were just here the week prior, he is like, all these ripe mangoes, um, were just falling off the tree. And they were serving with breakfast. And, um, he's like, I haven't really seen that many ripe ones. And then we look, and at the way top of this huge tree are some [01:18:00] like beautiful ripe mangoes.
And of course the gardener climbs the tree himself. Wow. All the way up to the top picks these fresh
**Rooster:** mangoes. Why to our breakfast. Why, why didn't you do it? Well, I gave
**Senator:** him an extra tip for, he was a very good guy. I took care of him. But, um, that's off the charts. It was a great experience. That's off experience.
And just when you have a kid as young as mine, like for me, that's why this f this setup was ideal. The idea that someone is taking care of every need imaginable and all I'm focused on is my son. It was exactly what we needed. That's
**Gizmo:** fantastic. Good for you. Oh yeah. The lizards are traveling the world, man.
They are Dakotas in
**Grinder:** Montreal. Yeah, I was. I was in Denver for less than 12
**Senator:** hours.
**Gizmo:** You got tortured by United.
**Bam Bam:** I was. I was in Newark last week.
**Grinder:** That was,
**Senator:** yeah. I will experience vacations aside. We do have another occasion. Oh, we
**Gizmo:** do another occasion. We do a big occasion. Bams turning 25. Come on.
**Bam Bam:** Oh [01:19:00] yeah. Again, again, you never ask a man his age. No. A simple light. That's exactly right. Ah. You
**Gizmo:** didn't have to do that. Listen, as we do on the podcast, we, we don't play games with birthdays around here.
I didn't bring this
**Senator:** back from Jamaica, but I thought bam, uh, would appreciate this for the occasion. Oh yeah.
**Bam Bam:** Oh, is that a Growy Paul? Paul er. Paul Roge. Okay. Are you grower or? Sure.
**Gizmo:** The official birthday. Champagne. Champagne of the Lounge Lizards podcast. That's exactly
**Bam Bam:** right. That's right. Wow. Here comes the saber.
Here we go. Oh my God.
**Pagoda:** I think you have to point it at him.
**Gizmo:** Regardless. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Garone to the podcast.
**Senator:** Garone is rested, vacationed, and ready.
**Gizmo:** So as Garone opens it up, that's down the drinks. Bam. What's, uh, bam, what's your plan for the birthday
**Bam Bam:** tomorrow? Uh, dinner with, uh, Mrs. Bam Bam.
And the two, uh, junior, bam, BAMS. Excellent. Yep. And then, uh, [01:20:00] Saturday, just, uh, the wife and I Oh, nice.
**Gizmo:** Okay. Keeping it light. Yep.
**Bam Bam:** Good for you. Absolutely. Low key.
**Gizmo:** Love it too. Low key is the best. That's, that's the way
**Bam Bam:** to go. A hundred percent. Absolutely. Totally.
**Senator:** Okay, here he is. You know, as I'm doing this, I really wish I would've had Chef De uh, sorry, Butler.
Desmond, same own bottle. So just a thing for vacation for me, every single morning I have to have champagne and like mimosas. It's just like everyday standard. It's totally normal. But go ahead, ahead. My first trip, you like pre stock stuff at the Villa. You tell 'em like the first day and a half what you want, and then you can place the order for the rest.
You can either have the butler just do the shopping or you go with him if you wanna like pick certain cuts of fish or meat or things like that. Obviously, in particular, no surprise. So I went with the Butler shopping. But wait, you and
**Gizmo:** the Butler went together. You went shopping?
**Senator:** Shopping. Yeah. The driver took us to the supermarket.
**Rooster:** We didn't get any pictures of that. No,
**Bam Bam:** but, but
**Pagoda:** while you're doing that, I, I gotta tell you this, that we went to a place for brunch called [01:21:00] Mimms in Montreal and all we had was Mimms and I. I've realized that our podcast is, you know, pretty influential in its own right, but a lot of the lenses are turning into champagne drinkers.
That's
**Senator:** right. There we go. Here we go.
**Gizmo:** All right, UBA, take it away. Here. Here he is. He's got the sort out.
**Rooster:** Lemme protect myself. He's, he's
**Gizmo:** moving his microphone. Can you aim it at pagoda please? As his microphone?
**Poobah:** I'm moving his microphone. He, he's, he's sliding. He's aligning it.
**Bam Bam:** Oh, rooster.
**Gizmo:** Aim for pagoda, please.
Oh, oh, we missed, we had a misfire.
**Rooster:** Wow.
**Bam Bam:** Happy birthday to you. Ba. Thank you so much guys. Bambi,
**Rooster:** baby
**Bam Bam:** as glasses boys. Fantastic guys. Pre-planning off the charts. Off
**Grinder:** the charts first.
**Bam Bam:** That's for him. Thank you. Thank you so much.
**Gizmo:** I gotta say, and I'm sure we all will, but I am a huge fan of bam. Bam. This guy. Ah, come on.
[01:22:00] I love this guy. I love you. We love Bam. We've loved ba we love Bam. We've traveled the world with Bam indeed. And, uh, he's a great guy, great friend. And, uh, I'm very happy that we're, uh, savoring champagne tonight in Your Honor. I love you all for your 25th birthday. Thank you so much. That's
**Bam Bam:** right,
**Rooster:** that's right.
**Pagoda:** I did wanna say a lot of things, but I'm gonna keep quiet. But, uh,
**Bam Bam:** you know, honestly, the, the, the poll Roge has become a special part of our lives. Huh? It has. Oh, come on.
**Gizmo:** Thank you sir. What's great about having so many guys on the podcast is we get to do this seven times a year. It's a
**Senator:** treat.
**Gizmo:** And New Year's eight. Eight. Yeah, that's true.
**Bam Bam:** Oh, sorry man.
**Grinder:** Senator, you gave me, fuck this up again. Yours is down. Yours is on the floor. No, no.
**Senator:** It's a good thing. Rooster doesn't drink. We love Rooster.
**Gizmo:** All right, boys. All cheers. Happy birthday ba man. Cheers to Bamba [01:23:00] Bambi. Cheers, gents.
**Bam Bam:** Cheers. Thank you so much.
Thank so much. Cheer, brother. Gentlemen. Love you guys. Cheer. Happy birthday. Cheers. Love you all. Thank you. Thank you so much. Cheers. Peace and love
**Grinder:** cheer. Thank you. Peace and love. Thanks, man. I, I feel like I should start cleaning this, uh, shit. It might get sticky and
**Senator:** stuff, or, oh, this floor is used to that.
There have been a lot of bottles that have touched this floor. Mm, right.
**Bam Bam:** So Good. Never disappoints. Oh, this is so good. Oh,
**Grinder:** I've, I've, uh, stopped with the cigar, by the way. Have you, have you, I just, how come this, my eyes are taking a beating and I'm like feeling a little woozy. This
**Senator:** used to be your favorite
**Grinder:** cigar.
It was never my favorite cigar.
**Senator:** Let me just literally handed this to me once and said, this is my favorite cigar. You have to try it. I remember that. That is a
**Grinder:** lie.
**Rooster:** That is patently falses. What? I never said it was my, he likes the Octa. I said, Octa.
**Grinder:** I said, I like the cigar a lot. It
**Rooster:** has very unique flavors.
Okay. And you said
**Senator:** one of my favorites. I promise you, you said it was one of your favorites. I'm not. You're
**Grinder:** qualifying your own words here. I never
**Rooster:** [01:24:00] said it was, you used the word favorite. Never used. I didn't even wanna smoke it. I just You said it was one of your favorites. It's the only reason I smoked it.
It's
**Grinder:** a. And favorite in the same sentence. Fantastic.
**Gizmo:** Listen, that's where it came from. The Alma. It certainly
**Rooster:** never, it's, I've certainly never, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I've never used Al. I'd honored if you
**Senator:** try, I got this whole speech from Grindr practically twisted my arm just to smoke this thing. I don't smoke Seia.
Mm. Well I I got you to
**Gizmo:** smoke it, didn't I? So of course, as it goes with birthdays, we have some gifts. Do you, I know er brought a gift. Pagoda, can you hand this to my friend over there? Sure. No, I'm not gonna hand it to him.
**Bam Bam:** I'm
**Senator:** taking these, you know, the policy. Take one and pass it around. Uh,
**Grinder:** yeah. No, not with these.
Wait
**Bam Bam:** a minute.
**Rooster:** We're not in
**Bam Bam:** Montreal anymore. Parus. Lusitania.
**Gizmo:** Ooh. Yep. Sir Winston from 2014 wins Winston. Oh my God. And Uba brought you what? What, uh, what whiskey did you bring in? Red? I brought
**Poobah:** a bottle of red breast. 12.
**Gizmo:** 12. There you
**Bam Bam:** go. One of my [01:25:00] favorites, which I think he likes. I do like it. Absolutely.
Guys.
**Senator:** Cheers. My friend. Bam. Like in Canada, just uh, cut those. I'll put 'em half pieces of
**Gizmo:** happy birthday. Ba We love you. Thank you
**Bam Bam:** guys. Spoil me. Thank you. This is, this is off the charts unexpected. I'm so pleasantly surprised. Thank you so much. I can't say enough. I gotta go. No.
**Grinder:** Amazing. I hope
**Pagoda:** we can do the one and pass with the Churchills.
Oh yeah.
**Rooster:** Puff puff
**Gizmo:** puff puff pass. So boys, we are, uh, coming to the end here of our pairing tonight with, uh, the fuerte Salamoni Generation five. What's everybody thinking so far? I'm enjoying the cigar. I'm pleasant. I'm well into the last third here. Yeah. Couple inches left. Like it's totally working for me.
I don't hate it. What do you guys think? No, it's good. It's
**Rooster:** good. It's good. But you know, it's just too big.
**Senator:** Well, yeah. [01:26:00] Yeah. I don't hate it, but I don't love it. I, I think when Roosters made the comment about the size of the cigar, for me it's, it sums up my experience. It's just because it's very OneNote and very one dimensional.
Like, I don't get, I couldn't even pick out more than, I couldn't get three notes out of this gets very boring after. So that's the thing with that size going, that's a good way to put it into notes. I get bored and tired of it. How
**Grinder:** long
**Bam Bam:** have we been smoking this now? What's the time for, I
**Gizmo:** mean, four hours.
Oh. We're like an hour and a half in, uh, that's a substantial cigar. Yeah. And I mean we're, you know, it's, I feel like I'm smoking it fast. Mm-hmm. And had it not been for the conversation and your birthday and everything else, like. I don't think sitting in a lounge that this is a cigar that I ever want to have again.
Yeah. It's just,
**Rooster:** it's not, it's not, maybe it's not the size, it's just that it's one dimensional that it doesn't change much. So if the size, even if it was this size, but if it kind of changed, [01:27:00] you know,
**Gizmo:** you would enjoy it more.
**Bam Bam:** It's a very
**Gizmo:** smokeable cigar though. Oh, it definitely is. It's a smoke. I mean, we're
**Senator:** smoking it, so Yeah.
And this, but, but the size I do think is important in this sense because, because it's one dimensional, but the thing for me is because you, you were just suggesting that, well, even if it was a smaller size, you maybe wouldn't enjoy that much. And, and I guess my point is there are a number of cigars that we've smoked that.
Are one dimensional, but some of which we've actually liked the one dimensional flavor that it delivers, but when it's delivering that for two hours, yeah. Yeah. You get so bored of it. Where if this were half that and I was done with this in an hour and I was sitting in a cigar shop or lounge where I had to buy a cigar and this was all they had, okay, for 45 minutes or an hour, could I have that cigar and say, that's not so bad.
Sure. But after two hours I'm sitting here saying, I'm sorry. Like I'm so disinterested at that point. That's really the
**Gizmo:** issue for me. To me, this is a cigar. You're in a lounge and people are smoking this and they're putting it down [01:28:00] halfway through. Yep. And this is where you're looking at the ashtrays and you're seeing a cigar half, half smoked, you know, running outta steam and people are just done with it.
**Pagoda:** Yeah. You know, what I found is the flavor profile just, uh, dissipates completely. Like it's, in fact, I. Uh, I, I think I was getting a lot more flavor in the beginning and now in the last half it's even milder than really. Yeah. I'm surprised. Typically, like it's supposed to becoming strength. Yeah. I'm not getting that.
**Gizmo:** No, I'm not losing. It definitely hasn't picked up. No,
**Rooster:** but for me it hasn't dissipated. No, but it's, it's not mild. No, no.
**Bam Bam:** I agree with Senator. Hasn't anticipated for me at all.
**Pagoda:** For me, definitely
**Poobah:** for me, it just wasn't compelling in any way. In any, it just wasn't, it didn't move me. It didn't, it, it didn't give me that kind of feeling.
When you smoke a cigar and you kind of go, you know, like, okay, [01:29:00] like I can really settle into this. This is really therapeutic. It was, you know, it's just, it, it's not for me. The flavor port profile's not for me. The size is not for me. Um, So, you know, it just didn't resonate with me. I could see how somebody could like
**Bam Bam:** it.
Mm-hmm. You know, when we smoke a, a new world of this size, we're always referring back to the leg of eye, and that's a substantial cigar. We all smoked through that to the very end. But that's a, it's really, really good score though. Yeah. It's a different cigar. It's delicious. It's
**Pagoda:** delicious. Even the Pledge of Allegiance.
I mean, so we, we smoked it all the way to the end. Smaller cigar, but
**Bam Bam:** yeah. Yeah. It's like a
**Senator:** buzo. Yeah, that's a Toro. Oh, Toro. Fair enough. Still. Yeah. So I'm curious, the other side of this grinder, you said you bought four boxes of this, actually about three. What did you I was, I misspoke. Three. What did, or even three, what did you like, what, what, what worked here for you?
**Grinder:** Um, I think the first time I had the cigar where I was smoking, I was smoking a lot of Really, [01:30:00] um, I wasn't smoking a lot of Cubans and I was smoking a lot of Nicaraguans that were full flavor, a lot of pones. Um, and this was full flavored, but it had a little softer touch to it. It wasn't. It, it you guys for your, you know, you, you, you've said it in your, in your commentary.
It's not a full cigar. And it had a, had that kind of mustiness that I like and, and I bought some boxes. But then I, but then at the same time, I. I started smoking a lot more Cubans with you guys. And then I just went down that rabbit hole and my, I changed, my pallet changed and I stopped smoking them.
That's why this is, you know, this is the box I have here. It's a steel.
**Senator:** And then you started handing these out to us. No,
**Rooster:** no, no, that's not true.
**Grinder:** I, I, I started handing them out to you when I, when, when, when I started smoking more Cuban cigars, because I didn't have Cuban cigars. And I wanted to, to give you something as a, you know, reciprocity.
[01:31:00] And I didn't have Cuban cigars. I wasn't going to, to Bon Roberts or Cigar Terminal frequently, or, you know, all these sites. I didn't know anything about. I havanas or, you know, where we get cigars from. I, you know, so that this was, this was the early days of the pandemic. We had just become friends and I didn't.
I had this box of these in there that I wasn't smoking. So, you know, I, I liked it at the time. And then we got into Cubans and then I just, I never really turned around. Mm-hmm. That's fair. But, but you know, it's not a bad cigar. It's not bad
**Gizmo:** today. No. I, I'm very surprised by the flavor profile that it's not more full than what your eye would lead you to believe it will be.
I,
**Rooster:** I also, the, I liked the sh
**Grinder:** the, the shape for me was, was, uh, was a bit of a novelty. Like the Solomon Yeah. It's kind of a uni, it's very unique shape. Sure. Like, it's not something you can roll easily. It's gotta be hard to roll. So I, I was appreciative of that. Yeah. They're so beautifully made. And the, [01:32:00] the funny thing is, with the cigar, you'd think that there'd be a lot of variability and shifts in the flavor.
And I remember at the beginning of this session, I had said, I'm, you know, I'm curious what you guys see in your, in your tasting, because it. On first look, you think, wow, this is gonna have some transitions, man. Yeah. You know, 'cause 'cause everything about it changes the size, changes like, it, you know, it, it's very significant and it's going from very, very small to really fat and then tapering back to small.
And I thought that was fascinating. And it's, it's, the shape itself is very classic shape. It's been rolled for a long time. It's novel shaped. It's, you have to be a really good roller to make the cigar shape. And I thought that was pretty cool. But the, it doesn't transition. It, it kind of, it kind of, it, it transitions very slightly and it, it maintains that.
That flavor profile throughout. And I think that's pretty fascinating that to have a cigar as distinct, as distinct full stop as it is with such [01:33:00] physical changes in the, in the actual composition of the cigar and for it to still taste the same, I thought that's pretty cool. Um, so there's that novelty in it for me.
And, and it's not a bad cigar to smoke, so, you know, if you have five hours to burn, you can, you can sit, sit around and, and, uh, smoke, you know, smoke your cigar and drink champagne and call it a day. I
**Gizmo:** certainly wish it transition more. There's no question about that, right? Yeah, yeah,
**Senator:** yeah. Or
**Rooster:** it's like, even if it doesn't transition
**Senator:** that much, I mean, I think of the padron 80th, right?
Similar shape. That cigar doesn't transition a whole lot. No, it does not. But it's complex and it maintains that complexity all the way through. And it keeps your interest. That's the thing we're like, if this were just a complex profile, I'd be perfectly fine if the whole way through it maintained that.
But it's not complex to start with. That's what I
**Gizmo:** have an issue with. And you've, you've very specifically held that position, maybe contrary to a few of us Yeah. Where you're fine. You specifically I love a one act play. You're fine with a one act play. Yep. The [01:34:00] entire way through. If it's interesting to you Exactly.
Hold on.
**Bam Bam:** Isn't, wouldn't you consider the exclusive or less, less a one act A one note play.
**Rooster:** Forget the
**Senator:** every padron is a one act play. Yeah. Yeah. And I love Padron and why it works for me is because I love the profile and the complexity of it so much that I don't want it to change. I want that all the way through.
Yeah. No, but it, the, the, the multiple act play is needed when the cigar maybe starts. Very mild. Mm-hmm. And we need more flavor. We want that to build and change and grow and strengthen flavor. Hmm. Um, and so sometimes there's a ton of utility in that, and I love that. Sure. But when the profile starts perfect, I don't wanna lose that.
So I'm happy to have that all. I think there's, there's
**Grinder:** something exciting about the journey because if, if you get on that cigar train and it goes to different places, you know, that's exciting. You're like, where's it gonna take me next? You know, I don't know. And, and you go through that and it's, you find that it either transitions to better or transitions to worse, and then it transition, you know, comes back to, to where you want it to be.
Um, but if you, [01:35:00] if you, if you've landed in your spot and your destination from the point that you light that cigar, then why would you want to go anywhere else? Mm. Yeah.
**Poobah:** It's, it's interesting. I think it, I think the Cuban, the, you know, the Cuban Piro is like, it takes you in different directions. It does. It doesn't always, um, A lot of the times it does.
And that's when I think the mystique and it, it, it draws you in because you, you, you will have those, those two act sometimes with the list, the three act play that is that where you're like, wow, like this cigar, this cigar started as something and it's actually developed into Yeah. You know, down the stretch.
Something else which makes it, you know, an interesting thing, this, this is just not that interesting Padron's consistency and what they do is like second to nut, it's off the charts means Yeah. It's the best in the [01:36:00] world in terms of Nicaragua and tobacco. Right. I, I mean,
**Rooster:** and some Cubans are a one act play that are tremendous.
Sure. Like, I think a D four is a one act play. Yeah. And it's tremendous. Yeah, totally. I, I would even go as far as, I think an Iman two is a one act play and it's tremendous.
**Grinder:** I, yeah. I, I, I even a hypothesis that the. More 10, the more aged a cigar is, the more, the less you're gonna, the more one act it's gonna be.
I agree. And I, and I would argue that, There's more variability in smoking a Cuban cigar because it's less aged. And when you age it more you, you are, you're, you're more inclined to have those experiences that are, that are, that are mono monotone. Not in a bad way, but monotone meaning it's just, it's, it is what it is.
It's that, that single note. And I would say that with Pones, they're aging that a lot. And the, the age brings down some of that variability. This one, I would argue the same if it truly is 10 years old, that a lot of ver that that transition, you know, factor is Has, yeah. Has been ameliorated. It's aged out.
Yeah. And, um, [01:37:00] and, and you see that with larger Cubans, like the larger ring gauge Cubans and the larger, the longer Cubans, you're gonna have those transitions because it's a young cigar and there's a lot of tobacco that's going to, there's more opportunity for it to change and manifest itself in new ways.
I would be
**Rooster:** totally happy if a Padron 80th was this size.
**Gizmo:** Of course. Yeah.
**Senator:** You would totally enjoy that. That's right. 'cause the profile's perfect. Yeah. I
**Rooster:** mean, I could
**Senator:** smoke that for four hours and be happy as I
**Pagoda:** have. It's the intensity of the flavors. Right? So the, like I, I know I've been using the word amplitude.
It's the amplitude of the flavor profile. It's just great. And I think over here it's a little milder. And so the question becomes, do you really enjoy the milder flavor profile for a longer period of time? And on,
**Senator:** yeah. For me it's not even just the mildest, it's just that I only get two notes outta this cigar.
Yeah. And it's like
**Rooster:** cocoa and raisin. That's it. Yeah. I don't get anything else. Right.
**Bam Bam:** How are you feeling about your cigar right now?
**Rooster:** It's
**Gizmo:** okay. It's okay. Like it's, I I'm [01:38:00] not putting it down. No, but I'm not thinking like, I can't wait to have this again. No, that's true. You know, like, it's not bad, but yeah, it's not, I'm not like rushing out saying, it's not a bad ci cigar.
I need to get a
**Rooster:** box of these in my
**Grinder:** humid. Right. Let, let's, you can't say it's a bad cigar. There's, there's a reason this thing's still a cell on the, on the box. Of course. Like, I'm not pulling these to course to smoke these, you know? And
**Gizmo:** plus this is a, this is a commitment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is a time commitment that's, yeah.
It's one thing to say, okay, we're recording a podcast. Let's, let's smoke this cigar. But to sit down in a lounge and say, okay, I'm gonna commit two hours to this.
Just
**Grinder:** this though. Just this. Yeah. Yeah. Because, because when you're, when we come into the lounge and we're gonna have two hours, we're going to, we're gonna do a D four, and then we're gonna do a RAAs, we're gonna play around a, a little bit.
We're gonna, you're gonna switch it up, you know? Exactly. And we have that potpourri. Yeah. Mm-hmm. This is mm-hmm. This is just cereal. Yeah. It's like the same smell.
**Senator:** Yeah. And I get,
**Gizmo:** uh, I guess I get why smokers, why people out there would reach for this. Yeah. If this is in their [01:39:00] wheelhouse, but Yeah. Yeah.
**Bam Bam:** It's
**Gizmo:** a perfect cigar for them.
It is. Yeah. But at the same time, I don't, it doesn't serve my needs in really any way. Hmm. It's not a bad cigar, but it doesn't serve what I need. I, I can think of a thousand different cigars right now that. Would serve better. This
**Senator:** is my take on Placencia from my very limited experience with it. I've only had this black band, Alma Forte, and someone at our lounge who really likes Placencia gave me what said Alma Forte on it.
And so I assumed it was the same thing like this. But then I look at it and it has a green band and the wrapper's much lighter than this and it smoked nothing like this cigar. Um, and my take is both of those cigars, while they're from the same line though, you'd never recognize it. They're very smooth.
Like this was a very smooth cigar. Sure there were no rough edges during. It's very smooth. And I think for newer smokers, That they light up a placencia and they say, well, [01:40:00] this is really smooth. This is much smoother than maybe some of the more entry level stuff that they've been experimenting with. And so I, I think that's why they gravitate toward this brand.
They assume that smooth means premium, et cetera, which is one component of a premium cigar. The, the funny thing is having that other green banded placencia, it was so even more, this had two notes that had one and it was just cedar really. It was just, and that was like a rab robusto, right? Yes, it would.
Or it might've been a Toro. Okay. And it was just straight cedar. Smooth, but just literally one note. And, um, I just, I, I, I, I struggle to understand like from a flavor perspective why folks would be that excited with this. So the only thing I can think of is if you're a newer smoker, you have this and say, well, this is a far smoother delivery that I'm used to.
And so maybe that's kind of where you're, it's not kicking you around.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah, no, it's not. And it's a substantial cigar. So when you're in a lounge and you're smoking this, it, it's got a different feel than a shorter [01:41:00] little,
**Gizmo:** little tla. Yeah. You're lighting one cigar, you spend two hours with your friends, you go home, you're happy.
**Bam Bam:** Exactly right.
**Grinder:** Right.
**Pagoda:** But if you're out on your deck and you are just chilling, I guess, yeah, not a bad, that's also
**Bam Bam:** a good application.
**Senator:** Right.
**Gizmo:** For three hours
**Pagoda:** when I'm on a deck, I'm,
**Gizmo:** I'm on deck, like
**Poobah:** stand shark Tank and for that reason I'm out.
**Rooster:** I'm out.
**Gizmo:** Alright boys, let's rate our pairing tonight. The Glen Achi. Okay. Glen ak. What was the
**Pagoda:** by by the way? I totally forgot about that. After the champagne.
**Bam Bam:** You know what? He's absolutely
**Gizmo:** right by the way. Yeah. The
**Bam Bam:** champagne ruined that.
It actually energized my smoke and I want to just keep puffing because of the champagne. Yeah. Honestly. And Paul Rege always wins.
**Gizmo:** It does win. Alright, you guys ready to do the former liquor radio by
**Senator:** the way? I'm gonna preview for the listener. I did pick up some vintage roge You did that. We're gonna break out for, uh, episode.
Very
**Gizmo:** special [01:42:00] episode. Episode. No way. That's very special. Three digit
**Senator:** episode that's coming up. Oh, actually better
**Grinder:** with H though. Oh, yeah,
**Senator:** yeah. Oh, wow.
**Gizmo:** Listeners can, uh, guess which one that is, but Oh yeah. So vintage Paul Roge. My man, my eyes are tearing. Alright, so you guys ready to do the formal liquor rating on the Glen Icky?
How do you pronounce this? Alki
**Rooster:** Grind Grinder's got the Gaelic. Can you
**Gizmo:** gimme the Gaelic as you rub your eyes?
**Pagoda:** No, you
**Rooster:** Alki.
**Senator:** Alki. Alki Glen Lacey.
**Grinder:** 12 Sounds very Brooklyn. Sounds like you're from nepa. It's
**Rooster:** Billy
**Gizmo:** Scotch. Alright, you guys ready to do the 12 year age Billy Scotch? Bam, you're up. Yes.
**Bam Bam:** I'm gonna give the scotch a seven now.
Paul. Er I'll give it a 10.
**Gizmo:** Okay. Paul Roge is not on the menu. That's okay.
**Bam Bam:** It's a 10 grinder.
**Grinder:** I'm giving it
**Gizmo:** a six. Six. Oh Pagoda Six. Six. What? Senator? That's, that's
**Rooster:** harsh. It's not
**Senator:** in a scotch. It's tough. I'm between a six, not scotch. I'm between a
**Rooster:** six and a seven. Me [01:43:00] too.
**Senator:** Because I, you know, I can see where BA's coming from.
Yeah. In the sense that like it, it was drinkable. It's drinkable. There wasn't anything offensive about the actual taste of it to me. But where I'm gonna round down to a six is just. The story is, so the story
**Rooster:** is muddled,
**Senator:** implausible, and you are disrespecting right now. Oh, happily I would, would
**Pagoda:** you buy it?
The wood? What would you buy? No, the wood master. So how can you recommend
**Grinder:** be
**Senator:** a six? Because it's like, you know, if I had nothing else to drink, again, I bring this analogy up a lot 'cause I travel a lot like some others here. For work. And you know, it's like if I'm on the ELA or I'm on a plane and this is the option, like this is, I would drink this over doers white label any day, week, a hundred percent.
Which is like the shit that you can get when you're traveling. A
**Rooster:** hundred percent. Even that's, that's
**Gizmo:** like the worst. I would drink this over right. Give it a five.
**Rooster:** Like, like, like I just, I mean these are the sad options you have when you're traveling. Well, black label,
**Bam Bam:** I would drink this over a black label.
I would.
**Gizmo:** [01:44:00] So like when I
**Senator:** give it a six Oh Kaba, I would
**Gizmo:** No way. No,
**Rooster:** no, no way. Fucking way.
**Pagoda:** Don't mess with Indians buddy. Don't
**Rooster:** mess with
**Poobah:** Indians. The black label knocks Scot. I'm
**Rooster:** kidding.
**Bam Bam:** I don't know. A little bit of ice. I liked it. It even with a seven. Don't go there. Don't go there. Hold on. How much? How much was this bottle
**Poobah:** Black label?
So much better than this? Way
**Bam Bam:** better. Hold on, hold on. Uba, I love you. Alright. Thank you. Kilo. It's the truth. Kilo. How much was this bottle? We never discussed that. That's a very good question. Yeah. Oh,
**Grinder:** geez. 90?
**Gizmo:** No, 87. I'm say 68 is say No, it's probably 55. That's my guess.
**Senator:** Price is 65. Wow. Wow. Yeah.
**Rooster:** Buy
**Bam Bam:** a bottle of Johnny Walker Black,
**Grinder:** 1.75
**Senator:** meters.
That Actually, I'm glad that you asked that. I, it helps me a bit with my rating.
**Rooster:** I gotta
**Bam Bam:** rerate then. Yeah. That's a lot of money. It,
**Senator:** it, it helps me because I was debating between a six and a seven. Yeah. And I'm firmly at a six, and I say that because [01:45:00] again, I go back to my analogy. If I'm on a plane, train, whatever the case may be, I.
I would definitely take this over a doer's white label or some other really shitty blended scotch. Um, but great,
**Bam Bam:** great couching there. But,
**Rooster:** um,
**Senator:** you know, it's not something I'm gonna pursue. And the story is just so ridiculous. And I think we've all said if we had this blind, we wouldn't even recognize it as a scotch.
Nope, that's true. Which is problematic for it to be true. Be something that I would like highly, seriously recommend. Highly,
**Bam Bam:** highly problematic. So
**Pagoda:** I know why BA rated as a seven a plum and honey,
**Bam Bam:** we wouldn't even,
**Poobah:** to quote, wouldn't plum honey recognize it as a scotch? So I'm not even gonna say anymore, and I'm just gonna give it a six.
All right. Unless, Move on because this is true. It's not good.
**Gizmo:** So I'm also, I'm also at a six and if they offered me Sprite and this on the Acela, I'll take the Sprite. Right.
**Rooster:** I'll
**Gizmo:** take the Sprite
**Poobah:** with the vodka
**Gizmo:** side car. Exactly. All right boys. So the former liquor [01:46:00] rating on the Glen Al Gala, Glen Locke, I will figure out how to pronounce it before I record.
The intro is a 6.2. Okay. A
**Bam Bam:** k a fair. That's a fair score. Rated high dog shit Jones. That's fair. For
**Gizmo:** this thing. Yeah.
**Senator:** I mean it is a k a break glass in case of emergency. Exactly. That's the only time you pull this out, like have nothing else. Yeah,
**Rooster:** this will be, it's like, it's like Superstorm
**Poobah:** Sandy and you're like, I got a drink
**Gizmo:** for you.
I'm horrible.
**Senator:** Try it but don't buy it. Exactly.
**Gizmo:** Alright boys, so let's do the formal lizard rating on the Alma Fuerte. From Placencia. Mm-hmm. The Salim Generation five,
**Bam Bam:** I think Pagoda and I are the only ones left. Smoking. Yeah. I just finished mine. All right. Oh, and,
**Gizmo:** and, uh, rooster, right? Rooster still has his rooster grew up.
So for me,
**Rooster:** I don't think I would ever buy a box of these, you know, the cigars,
**Gizmo:** so. Mm-hmm. I'm, I'm at, I'm at a six. Okay. Uba? [01:47:00] Um,
**Senator:** it's a seven. Just,
**Grinder:** just say it, tell it like, I mean, honestly, like it's, he only only smoked
**Bam Bam:** an inch of it, by the way.
**Poobah:** I smoked half of it for me, less thought, less than half. I thought it was 2.5. Terrible. I I'm gonna give it a five and that's it. I don't, it's, it had almost zero redeeming qualities for me.
I, I didn't like it at all, and, uh, I've never liked it. And that's it. Done, Senator.
**Gizmo:** Sorry. I'll give it a
**Rooster:** six. And it's a six
**Senator:** similar to the scotch in the sense that. If I didn't have options, right? I always give the analogy, if I'm in a cigar shop, I have to buy something and they don't have what I normally smoke.
You know, could I have this? And I would only smoke probably half of it, um, as PBA claims he did. I'm not sure that that's accurate. No. But I'd smoke half of it and I would say, okay, I got enough of a cigarette. He knows I'm right.
**Rooster:** He took an [01:48:00] off and that's it. Two thirds, no.
**Senator:** And you know, I'd have half of it and I'd say, okay, I got enough of a cigar fixed.
But I certainly don't need the second half of the cigars. It's just gonna be the same and not complex enough to excite me. Um, I will say also for what it is, the construction's very good. Mm-hmm. I didn't have any burn, burn issues. No. You know, grinder says before, and it's Drew a salamon, a figuera, anything like this is not easy to roll.
So they've, they've definitely done the job there. It had no rough edges. I'll also give it that. Um, but the flavor is just incredibly boring. That that's really what knocks it for me down to a six.
**Gizmo:** So I'm also at a six. I've been there probably since the second, you know, second, third, last third. If, if this was a re boost though, it may have rated a seven or eight.
But the commitment, the price, the time, everything factored in, it was a boring cigar for me. We're going on almost two hours of this cigar tonight. Um, it's just, it's just not working in its size. [01:49:00] You know, it's a six for sure. Pagoda,
**Pagoda:** I think it's a six, uh, for me as well. Uh, I think considering that this gonna be like a 20, 25 bucks stick, please.
There's so many other options. Um, the other thing that was really disappointing for me is that I was very excited about trying the cigar again because it's got the beautiful shape, the wrapper. I was, uh, looking forward to a stronger cigar. I thought it's gonna be more in my flavor profile. It just disappointed me in a lot of different ways.
It's a six.
**Gizmo:** All right. Grindr,
**Grinder:** this is a bit of a, uh, an interesting rating for me because, um, Well, because I've, I've recommended the cigar you guys before. Uh, I've given the cigar you in two days and forced us to smoke it. Forced,
**Pagoda:** forced, forced you. But, but you know, our flavor profiles have, they continue to change.
You've gotta remember that. I know. Well,
**Grinder:** that, that's, this is fair, not me. That's an excellent segue. No, not puba for [01:50:00] sure. So for, you know, for me, the cigar, I've enjoyed the cigar in the past. I've, I still enjoy the cigar. It's definitely not a cigar that I smoke, um, regularly. And, uh, you know, every or all your points are valid.
I don't, I. There's, there's qualities in it that I find redeeming and I really search for, but they're very fleeting. Like there's a mustiness that I like in my cigars. I had that in the beginning and then it just was obliterated. And then the rest was kind of, uh, you know, whatever. I've had so many good cigars it that are over and above it that are less money.
That's less money and more flavor, more enjoyable experience. And if I were to go into a cigar lounge or a cigar shop and, uh, to say to somebody, okay, here's your choice. You can have a Rocky Patel or a. Uh, I don't know, Arturo Fuente Green Label or whatever [01:51:00] it's called, like the, you know, whatever. And, you know, all the typical cigars you see in these humidors, even the one we're at here and one of them was an Alma Forte.
I'd be like, yeah, that's probably a, that's probably a better cigar than some of these that you're looking at. That's true. You know, and it was made well. And it is one of their mark, you know, it's one of their key markers, uh, not market, but key cigars that they're marketing. Uh, so to all that consideration, I'm giving it a seven, not giving it a six, it's not, you know, it's not something I'd smoke again, but it's very well made.
It's comes from a great manufacturer, um, despite some of the other brands that they manufacture for. Um, and they've done well with it. And I would say it's, it's, yeah, you're not gonna do wrong as a new cigar smoker for us. Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm probably never gonna smoke these again unless I, unless I feel, feel What are you gonna
**Gizmo:** do with that box that's unless, well,
**Senator:** I was trying to smoke.
**Grinder:** I was trying to smoke them tonight. Um, but yeah, that was, so I'm a seven. Okay.
**Bam Bam:** You'll sell that box. Bam. [01:52:00] Someone will buy it. So I'm, I'm glad he rated it a seven because if he gave it a six, I would've given it a seven because I think the five brings it under a six. I think it's
**Rooster:** got all, we
**Senator:** just want your rating.
Don't, don't do this whole, you rated it this, so I,
**Rooster:** because we care your rating, that's all. It's
**Bam Bam:** not, it should rate over a six. Not under. So I'm gonna give it a six. He gave it a seven. I'm happy with that rating. I think when you calculate it all, it'll be,
**Rooster:** it'll be over. No. Bam. No. I'm gonna take issue with this.
I'm going six. I'm gonna take issue with this. Please do forget the composite
**Senator:** score. The question is, what are you rating for you? Is this a six or a seven? I
**Bam Bam:** am between a six and seven. 25. Five. So you're the
**Gizmo:** only one on the pod, right? What's your rating? What should it get from
**Rooster:** you? I think
**Bam Bam:** it's because of the cost.
I am gonna go with a six.
**Rooster:** Okay. I'm go with, that's all, all I care about. That's your right.
**Grinder:** You guys just strong armed him into it a little bit. No, no.
**Senator:** He was intimidated. Just so the opposite. The opposite. He gave it a six initially and I was worried that he wanted to give it a seven. So I was trying to give him the fair opportunity.
**Rooster:** Like just give [01:53:00]
**Senator:** it what you rated. Look, its, listen,
**Gizmo:** as the listener knows, we're all about fairness.
**Bam Bam:** I have to echo a lot of what Grind said. It's an, it's an ex, it's a very well made cigar. I didn't have any issue with it. I like the flavor.
**Senator:** So
**Rooster:** why'd you give it a will I ever smoke? He's an eternal
**Bam Bam:** optimist.
This, but I'm, but I won't with everybody.
**Rooster:** I don't love that. It's like, it's like
**Poobah:** he's an optimist. So here's, he loves cigars so much.
**Rooster:** His ratings are always like, like 0.7 higher and his birthdays an eternal, his birthday, but he gave it a six. That's no, no, he
**Poobah:** gave it a six. Which like, like let's take that,
**Rooster:** we'll take in other words like, like, like, ah Jesus.
If he gave it an eight, is this an atonement
**Poobah:** hour? I wouldn't have been, this is a little bit of an accountability. I wouldn't have been surprised. I mean the fact that he gave it a six, I think is a as thick as earnest.
**Bam Bam:** Alright. It's
**Pagoda:** right there. I would've thought he would've said, you know, it's a six for me, but because of the,
**Bam Bam:** it's a seven.
I dunno [01:54:00] what that means, but, okay.
**Gizmo:** So boys, the formal lizard rating is a flat. 6.0. Okay. That's what it should be. Yeah.
**Rooster:** 60. Are you happy? Ba I am. It. Did you do the math before you rated,
**Bam Bam:** you know, the, the, the gears were turning?
**Grinder:** It's not, it's not a lot.
**Bam Bam:** It's not a complicated math. It's not, look, it's not a bad cigar. It's just not a bad cigar.
**Gizmo:** It's just not a great cigar. It's not a great cigar. And that's, that's the problem. Six
**Rooster:** is not a re can. I just, it's not a
**Bam Bam:** a recommend make a, he's right, he's right. Six is not a recommend.
You're It's not. And not for the price point. Is not for the price point. A recommend. Yeah. No.
**Rooster:** UBA is right. Six is, it's smokeable in
**Senator:** a pinch. A seven or higher. Seven is a soft recommend. Eight is a recommend nine and 10 are very strong. I would, I would, I would
**Grinder:** softly recommend the Oh, omegaflex. Absolutely.
**Senator:** I just, oh, you did give it a seven. That's fair. I think. Yeah, he did. Yeah, he
**Gizmo:** did. I think a 6.0 for us is a fair score for the cigar and how it performed [01:55:00] tonight. Agreed. Agreed. We've had way worse cigars in the podcast. Yep. We've had incredible cigars in the podcast. Right. A 6.0 is right where this should fall.
Yeah. For the prize for everything else. I wouldn't tell any of our listeners to go out and buy it, but for what it gave us tonight, unless they
**Senator:** wanna smoke it with Grindr. Exactly.
**Gizmo:** He has a box of 10.
**Senator:** He's ready. He, he gave it a soft record then.
**Gizmo:** Soft. Yeah. But a 6.0 is perfect. Yes. So, all right boys. So on the Glenn Lacey, 12 years aged scotch, we got a 6.2.
On the Placencia al Fuerte, generation five Solomons. We had a flat 6.0. I will
**Senator:** say my pairings never fail. You're right on the Money Senator. There's six and a 6.2 match made in heaven. Yeah, that's true.
**Rooster:** And
**Gizmo:** it, it aligns with how we feel about Bams birthday. They're
**Rooster:** supposed to. Ouch.
**Poobah:** I would argue. I would argue, Senator.
It was a match being not nice
**Rooster:** Purgatory. We could discuss that offline. I'm with you. [01:56:00]
**Bam Bam:** The poll Roge saved the night.
**Gizmo:** It did. Happy birthday. Bam. Bam. Thank you so much. We love you, man. Thank you. Love you too. All right. Great night. Mediocre pairings and a great birthday for our friend Bamba. Absolutely. Happy birthday.
All right everybody. We'll see you next week.
**Rooster:** Cute Smoke.
**Gizmo:** Hope you enjoyed this episode. Thanks for joining us. You can find our merch store and ratings archive at our brand new website. Lounge Lizards pod.com. That's Lounge lizards, P o d.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 hello@loungelizardspod.com. You can also find us on Instagram at Lounge Lizards Pod. We really appreciate your time and we'll, uh, we'll see you next week.