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Released every Tuesday, the LOUNGE LIZARDS podcast helps listeners navigate the experience of finding and enjoying premium cigars (both Cuban and non-Cuban) and quality spirits. Episodes are normally around 90 minutes long and feature a variety of different topics including food, travel, life, sports and work.
The podcast features eight members: Rooster, Poobah, Gizmo, Senator, Pagoda, Chef Ricky, Grinder and Bam Bam.
This is not your typical cigar podcast. We’re a group of friends who love sharing cigars, whiskey and a good laugh.
Join us and become a card-carrying lounge lizard yourself! Email us at hello@loungelizardspod.com to join the conversation and be featured on an upcoming episode!
Welcome to the Lounge Lizards podcast presented by Fabric of Five. It's so good to have you here. It's a leisure and lifestyle podcast founded on our love of premium cigars as well as whiskey travel, food, work, and whatever else we feel like getting into. My name is Gizmo. Tonight, I'm joined by Rooster, Senator, Pagoda, chef Ricky, and Bam Bam, and a plan is to smoke a cigar, drink some rum, talk about life, and, of course, have some laughs.
Gizmo:So take this as your one hundred and seventy seventh official invitation to join us and become a card carrying lounge lizard. Planet news here once a week. We're gonna spoke at New World cigar tonight, share our thoughts on it, and give you our formal lizard rating. We do our first ever full panel blind cigar review tonight with a shocking result. Lizard Henrito joins us to reveal the details post rating, and we preview PCA twenty twenty five in New Orleans, all among a variety of other things for the next two hours.
Gizmo:So sit back, get your favorite drink, light up a cigar, enjoy as we pair 18 year aged Florida Cana rum with stoic cigars, courage. What looks to be a Robusto on the pod tonight, boys? It's our first ever full panel blind. Including me, no one in this room has any idea what the cigar is that we have in our hands. It has no bands on it.
Gizmo:Nothing. It was all removed before it was given to us. Our friend, Lizard Henrito, who we talk about a lot on the pod, good friend of ours. He is a member of our lounge, procured these for us, and made sure that we had no indication what these cigars are other than, I guess this is Robusto. Something like Not
Bam Bam:only does it look mysterious, but I'm not getting any aroma on the wrapper or the foot. Very light.
Pagoda:Like a very light milk chocolate or something.
Senator:Yeah. Get a light aroma, but
Gizmo:it's actually very pleasant. Do you say milk chocolate if you
Senator:go to I agree.
Gizmo:It's very oily. It feels like it has a sheen on it in your hand.
Senator:Yeah. And smell the foot, Bam. Yeah. That's where I get more of the milk chocolate.
Gizmo:Yeah. So what ring gauge do you guys think this is? I'm thinking it's somewhere between forty eight and fifty. Looks like 50. Would say 50.
Pagoda:Yeah. What's it like? 49 plus or
Gizmo:49 plus. Exactly. Pagoda?
Bam Bam:I'd say 48.
Pagoda:I'm gonna go 50.
Gizmo:Alright. Well, let's cut this thing, boys. See, we're getting on the cold draw and the wrapper. So some listeners who are old, you know, old school listeners, OGs, let's say of the podcast would remember that we did a blind. I think it was like episode nine or 13 or something many, many moons ago when we were rookies.
Gizmo:Grinder provided the cigar actually correct, and we haven't revisited it since. We did that in our rookie days, so we were scarred by that experience. It took
Senator:us a hundred and something episodes to come back to it.
Bam Bam:It's true. I don't I don't remember what that was.
Gizmo:A lot
Senator:of times. I remember.
Gizmo:It's not good. Was in. Wow. Nice job, Ricky.
Bam Bam:Right. Look at you. Big fan.
Gizmo:So what are you guys getting on the cold draw here on
Bam Bam:our Well, I will say I just took the very extreme cap off. The draw is wide open.
Pagoda:Mhmm.
Bam Bam:So it's a well made at the moment, well made cigar. Same.
Gizmo:This is an incredibly flavorful cold draw here. I'm getting fig. I'm getting sweetness.
Bam Bam:Yeah. It's sweeter.
Chef:Yeah. It is. I'm not that enthusiastic about the cold draw on my end.
Gizmo:Not yet. Awesome.
Bam Bam:Yeah. Faint apple I'm getting maybe.
Gizmo:I'm getting more like a Fig Newton, a bready Fig Newton. Mhmm.
Rooster:Yeah. Definitely Fig Newton. Very flavorful.
Pagoda:Oh, yeah. Meaning, it's yeah. It's a Fig Newton. Yeah. No.
Pagoda:No. It's
Bam Bam:It's life. It's
Pagoda:I'll tell you when Tuck does the By
Gizmo:the way, that bam. Let me just reference
Senator:a little listener.
Gizmo:That's one of my favorite clips Me too. That has ever existed on this podcast was the rating on the Cohiba Siglo six. Pagoda just sang, life.
Chef:It's great.
Gizmo:Unbelievable clip.
Pagoda:No, I was just saying that, you know, my tongue just touched the end of the tip, and my initial thing was, and I know it's a bit off, but tea, initial. And then it went into like, I
Bam Bam:agree with that.
Pagoda:Little black tea. Then it moved into like the sweetness. Definitely. And it's actually just left a really, really pleasant flavor. Like, it's pretty it seems like it should be a very flavorful cigar.
Gizmo:Alright, boys. Well, let's light this thing. Our April fools blind cigar tonight. We're gonna see if we're fools or not. And it looks to be a Robusto
Pagoda:Oh, damn. It's a Xeno, isn't it?
Gizmo:Ring gauge cigar by five inches long. I would love it if it was a Xeno for rooster's sake. And lizard Henrico is gonna come in after we rate, give his rating on the cigar because he smoked it prior to us, and he's going to share the make, the model, and components of our blind cigar tonight. The only thing we know about this cigar is that it is not Cuban. It is a new world.
Gizmo:That's all we know tonight.
Bam Bam:Yeah. That's obvious.
Pagoda:I don't know. It it could it it looks Cubanist. The wrapper seems very thin.
Gizmo:Oh.
Pagoda:Doesn't the wrapper feel very thin?
Gizmo:Pagoda found his mic.
Pagoda:Oh, yeah. Finally.
Gizmo:The wrapper does feel thin. This is very pleasant on the light.
Chef:So far so good.
Gizmo:Yeah. I would say I'm getting like a coffee thing, a little salt. Very nice.
Bam Bam:Maybe a little butter. That's salty butter.
Chef:Getting a little strength. I'm getting a little, some spice, some pepper on the retrohale there.
Bam Bam:It's very toasty. Yeah. There's a toast thing going on here.
Chef:Something that's very similar in flavor to the, toasted marshmallow you were speaking of a few weeks back. Yeah. Getting some of that here.
Bam Bam:The burnt part of it. Pretty nice.
Gizmo:I like it. Yeah. I actually like this quite a bit.
Chef:Yeah. Very milky on me all of a sudden.
Senator:Yeah. It's creamy. Yeah. There's like a creaminess and even a slight viscosity to the smoke that I just feel like marries up all the flavors really nicely.
Gizmo:And as I draw it, I'm getting a sweetness on the front of my tongue.
Senator:That's where I
Gizmo:was going. Oh, that's I'm sorry. No. No. No.
Gizmo:As as the smoke takes over your mouth, your tongue is kinda highlighted by, like, a sugar component.
Bam Bam:Right at the front.
Pagoda:Yeah.
Senator:Yeah. It leans more sweet than savory.
Gizmo:Which I like in a in a new world.
Bam Bam:You know, if this takes a roller coaster ride back and forth, that would be incredible.
Pagoda:I like the smoke output. It's really nice.
Gizmo:Oh, Smoke output
Pagoda:is Open drawer.
Chef:Yeah. It's checking off a lot of boxes.
Bam Bam:Brewster.
Rooster:It's easy to smoke, meaning it's not,
Bam Bam:It's not harsh.
Pagoda:Yeah, absolutely.
Gizmo:You don't
Rooster:get that pepper blast in the beginning. You're getting actually a sweet like there's a lot of sweetness right on the light, which is different than most cigars. Feels like it's a Steve Sakka cigar.
Chef:Yeah. Maybe safe to say it's not a Nicaraguan or not heavy Nicaraguan blend there.
Pagoda:There's definitely no Nicaraguan, at least from what I understand that. It's an info.
Gizmo:I'm not I'm not comfortable saying that yet.
Senator:I just think though, to the point that a number of the guys are making, on the light, I don't get anything Nicaraguanesque. I get more like Dominican Correct. Maybe a little Honduran.
Pagoda:Honduran, yeah.
Senator:Because it's a very approachable, easygoing, creamier kind of smoke.
Bam Bam:Endurance, creamier Honestly, it's like a fab five experience right now. Those cigars.
Gizmo:Could you imagine if Henrito
Bam Bam:I bet. A different flavor.
Gizmo:Five in
Pagoda:our hands tonight. Exactly what I thought.
Senator:The honestly, the thing this tastes the most similar to to me is the trinity ribuso.
Rooster:Yeah. Can you imagine?
Senator:Because there's like a sweetness about it and also like a nuttiness there.
Bam Bam:But that has a pigtail, doesn't it?
Senator:Yeah. Yeah. Does it really? Did I?
Pagoda:It does.
Gizmo:It does.
Senator:Oh, wow.
Gizmo:Yeah. Alright. That's a good point, Bam. Yeah. I cut it without even looking, but this does not have a pigtail.
Gizmo:So that would
Bam Bam:pull up.
Senator:Them rolled without pigtails just to
Gizmo:throw He called
Senator:Rob. That's right.
Chef:And I feel like the wrapper on the Trini Robusto is a little bit darker.
Bam Bam:It is maybe a touch, but honestly it's smoking a lot like the Trinity I feel like the wrapper's a bit more robust, not too too thin. Definitely not a soccer cigar.
Gizmo:I'm not getting
Bam Bam:These cigars are pristine.
Senator:This is not what
Pagoda:this is.
Gizmo:I want to eliminate flavors. I'm not getting any pepper. No. No spice. Other things that we often call out.
Gizmo:Are you getting any coffee?
Rooster:More like milk chocolate.
Gizmo:Milk chocolate. Yeah.
Chef:Yep. Milk chocolate, maybe a a latte esque flavor. Like, there's definitely a very creamy component to this where it's not just straight coffee.
Bam Bam:No leather like a Padron.
Chef:Yeah. No leather. It's not earthy.
Senator:It's not earthy.
Bam Bam:No. It's not mint there's no minerality there. All good things.
Pagoda:And and that is why, like, I thought that maybe it's an acrogan. Maybe we we tend to smoke maduros, and, you know, which is earthy, sweet, peppery, leathery. We are getting none of that. So that's why I was thinking it could
Bam Bam:be easier to eliminate. This is not a Madura wrapper.
Pagoda:No, not at all. This is absolutely not.
Senator:And there's like a faint fruit note in there. Yeah. Like going back to your Fig Newton comment, like, some kind of dried fruit in the background.
Chef:Oh, did you say dried fruit?
Senator:Someone's got it. As long as it's not
Bam Bam:bad. I'm not allowed to.
Chef:Yeah, I don't know if it's because it's been a couple days for me without a cigar. I'm getting a little bit of
Pagoda:Are you
Senator:feeling okay? I'm Well,
Chef:everything's Your place on it was the last cigar.
Senator:Oh wow. Well we put in plenty of work.
Chef:Yeah we did.
Senator:That'll last you for a few days. I
Gizmo:want to ask you guys about that in a little bit.
Chef:Yeah I'm getting a little of a nicotine tingle here.
Bam Bam:You
Chef:know, not in a bad way. Not that it's overpowering but it's definitely noticeable for me.
Bam Bam:I'm not getting any of that. It's pure pleasure with this thing right now.
Chef:Oh, it's not an unpleasurable thing for me. I don't mind it.
Bam Bam:The aroma is still getting that toastiness, but there's a slight faint flour type thing, potpourri mix in there, which I really like a lot.
Senator:Smell the burn line. That's where you're getting what Bam's talking about.
Bam Bam:Toast and
Senator:I also get some baking spice on there.
Bam Bam:Toast, baking spice, and a little bit of a potpourri, just a touch. This is
Gizmo:This is a nice cigar.
Bam Bam:It's surprisingly good. Surprisingly good.
Gizmo:Doesn't feel one dimensional to me. Like, it feels dynamic, and it feels like there's a journey that's going to be had here. Like, it's really piquing my interest.
Bam Bam:Yeah.
Gizmo:A lot of times we talk about even some of the good New Worlds we smoke, they're very linear. They're very one flavor dominant, straight through all the way. They give you know, it's like a race car going straight down, you know, a a track. This this is something that it might be more of a as Bam was saying, like a little bit of a journey.
Chef:Let me
Senator:ask this.
Bam Bam:Well, I'm hoping it's a journey.
Chef:Yeah. Right. Does this taste like anything any of you have ever smoked before? This seems like a new journey for me.
Senator:To me, this is the closest thing I've had to the Trini Robusto.
Bam Bam:I agree with that. Yeah. Hard to compare it to anything else.
Pagoda:It feels very Cuban esque to me. I don't know.
Bam Bam:Yeah. Not enough salt for me to say that.
Pagoda:Yeah. But I'm
Gizmo:I'm getting And it's little more full,
Bam Bam:I would say. It's fuller than
Chef:the Cuban. It's definitely fuller bodied. I am getting a very kind of a fresh tea note here, you know.
Bam Bam:Pagoda mentioned that earlier. Think that's a legitimate
Chef:It kind of reminds me of jasmine almost.
Pagoda:Mhmm.
Senator:The thing I like about the construction of this so everyone commented how open the draw was initially, and I feel like whenever you cut a cigar and you have a really open draw, half the time or most of the time when you're smoking it, it burns pretty quickly. The way this is packed with tobacco, I can tell like, you can take your time with this. It's not gonna burn fast.
Gizmo:Yeah.
Senator:And I I really like that. I think the flavor profile is so good. It'd be tempting to smoke this quickly, but I think it's gonna muddle the flavors. I feel like we're gonna get a good amount of time out of
Rooster:this cigar.
Bam Bam:I I think it's a great point. There's some density to this thing.
Gizmo:Does feel was gonna say it feels weighty in the hand.
Rooster:It's not it's not loosely packed.
Pagoda:No. It's a very well made. Very well made.
Bam Bam:Very well made.
Senator:But to have that weight to it with such a perfect draw Yep. It's not easy to do.
Gizmo:You remember what we experienced with the Mona Cristo White Edmundo where most of us, I think, finished that in Mhmm. Forty minutes.
Senator:Yeah. Is that the one we all lit up like a second cigar? Yeah.
Gizmo:We lit up a second cigar inside the episode because we'd only gotten forty minutes out of it, we had a lot to talk about. We were having fun too, but this, to your point, does seem like a cigar that's of a similar size, actually maybe a little smaller, and seems like it could be something you get an hour, hour, hour fifteen out of. Yeah. You know? I'm pretty into this.
Chef:So I'm curious because on the pairing, were you given anything to pick a pairing or you just want
Senator:to say for
Gizmo:all that? That's a great question. So I'm going to answer. I'm going to talk first about how I set this up to kind of, you know, answer your question with that, and then I'll talk about the pairing. So let me lay out how I asked Lizard Henrito to do this project for us.
Gizmo:So way back, I was talking to Tuxedo Timmy. He said, you guys need to try a blind again. I said, you know what? That's a great idea. I looked at the calendar.
Gizmo:I saw for the first time that Tuesday was going to be April 1. So April fools. So I said, you know what? Let's try to fool ourselves and see if we can nail what a blind cigar really is. And that would mean that none of us have any idea how, you know, this cigar came into the room and what it is.
Gizmo:So what I said to Lizard Henry were three things. Number one, it needs to be a cigar that is $40 or less. We always get 10, so I Venmoed him $400. I said, Just get them, and then after we figure out what the price is, you can send back the balance.
Bam Bam:No split wise.
Gizmo:I said, Number two, it has to be non Cuban. This week falls on a New World episode, so I said, I want it to be a New World cigar. And number three, I said that the listener, if we enjoy the cigar and share it and ourselves, you we need to be able to find this cigar pretty easily on the Internet at least. So those were the three parameters of how it was set up. Lizard Henry went out.
Gizmo:He bought five or six cigars, tried them. I guess chose this one as the one out of that group.
Senator:There were some duds.
Gizmo:There were some duds.
Senator:Because I was in the lounge when he was trying some of these, and I think it was the first one that I guess he had attempted.
Bam Bam:Did you
Chef:see the bands?
Senator:No. No. He had bands on.
Gizmo:He was he was very diligent
Bam Bam:Oh, good.
Senator:Yeah. About this product. He had these shipped to my house and had whoever he got them from removed the bands prior to shipping.
Gizmo:They literally shipped them in those empty bags with no bands, no receipt, no nothing.
Bam Bam:That's amazing.
Gizmo:So Henry's gonna talk about the retailer later. We can, you know, support the retailer who helped us with this project. But the project showed up to senator's house while Bam, Henry, and I were in Cuba. We're gonna talk about that in a few weeks. But these cigars showed up.
Gizmo:No receipt, no bands, no identifying marks at all. Just a box with 10 cigars. Wow. So that's how we set it up. Know, the last time we did this, like I said, we were rookies.
Gizmo:Lizard grinder brought in a cigar. He knew what it was. So it really wasn't a true blind. And we've done so many cigars now. We've learned so much about tobacco.
Gizmo:I felt that this was an appropriate time to do it for April Fools this year. So here we are tonight, boys.
Pagoda:I must say, I love that Henrietta's picked a wonderful cigar.
Bam Bam:That's very good.
Pagoda:I'm really enjoying it so far. Like, that's fantastic.
Rooster:He's definitely redeemed himself.
Bam Bam:He took the words out of my mouth.
Pagoda:Though he asked.
Gizmo:So to answer your second question, the second part of your question, Ricky, I with all that being said, I had no idea what it was, so I figured I'd bring in a really good spirit that would be versatile if it was Honduran, Nicaraguan, you know, Dominican, whatever it may be. And that's why I chose the Florida Cana 18 Years aged rum tonight, which is now the third Florida Cana we're doing on the pod. We did the 20. If you remember coming up on a year ago at PCA twenty twenty four with the folks from Florida Cana, and we then reviewed the Florida Cana twelve on the pod. And tonight, we have the 18 years age Florida Cana rum.
Senator:I can't wait for what we discover at PCA in NOLA this year.
Pagoda:You know where you'll find me. Can't wait for that one.
Senator:Any listener that wants to eat Pagoda, he'll be at
Bam Bam:the beer stand. 14 in.
Gizmo:Alright, boys, so let's try our pairing. Let's see how it does with this blind cigar tonight. We have the 18 years aged Flor de Cano rum.
Bam Bam:It's outstanding on the nose.
Pagoda:Always excited about Flor de Cano.
Gizmo:Yeah. It's great rum.
Chef:I gotta say, just getting back to the cigar real quick, this ash is gorgeous. Mhmm. Bright white. Burn line is beautiful. It's perfect.
Chef:I mean, I I'm having a hard time because I'm thinking about Honduran tobacco, and I'm like, alright. Who do you have? Camacho, Placencia? Like, are any of them worthy?
Pagoda:Could be Fab or Capade, one of the new Yeah.
Chef:Right. You know, can it be a Fab five cigar that we haven't had yet?
Gizmo:Lizard Henrico knows no bounds. Oh, he doesn't? He was very diligent with his project. So anything is on
Rooster:the table. Is one that was a recommendation by a listener?
Gizmo:Lizard Henrico had no access to our emails. The only thing I asked him was to not, you know, do a cigar that we've done in the last few weeks, but I think that was obvious to him already. You know? So I have no idea who made this cigar.
Bam Bam:After taking a sip, you take a draw, and if you can retrohale, you retrohale. It is like a deep biscuit, toasted biscuit finish I'm getting with the cigar. Incredible. Wow. Incredible.
Chef:Shortbread. Oh,
Gizmo:yeah. This rum makes the cigar even more dynamic. Great pairing. Vice versa, the cigar is making the rum Agreed. Very dynamic.
Gizmo:This is an excellent pairing Yeah.
Chef:This is bonkers. You know, I thought the rum was gonna be sweeter, but it leans a little bit dry and I'm enjoying it.
Gizmo:And it's there is a bit of pleasant heat there that I like on this.
Bam Bam:Yes. And what you and senator mentioned about that capturing that sweet note on the front of the tongue, that's still there. And it I think it's developing for me.
Senator:Going back to the rum, what chef just mentioned, it not being as sweet as you would have thought. That's how we fell in love with Flor de Cana.
Gizmo:Mhmm.
Senator:I mean, when Pagoda and I met the brand ambassador there, we tried, like, every expression they make, and that was like the big thing that stuck with me was it it's perfectly balanced. Like so many rums are mean, brands that add residual sugar, and they're sweet as can be, and it just totally for me ruins it. There's no additives in any FortiCagna product, and I feel like it's the perfect balance of, like, sweetness with this, like, rich flavor that the eighteen year brings out.
Bam Bam:And I
Chef:could really tell that there's no additives here because on the nose, it develops all of that sweetness that you expect from a rum. But then on the drink, the palate, it's it's balanced. It's a little dry. Whereas with, you know, added additive laden spirits, they tend to wanna match that nose by adding a lot of sweetener and artificial stuff. So
Gizmo:so just for the listener out there, we're referencing drinking for the first time, Florida Kanye, twenty years aged on episode 126 for our PCA twenty twenty four. We actually recorded that live at PCA, and we're gonna do the same thing this year when we go to PCA in New Orleans. And I just wanna shout out Luis Baez, who is the global ambassador for Florida Kanye, who actually joined us on the episode for a few minutes, talked about the product, the history, and the, as as Senator was saying, the additive free process that they go through.
Bam Bam:Great interview.
Gizmo:It was a great conversation, and we're really thankful to them. And obviously, we're still enjoying Fortacania. We enjoyed the 12 on the podcast, and tonight we're back with the 18. And for a $60 bottle, boys, this bottle I paid $60 for a total wine. I don't know if an 18 year aged rum at $60 if there's more value out there than we're having right now.
Gizmo:Pretty impressive.
Pagoda:It's excellent. So anybody who's looking
Gizmo:for Florida Kanye's story or rum, out our PCA twenty twenty four episode, episode 126. And speaking of PCA boys, might might as well tell the listeners now, in a couple weeks, we are heading to New Orleans for PCA twenty twenty five. A few of us are gonna be there. We have some surprises planned, some good things lined up, and our plan, of course, is again to record an episode live on-site like we did last year, so that should be a lot of fun.
Chef:Oh, yeah.
Pagoda:What are
Gizmo:you guys looking forward to in New Orleans this year?
Bam Bam:I'm looking forward to the guided senator tour. Because I've never been there.
Pagoda:Some beignets.
Senator:That's right. Mean, Orleans has a special place in my heart. I first went to New Orleans, spent a lot of time there for work, doing a lot of advertising down there, but quickly fell in love with it. It was the place I actually did my bachelor party before I got married, and I've been back many times since. The food scene is awesome there.
Senator:We've got a reservation at Commander's Palace, one of my favorite spots.
Gizmo:You locked down a reservation?
Senator:It's locked in.
Bam Bam:My man.
Senator:It's locked in.
Gizmo:He's our tour guide.
Bam Bam:That story that he told us about that dinner, I I can't wait.
Senator:Just just the the hospitality in New Orleans, the restaurant scene is so competitive. The service is, like, off the charts. And it's that way because if a server if a server doesn't cut it, they can so easily find someone to replace them. Like, it is like a privilege to be at some of these restaurants
Bam Bam:Wow.
Senator:That they really don't mess around. And I love with Commander's Palace. I there was maybe a few year gap between my last trip to New Orleans, and I wanted to actually not cook or host Thanksgiving and do Thanksgiving somewhere. And so I picked New Orleans, took my wife and and family, and I called trying to get a reservation, obviously expecting it's gonna be difficult for Thanksgiving, and told them the party size, is there any way you can accommodate us? And the first thing they say, mister senator, we haven't seen you in a while.
Senator:We would be honored to have you for Thanksgiving.
Bam Bam:Wow.
Senator:And they said the exact date that I was last there. They had it in their system. They keep meticulous notes on people.
Bam Bam:That's good CRM.
Senator:It's crazy. Luckily, lot of the They
Gizmo:paid for Salesforce. Correct.
Chef:That's OpenTable, boys. Oh,
Gizmo:that's OpenTable. Okay.
Chef:OpenTable does wonderful things for you.
Senator:And then the funny thing is, you know, I had eaten there a number of times, and they have this room there called the Garden Room, and that's, like, the premier room to dine in.
Gizmo:I've actually So that's where we're gonna be, ma'am, because We
Bam Bam:can hope. Let's hope
Senator:I had never been there prior, and then I show up for Thanksgiving for a reservation, and they were like, right this way to the Garden room. I was like, I finally made it. I commend you. It's like, I got my own table in the garden room. I took years for that.
Gizmo:Well
Senator:So we can hope that we'll be there, but just top to bottom, I just you know, I mean, chef knows this. Obviously, he owns restaurants. The food obviously has to be excellent anywhere for you to return, but the service is what really defines the experience. Because you have great food and shitty service, you may as well do takeout. You're not gonna ever wanna go back and visit.
Senator:And every time there, it's been excellent.
Bam Bam:That's great.
Rooster:Pretty big French influence on the food. Right?
Senator:For sure. French Creole is really the the New Orleans
Bam Bam:Can't wait.
Rooster:And I'm sure the service is very, like, old school where it feels like it.
Senator:Oh, it is. They do a lot of table side stuff. Like Nice. It's a
Rooster:it's A lot of flambees and stuff
Senator:like that. Exactly.
Chef:Nice. You guys get Do
Pagoda:they have a dress code?
Senator:Yeah. They do, actually. Percent. Yeah. Shit.
Senator:Jack jacket is
Bam Bam:Bucket shirt. There. Button downs. No hoodies. Luckily You could wear
Chef:a hoodie. Just put a blazer over it.
Gizmo:Thank you, Sean.
Senator:Not a commander's.
Pagoda:Luckily know it's not windy there.
Senator:Luckily, we'll be coming from PCA, so even Gizmo will be at a blazer. That's correct.
Bam Bam:He did very sharp last year.
Gizmo:Thank you very much.
Bam Bam:Very, very sharp. So I'm looking forward to us as a unit, like we did last year, moving through PCA like Lizard Mafia. We turned heads all over the place. And you can't deny it. We made an imprint in that event, and I'm looking forward to that again.
Bam Bam:Agreed. Yeah.
Gizmo:It'll be nice to be back. And honestly, I'm pretty excited that it's not in Vegas. You know, Vegas is a love hate relationship I've always had with it. I don't gamble. It seems very overpriced, the experience seems a little put on, you know, a little fake, obviously, trying extract as much money out of your pocket as possible.
Gizmo:But it lacks culture. It lacks culture.
Senator:What New Orleans has that Vegas doesn't. Correct.
Gizmo:Culture. So I'm also looking forward to a new experience in a city I've only been to in a limited bay you know, I've been there, but I was there for work and really kind of in one building at a time. So it'll be nice to actually experience
Bam Bam:Mhmm.
Gizmo:You know, New Orleans for real.
Senator:And the cool thing, I'll give PCA a lot of credit what they did this year, they talked to a number of different bars, restaurants, lounges, because in New Orleans, there are cigar bars. Yep. But they're they're all smaller. There's not like a big I mean, everything is really crammed in in the French Quarter. So there's not like a big go to place to smoke, but there are a number of bars and lounges that have outdoor patios, and some of them are very friendly about smoking.
Pagoda:You can
Senator:have a cigar. Others, if there's
Bam Bam:a lot
Senator:of people, they'd rather you not. PCA in advance talked to a number of these places, came up with a guide of kind of the after What? After PCA kind of smoking spots.
Bam Bam:That's cool.
Senator:Every night, there's gonna be all these different places that everyone from PCA can go and meet up and smoke, which should be a lot of fun throughout
Bam Bam:New Orleans.
Gizmo:I believe they've also gotten city leadership on board for the time that PCA is there to kind of, you know, be a little more lax about cigar smoking in general. So, you know, overall, you gotta shout out to Premium Cigar Association
Bam Bam:for Absolutely.
Pagoda:I mean
Gizmo:you know, the effort.
Senator:To your point about getting the city council to be more lenient. So when I saw Joshua Habrusky, who's the the CEO there at an event at one of the political conventions late last year, I asked him kinda how New Orleans came to be, and he said, the funny thing is the convention center in New Orleans smoking has always been banned in there. You can't smoke in their convention center like you can in Vegas. That's why PCA is always out in Vegas. Him
Chef:and
Senator:the team lobbied the city council in New Orleans and got a two year exception written into law just for PCA to be posted in Washington Center where we can smoke throughout it.
Gizmo:That's incredible. Incredible.
Bam Bam:You can't have that event without a smoking experience.
Gizmo:So we're very excited about it. I just wanna highlight the headline sponsors this year, PCA twenty twenty five. You know, every year they change the headline sponsors. These are the folks that are highlighted in the Friday panels. They each give talks.
Gizmo:They sponsor different events. I'm just going to go through the gold sponsors this year. Espinosa, Villager, Orongo Cigar Company, Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust, Drew Estate, Tatawahi, Buffalo Trace. I was interested to
Rooster:see that.
Bam Bam:That's interesting.
Gizmo:Foundation cigars and Placentia. So those are the folks that are going to be headlining the events and the talks on Friday, as well as, I'm assuming, releasing some pretty cool products throughout PCA. So I'll tell you, I'm pretty excited about all of this
Bam Bam:Me too.
Gizmo:You know, in a couple of weeks.
Rooster:Isn't Davidoff back in?
Gizmo:Davidoff's back. Again, thanks to Josh's leadership over there. Yes. I mean, Davidoff is back for the first time, I think, five or six years. Yep.
Gizmo:If not more. So before we get back to the cigar boys, I do wanna shout out Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust, one of those sponsors we just announced. They're adding a Micarita Gorilla Gordo this year at PCA, sixty ring gauge by six inch cigar. And it'll be, I guess, one of the biggest cigars in their portfolio. It's gonna feature a Connecticut broadleaf wrapper covering a binder and filler blend composed of all Nicaraguan tobacco.
Gizmo:So, Steve Sokka had told the half wheel where I'm reading all this, that the price is still being finalized, but the cigars are gonna ship in boxes of 20. So I thought that was pretty cool. We do love Steve Socket. We had a great interview with him last year at PCA on the floor and looking forward to chatting with him again this year.
Chef:It's gonna be a heavy box of cigars. Absolutely.
Gizmo:Boys, we're coming into the second third here now on our blind cigar tonight.
Chef:I'm tell
Pagoda:you what
Bam Bam:I'm getting here.
Gizmo:I'm blown away.
Bam Bam:We're all blown away.
Pagoda:This is awesome. Absolutely.
Gizmo:This is an awesome cigar.
Chef:I'm getting that shortbread the shortbread cookie with the raspberry jam center. That's like that's exactly what I'm
Bam Bam:getting. Yeah. I'm getting everything. Maybe not raspberry, but the shortbread, the toastiness, the little butteriness, it's very creamy, and the quality of the cigar.
Gizmo:Everybody's ash is holding on brilliant. Construction is phenomenal.
Bam Bam:The structure of this is just off the charts.
Gizmo:I love the charts. Smell the burn line, dude.
Rooster:And the sweetness is still coming through.
Gizmo:Yeah. Awesome.
Bam Bam:What is that? That's like a jasmine potpourri type thing happening.
Gizmo:And a little bakery.
Chef:I can't wait to find out what the cigar is because
Gizmo:I want What the hell?
Senator:Look at look at the burn on chef's cigar.
Gizmo:What is going on here?
Senator:I thought my ash was holding on.
Pagoda:Look at that.
Gizmo:Razor about an inch and a half Razor sharp. Bright white perfect burn line ash on his cigar right Unbelievable. I'm blown away by this. So am is A plus. I can't believe it.
Gizmo:I can't believe it.
Pagoda:What a redemption. What a redemption.
Bam Bam:I don't think we're gonna nail this one because I've never had a cigar like this.
Senator:I don't care if we nail it or not. I think we need to have Lizard Henrico just pick all of our cigars going forward. This is damn
Bam Bam:New procurement director. That's right.
Gizmo:He can have the job. Enough.
Bam Bam:I think he'll quit promptly.
Gizmo:Wow. This is this is really impressive, and I'm loving the pairing with this rum.
Chef:Agreed. I'd say he understood the assignment.
Gizmo:Yeah, he did a great job.
Rooster:And the cigar is barely medium. It's not It's very flavorful, but it's like mild to medium.
Bam Bam:And that retrohale, honestly, I'm sorry. It's so toasty and pleasant. It's really very unique.
Pagoda:I'll tell you, for me, on the Toparma palette, I'm getting a little bit of the saltiness now with the, like, nuttiness, right?
Bam Bam:Oh, yeah.
Pagoda:Nuttiness, I think, but a little
Senator:bit salty.
Bam Bam:I Salted nuts.
Senator:This is super nutty, this cigar, and I think there's, like, a nutty quality about the rum on the finish
Bam Bam:that Does it enhance that nuttiness? Exactly.
Pagoda:Oh, man. Exactly. $10.10 wins.
Bam Bam:That's another one to coin. Wow.
Gizmo:I and by the way, let's just take a look at the room here, boys. It is full of smoke. It's like we're driving through a thick fog on a dark night. It is very smoky in here.
Bam Bam:Yeah. It's beautiful. I think this is gonna hold up beautifully.
Chef:This is great.
Pagoda:Very pleasant.
Rooster:This is this is not Nicaraguan tomorrow.
Pagoda:What are doing here? Mean, no.
Senator:There's no way. Yeah. Giz, would you agree at this point this is not Nicaraguan?
Gizmo:I'm thinking that there if anything, there's a touch of Nicaraguan in the cigar, maybe No. Maybe a little Nicaraguan.
Senator:Mean is it possible? I mean, do you really No. I don't think flavor wise. That's what I'm saying.
Gizmo:I'm I'm leaning I'll tell you where I'm leaning right now. I'm leaning Honduran Dominican. That's where I'm
Pagoda:kind of Yes. I It's Honduran Dominican.
Gizmo:Correct. Honduran Dominican territory right now. And what kind of
Bam Bam:rapper do you think this is? This could be Corojo rapper?
Pagoda:No. This could
Gizmo:be a What was again?
Senator:How do you pronounce that? Corojo. Crayola.
Gizmo:Crayola or I have no idea. It could also be a broadleaf. It could be an Ecuadorian. No. It could be an Ecuadorian.
Pagoda:It could be the shade the Connecticut shade or
Gizmo:It could be Ecuadorian Connecticut shade as the wrapper.
Pagoda:Ecuadorian Connecticut.
Gizmo:But obviously, I mean, most of the component of this that we're tasting is beautiful for everything Of
Bam Bam:course. The
Senator:sheen on an Ecuadorian Habano wrapper too?
Bam Bam:Yeah. Maybe. Or Habano.
Pagoda:Yeah. Anything. Because they're lighter. They're
Bam Bam:But the sheen
Pagoda:That could be it because the Cuban seed through in Ecuador.
Senator:I think
Chef:you're onto something with the
Senator:My guess on the wrapper is going to be Ecuadorian Habano.
Rooster:Yeah. Okay.
Bam Bam:Very, very good.
Gizmo:Bam, you're onto something too about the sheen. I mean, I would assume
Bam Bam:That's unbelievable.
Gizmo:My assumption too, as we're talking about this, is this cigar does not have a lot of age on Mhmm. Not that I'm tasting youth, but I'm No. That's just my assumption coming from a retailer. You know, I'm assuming Don't discount it,
Senator:It sat my humidor for a week. That's true.
Bam Bam:A lot of age. A
Pagoda:of age.
Rooster:A week ago does wonders.
Gizmo:Lizard Henrico is the new procurer Correct. Lizard Senator is now the storage master.
Senator:Aging master. Exactly. Incorrect.
Gizmo:Alright, boys. Let's talk about another new release at PCA. We just talked about Davidoff. They are launching an Escorio tenth anniversary limited edition next month, which is a 56 ring gauge by six Toro extra that has four year old Ecuadorian wrappers we just talked about, nine year old Brazilian binder, and filler made up of one Brazilian leaf and four different leaves from The Dominican Republic.
Pagoda:Is it with an o or an e? Oscuro.
Gizmo:O? Escuro, e s e r I o. Okay.
Pagoda:Yeah. Yep. Yep.
Chef:I actually like their Escuro line. You know, they're a little bit fuller. Listen.
Rooster:We're not this is not the Duolingo podcast band.
Pagoda:No. But you know the reason you know the reason I asked, we I think I think Dude, this is
Gizmo:the blind leading the blind with
Pagoda:a blind cigar in our hands. No. No. Absolutely. Kurojo with an o or with an e?
Chef:I've seen it spelled both ways
Bam Bam:It is.
Chef:To your point. Yeah. It's spelled both ways. So you're not wrong.
Pagoda:No. Because we we had a discussion on this, and I remember very clearly having the Davidoff with an o as well. Yeah. So there was a e, which I did not like, and the o l, like the Oscuro rap. And we were just having the discussion, I think, last week or the week before.
Rooster:There was a cigar that Davidoff came out with. It was the Escorio, e s c o. No. Not a u. The black
Pagoda:tubal with the c s. I think it was a o.
Bam Bam:E I. So Let's But
Pagoda:either way
Rooster:I love that we're laying out our preferences and vowels. I didn't like the e. I like the o. While the Escurio is a regular production. Yeah.
Pagoda:So that's why I wanted to confirm. I was just laughing. I was very excited that maybe the o has come back.
Gizmo:I'll tell you. We listen. Full disclosure for the listener. We didn't record last week. We haven't seen these guys in two weeks.
Rooster:Bam and I were
Bam Bam:in Havana. Missed this, boys.
Gizmo:Oh, I missed it. This was great. This is great.
Chef:I I just wanna break out old McDonald had a farm. There was a
Bam Bam:farm who had a dog.
Senator:80. That's a rock song.
Bam Bam:No.
Pagoda:Alright. We gotta stop this.
Gizmo:We're off the rails. And again, boys, we've talked about this before. This is what happens when we have a great cigar in our hand, and we have a great cigar in our hand tonight. This is fantastic. Very true.
Chef:So good. So am so It's a Zeno.
Gizmo:Oh, man. So lizard senators, so as I just mentioned, Bam, Henrico, I were actually in Cuba last week. We didn't record. While we were gone, senator, it was very fortunate here. The weather was pretty good, I guess, in the fifties at night, sixties during the day.
Senator:Oh, yeah. It's a big And you were able
Gizmo:to invite everybody over because your outdoor patio backyard is finished now. That's right. You had a big crew over. So tell us about your your experience hanging with the boys outside.
Senator:No. It was a lot of fun. I mean, the the weather was surprisingly nice, so I had said to the guys, you know, I was hoping there was two nights that looked promising, so I think it was Wednesday we decided to do it. I assumed at night it was gonna get cold, so I was actually planning on using the fire pit. And we had started when kinda earlier in the night when Rooster and Pagoda came by just under my I have a a kind of waterproof sealed deck underneath and, you know, TV down there, patio furniture, outdoor kitchen, all that, and there are heaters up there.
Senator:And so we were just using the heaters, and they're putting out so much heat. I mean, even when chefs showed up and some other friends, we were there the whole night under the heaters. We never even needed the fire pit, and it was toasty as can be under.
Gizmo:That's great. And what did the temperature get down to?
Senator:The low was 42 that night. Wow.
Gizmo:And you guys were comfortable just with the heaters. Totally. That's impressive.
Bam Bam:That's awesome.
Senator:Totally. I mean, Idiav, Lizard Idiav, who he is and when our lounge is 70 degrees
Gizmo:He's got a coat
Bam Bam:on. Exactly.
Senator:Yeah. He was sitting in there, and he's like, I actually am warm. I get he was Wow.
Bam Bam:That's cool.
Senator:That's awesome. And he was the last one to leave, which was at, like, 02:30 in the morning.
Bam Bam:Oh, that's a pleasure.
Rooster:Actually, senator got up. It was I I left at two. Right? Senator got up, and and this is like, you know, you kinda take a hint like he's cleaning up.
Bam Bam:Oh, no.
Pagoda:Pushing the inks away.
Rooster:Putting the bottles away. I'm like, it's time to go. And EDF sits down. He's like, what else are you gonna have to drink?
Bam Bam:Yeah. He's like, don't drink don't make me drink alone. Pour some
Senator:more tequila. There you go.
Gizmo:So what were you guys drinking? What was the what did you pull out for
Pagoda:the party?
Gizmo:What did you weigh out? Drinking, think. What's question?
Senator:So Pagoda actually brought over a bottle of champagne. So we started with some champagne, then we went to rum. I think we were having some Havana.
Pagoda:Club. Yep.
Senator:Nice. Then we went to scotch.
Pagoda:We also have Florida County.
Senator:Oh, yeah. Seven. We finished the florican in seven, then we went to some Balvini. Then chef had gifted me the first time when kinda the pre opening of my patio, this awesome blanco tequila that we have to do on the pod. The funny thing is it comes in like this really
Chef:gaudy bottle.
Senator:Yeah. Like, it it's you kinda look at the bottle, you're like, oh, that's really nice, but it you'd think it's like all marketing and that, like, the spirit itself is probably not great.
Gizmo:Bam, go ahead. Say it.
Bam Bam:Oh, it's marketing. It took me a second. I'm
Rooster:gonna call that out every episode,
Senator:by the way. And so I hadn't cracked it open all this time, so with chef there, a perfect reason to get into some tequila. So we cracked the bottle, and it was fantastic. Honestly, one of the best Blancos I've had. I think it's gonna do extremely well in the pod.
Senator:And the best part of it I mean, being out there late, I drank plenty of it that night. I felt awesome in the
Bam Bam:Can you share the name of it? Sierto. Sierto.
Chef:Yeah. So it's made by Enrique Fonseca. He's the guy that does the bottlings according to vintage, single estate agaves.
Bam Bam:You've mentioned him
Chef:So when we did the tequila deep dive in Senator's Lounge, it was the bottle that I kind of poured glass, it was in the wooden box, was a little on the higher proof side.
Gizmo:I remember that. I remember the box. Yeah.
Chef:So this is definitely like mean, all of his tequilas are bangers, but this is something that was made to be a little bit more elegant and refined.
Senator:I mean, bam, this tequila is so smooth. You could put back half that bottle, no like, it's so easy to drink and
Bam Bam:get so Let's get a bottle, man. A it's a bottle. It sounds awesome.
Rooster:You can tell he's back from Cuba.
Gizmo:So what were you guys smoking? What was kind of the was did everybody have their own individual lineups? Did what what was All individual lamps. We were just smoking
Senator:potpourri, little bit of everything, little potpourri. But we were watching little college basketball. There was some NBA game NBA on that night. That night worked out because that
Rooster:It's a great night.
Senator:Yeah. That that that prompted the purchase of another a second seventy five inch TV out there. You're gonna have a double rover. I already my son helped me set it up. Can you believe?
Senator:Two and a half years old. I'm not kidding. This kid loves building things. He's helped me screw in bolts because I had to build another rover for it. He held the rover while I'm mounting on the the 75 inch.
Senator:That's impressive.
Bam Bam:Future engineer.
Senator:That's right. You never know. So it is fully functional. So now the setup is basically since under the deck is waterproof sealed, there is permanently a TV out there. And then the other TV I keep in the garage, and I just roll out for the fire pit area, and then that 55 inch goes up on the deck.
Senator:So we'll have three TVs. I mean, during March Madness, I have the two seventy five inch screens next to each other, like multiple games going. That's awesome. That's cool. Fantastic over the past weekend.
Gizmo:Nice. Excellent. So you were mentioning that you guys were drinking a lot, And then you're a big stemware guy. I know you've talked in the past about glasses breaking, etcetera. So as the resident stemware guy, we've had some folks emailing about stemware.
Gizmo:Obviously, we did the whole deep dive during the wine episode a few weeks ago about stemware preferences and, you know, drinking in the proper stemware. So what do you do when you're outside? Solo cups? So no solo cups. That's what I do.
Chef:Senator in a solo cup?
Bam Bam:That doesn't those things don't go. That shit don't work. No.
Senator:But if it's just for, you know, something that's disposable, like those kinda smaller, like, wine, like, disposable glasses
Bam Bam:They're clear plastic.
Senator:They're clear plastic. So, like, you know, they look clear. They look, you know Elevated. Decent, a little elevated. They feel good in the hand, but what I've been wanting is just once everything is set up, some unbreakable proper stemware.
Senator:What I have found so I've ordered from Amazon and even I went to Crate and Barrel, every kind of lowball scotch glass that you can find that's unbreakable. The material you want is I think it's called Tritan. It's kind of like acrylic, but feels more substantial and looks more like real glass. Are these made by Riedel? They make with the same material.
Senator:I didn't like their designs, but they make exactly the same material I'm talking about. And you're talking about Riedel?
Gizmo:Yes.
Chef:Criollo, Crayola, Riedel, Riedel.
Rooster:E I e I o.
Senator:But after trying a number of these, and this has literally been a project for me this this past weekend, I have found awesome scotch glasses. So I just ordered a set of 12. I'm working on wine glasses, stemless. That'll also be good for like champagne and wine because it's like I'm not gonna disposable I shouldn't say disposable. The reusable the tri tan like champagne flutes, none of them are really great.
Senator:The coupe glasses they have, none of them are really what I'd want. So I actually love I mean, there are a lot of places where you go if you get champagne. They'll actually serve them in, like, these smaller essentially wine glasses, and you get more, you know, surface area in there for the nose and all that and for doping up a bit. So should have everything by the end of this week, but even for the outside, stemware is really important. And I'll I'll eventually send around the link for the the scotch glasses because I think anybody who has a patio I mean, prior to this, I always had a deck.
Senator:The patio was an addition. With a deck, you don't have to worry. You know, glass falls, as long as it's substantial like a rocks glass, it's not gonna break. Patio, the other hand, as soon as that glass hits, it's gonna shine.
Gizmo:It's cooked.
Senator:So it's like, you know, it's just annoying, you know, to have to deal with that when it happens, then everybody's worried about glass. So to have something that total peace of mind still feels great in the hand, I think super important for anybody with an outdoor setup like that.
Gizmo:Awesome. Well, I'm sorry that we missed it.
Bam Bam:Oh, yeah.
Gizmo:I wish we were able to attend. Obviously, we were out of the country, but There'll
Rooster:be many more.
Gizmo:Oh, I We
Chef:had you guys on FaceTime.
Gizmo:I know. You're right.
Chef:You were there with us.
Pagoda:Senator's Lounge is open now.
Bam Bam:Yes. Senator
Gizmo:Even if he's not there, we can go. Yeah. Senator,
Pagoda:curious for
Bam Bam:for beer pong. He's there right
Gizmo:now. For beer pong.
Chef:For beer pong. Do you use solo cups
Gizmo:or you have
Pagoda:lot of
Senator:this is gonna be
Rooster:There is beer pong stemware.
Senator:No. This is I'm gonna eat a lot of shit for this one.
Gizmo:Uh-oh.
Senator:So there's a photo. I'd have to find this. This was back when I was dating my wife. When you go to the masters, you get these cups. They're like thick plastic cups with the Masters logo and the year on them, and everyone collects them.
Senator:So like each beer you get there, and you're there like ten hours basically. So like you're going through like 10 beers a day basically, And you just collect these glasses. It's like by the end of and I went three different years. It's like even my first year, I probably came home with like 15 of these things.
Bam Bam:Wow.
Senator:So I have a ton of them. And I actually in the island in my apartment when I lived in DC, we everybody wanted to play beer pong and I didn't have solo cups, so I used Masters cups for beer pong. So I still have them, and I still break them out for that occasion.
Gizmo:Nice.
Chef:I expect nothing less from you.
Pagoda:Will it be beer pong or tequila pong? Correct.
Gizmo:Well, sounds like it was a great event. I'm looking forward to when we're in town for one, hopefully very soon.
Senator:Oh, it'll be I'm telling you, we're gonna have so many nights out there. I also discovered so I got Apple TVs now for all the TVs, and you can connect the Sonos audio of the TV through that, which was a game changer I recently discovered. So
Gizmo:So much better quality than actually using the TV speakers. Exactly. Because the TV speakers, if you think about a flat screen TV, most of the TV speakers shoot out the back.
Pagoda:That's right.
Gizmo:Yeah. And they're planning on they're not planning on cigar smokers outside with it on a rover. They're planning on it being on a wall, so they're using the reflective nature of the wall to shoot it back out at you, which obviously then also dampers and changes the tone of it. But when you have a Sonos that's dialed in, functioning great, and pointed right at you, even if you have a sub two somewhere, sub, you know, base is non directional. But, you know, highs and mids are directional.
Gizmo:So if they're focused at you and pointed at you with a great system, it elevates the whole night.
Bam Bam:I am I am in awe of you right now. I you are the digital MacGyver. That's what you are. I have a whole story about this guy.
Chef:Oh, boy. And I'll say this because this is a problem I was facing with my TV on my Rover on my deck. I'm like, man, well, I'm losing all the sound because I don't have it flush against the wall most of the time. I discovered that on Amazon, they sell reflectors that you could put on the TVs themselves to shoot the song forward. Yep.
Chef:So or you just get yeah.
Rooster:We could also get a soundbar.
Chef:Yeah. Yeah.
Senator:That's you can.
Chef:It's just more shit to bring inside when you're, you know, done watching or whatever.
Senator:The other thing I'll say for lizards with a rover setup that I discovered. So with my fire pit area, it's more long than it is narrow. So the viewing angle on a TV, you kinda never have to worry. The setup under my deck is more wide, and so on any TV, especially outside, the viewing angles from the side of a TV are never very good. The only time that they're gonna be good is with an OLED TV, but then you're dropping serious money for an outdoor TV.
Senator:I thought I was going to buy an OLED TV to put under the deck because the viewing angles just sucked with how wide that area is. Ironically, I had a Roku TV out there, and I really love Roku's apps because they have like every app imaginable where like the built in systems in most like Samsung, LG, any of them, they don't have half the apps that Roku does, and it's super easy and just seamless. I had a problem for some reason getting into the Roku ecosystem, so I had to hook up an Apple TV. The big discovery for me with this, Apple TV, if you get like the newer, like the four k ones, they upscale the image quality. Yep.
Senator:And so when I put the same app that I was previously watching with the native app built into the TV instead on the Apple TV, it upscaled so great that the viewing angles from every direction were perfect. So I saved a ton of money in not needing to buy an OLED TV for this anymore because now you buy an Apple TV for, like, a hundred $20, you're basically set. So for anyone that has a wider seating area with a rover, the people that are on the edges always get the worst view of the TV. Get an Apple TV to upscale the quality, save you a ton of money, and everybody's gonna be happy.
Bam Bam:That's great.
Gizmo:And I just find the Apple TV too. You know, most folks have iPhones. You wanna shoot something from the phone to the TV. It's so seamless, and it just works.
Rooster:Plus, the menu is great.
Gizmo:A cigar. Cigar is unbelievable.
Bam Bam:It's Henriette, I don't know what you did here, but this is exquisite. And it's only getting better and better.
Rooster:This is the Steve Saka umagog. No.
Pagoda:Umagaga. I don't think so.
Gizmo:Aren't you gaga about it?
Bam Bam:I'm gaga about it, but It's the umagaga. I don't think it's a Dunbarton product.
Gizmo:It's not. I don't think this is Dunbarton. I think this is definitely something Honduran or Dominican at this point. I'm leaning more Honduran, more primarily Honduran, but there may be some Dominican or Nicaraguan, but that's where I'm sitting right now. Where are you guys at?
Bam Bam:I agree with you.
Senator:Yeah. Yeah. In the
Gizmo:same boat.
Bam Bam:Hard to that. We all
Pagoda:are the same. The only thing with the rapper, probably, like, one of the either the Ecuadorian Habanos or the Ecuadorian Yeah.
Rooster:Don't think I don't think it's it's it's a
Gizmo:poor Honduran either. I agree with you on that.
Rooster:I it's it's got some Dominican and Honduran
Gizmo:Or even Nicaraguan tobacco. Could be.
Chef:Yeah. Honduran tends to be a little more floral. I'm not getting a lot of floral here.
Rooster:But there is some floral.
Bam Bam:I get a little floral. Yeah. Do too.
Pagoda:I do. I do. I get a little bit.
Chef:I'm getting tremendous baking spice still and
Pagoda:A bit more biscuity now.
Bam Bam:The aroma on the cigar is very biscuity for me. It's not baking spice, but there's a toastiness to it, a biscuity to it. It's really very pleasant.
Senator:The baking spice you just get on the burn line.
Rooster:Yeah, Outstanding. It's gonna be hard to tell the brand, though.
Gizmo:Yeah. That's impossible. Know, because
Rooster:if you've never had it
Pagoda:When you don't know, you call it xeno.
Rooster:Even when you do know, you
Bam Bam:call Another coined expression. You're on fire. Another pagoda
Gizmo:Another pagoda ism. I mean, the thing with the
Senator:brand, for the major manufacturers,
Pagoda:I
Senator:feel like most of them, we would have a decent guess.
Bam Bam:Mhmm.
Senator:Right? Like, this doesn't taste like any Fuente I've ever had.
Gizmo:No. I would rule out Fuente.
Senator:We've obviously ruled out Padron. None of us think this is primarily Nicaraguan tobacco. This doesn't It's not Davodoff. Look or taste like a Davodoff.
Bam Bam:Definitely not.
Senator:So like, whatever brand this is, I think it has to be something that we don't know, we're not as familiar with.
Bam Bam:Could could it be an obscure avo that we don't know about maybe?
Gizmo:I'm thinking my gut way. My gut is telling me this is a boutique brand we haven't had before that has components of stuff we have had before. That's my gut right now.
Rooster:Could it be a CAO?
Chef:It could be a warped.
Gizmo:Oh. It could be a warped.
Senator:Oh, Warped is a good That's
Rooster:a great call out.
Gizmo:Will say though, the construction on this is better than what I've experienced recently on several warped cigars.
Bam Bam:And the ashes on the typical warped are darker from my The
Chef:ash was pristine on this. This is bright white.
Senator:Yeah. I'm just saying, his flavor profile
Bam Bam:wise It's theirs. Yeah, yeah.
Senator:Warped should be in the conversation.
Bam Bam:Mhmm.
Senator:I think Chef is very smart to point that out.
Pagoda:Mhmm. Link to Fab Five and Warped.
Gizmo:I mean, if this is Fabrica Five, I'm gonna feel like a fool.
Bam Bam:Tasting panel, global insider.
Gizmo:Status that status is gonna be revoked then.
Bam Bam:Correct. So on our way out of Cuba, we were delayed in the airport for at least eleven hours.
Gizmo:Yeah. We were stuck in Havana.
Bam Bam:Twelve Hours.
Senator:It was a disaster. Is after after you broke the bottle of Havana Club?
Gizmo:We're saving listen. We're saving that story
Bam Bam:for the
Gizmo:Cube episode.
Bam Bam:Very heartbreaking moment. I was so you know what it was? I was so excited I know. To have those three bottles in.
Gizmo:He was like a little kid.
Bam Bam:I really was.
Gizmo:Bottles in his hand.
Bam Bam:And it broke, and I was like, my face went blank. I don't
Chef:think the flight was
Rooster:in picture of it.
Bam Bam:No. No.
Chef:I I I think he missed the flight because he was just staring at
Bam Bam:the bottom on the
Pagoda:flight. It'll be posted on the Instagram, right?
Bam Bam:I It was hours in the airport, and we were thinking, are we gonna stay in Cuba another day? It sounded like there wasn't gonna be any flights available, so we probably had to go back, come back another day, go through customs, and do the whole thing again. Sounds terrible to have
Senator:to stay another day in Cuba.
Bam Bam:Well, no,
Rooster:it was at the airport.
Gizmo:It was pretty harrowing up here.
Senator:No. No. At the airport. I'm saying if you guys had stayed another night there, obviously, that
Bam Bam:would be That's true, but they were gonna put us up at some hotel that the airline was going to select for
Rooster:us. Told them Massimo.
Senator:Yeah, well screw that, you guys would've just gone to one of our places.
Bam Bam:Yeah, that's true. So you know, we're sitting there, everyone's worried, everyone's kind of down, Gizmo stands up, some kind of switch flipped in that brain of his. He saved at least a quarter of the people in that airport. He literally got up, systematically went through our phones. He took my phone, got me on a flight, got Henry Doe on a flight, got several people that were surrounded that were all panicking because we didn't know what was gonna happen.
Bam Bam:Got them on a flight. Gizmo charters? No. Dude, this guy's a digital MacGyver. I'm not kidding.
Bam Bam:It was incredible.
Senator:I could get him a job at American Airlines.
Bam Bam:You probably Let
Gizmo:me tell you something. American Airlines is out after that experience.
Bam Bam:Oh, dude.
Pagoda:I think they're also looking for some aircraft controllers.
Bam Bam:Yeah. It was just it was incredibly dramatic. And we finally get to Miami, and we knew prior to there weren't any rental cars. So we were gonna get stuck there.
Senator:There were no rental cars
Gizmo:in No rental cars. So let me explain.
Senator:It was awful.
Gizmo:We had come back from Havana. American Airlines All Day had kind of punted this flight and kind of ruined our day. They were a little dishonest about what was happening, and ruined our ability to pick another flight, fly another airline, go somewhere else. But we
Bam Bam:missed every connecting flight because we were there for so Yeah.
Gizmo:We didn't
Bam Bam:know what was gonna happen.
Gizmo:So when we got to Miami, and we were realizing this while we were in Havana, that there was an issue in Miami. I don't know if it was spring break or weather or something. But after we started missing connecting flights, Miami, Palm Beach, and Fort Lauderdale had zero flights back to New York for thirty six hours.
Bam Bam:Correct.
Gizmo:And we were missing all of our And no cars to rent
Bam Bam:at any of these airports.
Gizmo:No rentals available.
Rooster:Wow. So this
Senator:is widespread. This is
Bam Bam:a nightmare. So he so they realized this prior to us getting to Miami. So we get to Miami. Lizard Henry's online fighting for us to get our money back for the connecting flight that we couldn't possibly make. This guy, I stay with the luggage because that's what I'm good at, and he and this guy goes out into the wild, like, hunting big game.
Bam Bam:And what did you get for us?
Rooster:You Of some
Bam Bam:boss. Miraculously, he found
Gizmo:I found a three row
Bam Bam:SUV. SUV, GMC Acadia. Perfect. Now they hated the car. You loved those.
Bam Bam:I was very thankful to have a car because from there, we drove where? So we had
Gizmo:to go to we had to drive two and a half hours or two hours to Fort Myers across the across the state because that was the only airline the the airport that could get us back to New York the next morning. So when we landed it in Miami from Havana, we missed our connection because when we were in Havana on the flight, we waited twelve hours to get on. They they sat us at the gate waiting for two people in the terminal Mhmm. To get on the plane. I don't understand why.
Gizmo:Then we land in Miami, and we missed our connecting flight. Correct.
Senator:So we
Gizmo:had to drive to Fort Myers that night, stay over
Bam Bam:Through the swamps of Florida. Drove to the black.
Gizmo:Yeah. We drove to the Everglades in the pitch black. I you know, it was a miracle. But the next morning, we woke up at 04:30 and Unreal. Drove to Fort Myers ago.
Bam Bam:Was it was awesome.
Gizmo:Yeah. It was quite a story.
Bam Bam:All full at the same time.
Pagoda:Yeah. I'm glad you guys are back home safe.
Gizmo:Yeah. Me too. So we'll tell more of our Havana story on an upcoming Cuba episode, but that was our American Airlines hell story and our dude. You
Chef:are my hero. Did did you smoke in the rental?
Gizmo:We did not. No. I actually asked how much the fee was because if it was a hundred, we would have done it, but it was 400, so we did it. So so, boys, we're in the last third here on our blind cigar tonight. We're getting ready to invite lizard Henry in here in a minute after some listener email.
Gizmo:What's everybody thinking right now?
Chef:Fabulous cigar.
Bam Bam:It's a fabulous cigar.
Senator:I think the thing I'm happiest with is the flavor profile has been so awesome. I have not wanted it to change.
Bam Bam:True.
Senator:And it hasn't. All those flavor notes are there. It's been consistent, but there's so many, and there's enough that it's complex and refined. Super happy with this cigar.
Rooster:Absolutely has picked up in strength
Gizmo:a tad. Maybe a touch. A little bit. I would say it's still medium. Agree.
Gizmo:Call it medium plus right now.
Rooster:No. Medium plus.
Gizmo:No. That was for chef Ricky.
Bam Bam:Are you serious right now? We need to
Senator:beat this out of Gizmo's vocabulary. Jesus.
Bam Bam:No. No. It's a good one. It's a good one. I like it.
Bam Bam:Don't know it's by
Pagoda:the way.
Bam Bam:But it's still very creamy and velvety.
Gizmo:I agree. This is a great cigar.
Senator:I love chef Ricky the other night. We were talking about this ridiculous Rare Plus crap that Gizbo says, and Ricky goes, I have news for people who order Rare Plus. There's no Rare Plus option on any POS system at any steakhouse in America. They're hitting medium rare. They're bringing it out.
Senator:The person's saying, oh, this is a great Rare Plus stink.
Gizmo:Probably true.
Senator:It's gotta
Gizmo:be true. Nobody's putting Foca Rare
Chef:Plus in their
Senator:fucking POS system.
Bam Bam:Fair enough. Serious question though. Yeah. Where's he gonna sit?
Gizmo:He's this is all set up for him right here.
Bam Bam:Oh, he's gonna stand.
Gizmo:He's gonna stand right there.
Chef:I love
Gizmo:it. Headphones and everything.
Bam Bam:Look at you.
Chef:You know, the only thing that could make this better, if there was a monitoring room where he could kinda sit out A green room.
Bam Bam:He needs a green room.
Rooster:He can listen to
Gizmo:bar. Wizard green room
Bam Bam:Correct.
Gizmo:With a live audio feed.
Bam Bam:Ball of Skittles.
Senator:Just just put them in the bathroom.
Bam Bam:A ball of Skittles. Yeah.
Gizmo:Alright, boys. Let's go to some listener email now. I really like this one, and this is gonna be our lizard of the week. And now this is going to be a repeat lizard of the week from our first ever winner, Lizard Craig. And Lizard Craig sent us an email, and I really loved it.
Gizmo:I wanted to share it with you guys. And he's gonna be our lizard of the week this week. He says, Lizard Gizmo and my fellow lizards, I cannot express my surprise and gratitude at the gift I received for having been the first lizard of the week. Thank you so much for the cigars and the kind note. After having started listening to the pod in 2024, I have now finished the entire catalog and have revisited about half of the episodes.
Gizmo:So he's listened to the entire catalog of 175 episodes, one and a half times. Unbelievable.
Senator:Guarantee he went back to the Bam Bam accountability hour.
Gizmo:Oh, at least three times.
Bam Bam:I was just thinking that.
Gizmo:I'll tell you, the numbers on that one just keep hitting every week.
Bam Bam:No.
Gizmo:So he says, as I return to further absorb your comments on cigars that I have since sourced in order to smoke along with you, as, of course, I say on the the intro where I list what we're doing, he says, I have also studied the pairings, many of which were new to me. As many lizards have commented, listening to the pod can be an expensive exercise. Solely as a result of the pod, I now have a Sodolo, the case, of course, that we love, and I bought a second for a smoking buddy friend of mine, two ST DuPont lighters, an extensive correct collection of Padrons and Davidoffs, and a growing seller of Paul Roger. What? Thanks to Bam and I.
Bam Bam:Yes. Tequila Let's go.
Gizmo:And other spirits reviewed. Thank you for all the suggestions which have enhanced my enjoyment of the cigar journey.
Bam Bam:Hold on. Two cigar cases, two ST DuPont lighters?
Gizmo:Yep. And Padron and Davodoff extensive collections of both.
Bam Bam:I mean, he's doing better than most of our members.
Gizmo:He's killing it.
Pagoda:On his dime, he must be retired.
Bam Bam:And I
Senator:Or he
Gizmo:works with you.
Bam Bam:He takes one to know one. Correct. I go to, like, a fellow retiree.
Senator:I know one when I see one.
Bam Bam:And I guarantee he will not walk in his club if he goes to the one with the plastic
Gizmo:That's true. He does know the lizard rules
Bam Bam:Correct.
Gizmo:As as Bam Bam has laid out.
Senator:Correct. All of us follow except one.
Bam Bam:That's also true.
Gizmo:Only on pod night.
Bam Bam:Alright.
Gizmo:Hey, Pagoda. Just lay out for us very briefly. What is your ideal work week?
Bam Bam:Jesus.
Pagoda:It's called twelve to twelve.
Gizmo:Twelve to okay. Go ahead.
Pagoda:Life. It starts at 12PM on a Monday morning
Gizmo:K.
Pagoda:And ends at 12PM on a Friday afternoon.
Senator:Alright. And does work take place in between? Or what happens?
Rooster:Couple of days off in the middle, though. Right? You
Pagoda:can't work. You would entertain clients, you go for lunch on most days.
Rooster:Liquid lunches.
Senator:A long
Pagoda:By the way, I hope my boss doesn't listen to that.
Rooster:The twelve to twelve, I love it. Correct.
Gizmo:You should run for office somewhere.
Senator:You should run for mayor of New York.
Pagoda:No, no, no. I'm gonna be the idea man for senator when he runs for office.
Bam Bam:Correct. Perfect. Know what the slogan's gonna be.
Lizard Henrito:Life. Life.
Senator:Abundance. Correct, I'll do that. What's your platform, senator? Pagoda? Abundance.
Chef:Life is a bliss.
Gizmo:So I really love this. This really hit me. He says, Shelley once wrote that, quote, poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. And I say, quote, the lizards are the uncompensated influencers of the cigar world. Oh, I like that.
Gizmo:That's pretty cool. I like that. One suggestion, which is probably unlikely, but here it goes. Years ago, the Fuentes held a cigar family celebration in The US and later in The Dominican Republic that brought their fans together. A lizard nation celebration would be a blast and an opportunity for fellow lizards to commune about the cigar journey.
Gizmo:We've been talking about it.
Bam Bam:Well, it would be ideal to do that in Cuba.
Rooster:Ideal. Okay, man.
Bam Bam:Restrictions coming down the road, God knows what's gonna happen with that.
Gizmo:Yeah. We're gonna definitely do something in The US. There's no question about that. We've been talking about it. But we're definitely gonna do an event.
Chef:I say we sit on a stage with our mics in our AI costumes, the ones that were created by that Bam's gonna love this one.
Bam Bam:You know what? I'm going to have an entire body prosthetic made that I can slip into. That's great. That's a great idea. So is it?
Bam Bam:It is because he's going to spend
Gizmo:about $10 on this.
Bam Bam:I am. So preserve our anonymity. Yeah.
Gizmo:And he finishes here. Thanks again for all you put into the pod. I am now going to light one, boys. Lizard Craig. What a great email and our first lizard of the week and this week's lizard of the week.
Gizmo:Anybody out there, of course, can win lizard of the week. All you have to do is send us an email, a comment on Instagram, even a comment on Spotify. Now I don't know if you I don't know if you guys know that listeners can do that and actually write comments on the episode on Spotify. Pretty cool. Instagram, wherever you choose, but we love to hear from our listeners.
Gizmo:Comment, subscribe, and leave it. Exactly right. One more from Lizard Seagull here. He says, guys, another informative podcast. He's referring to episode 175, the Padron episode we did a couple weeks ago.
Gizmo:He says, what do you guys do when not recording the pod while smoking? I know sitting around, of course, enjoying camaraderie, maybe golfing, but what other things do you guys do while you smoke?
Pagoda:Most of us work.
Bam Bam:Ridicule each other.
Chef:Yeah. Exactly what we do on the park.
Bam Bam:Yeah. Throw lit cigars at each other.
Gizmo:Does anybody work while they smoke? I know some of us come to the lounge here if we have a like a laptop day. Occasionally. You know, you're doing busy work. I do a lot.
Gizmo:Yeah.
Senator:Yeah. For me, if I need to be really creative, nothing puts me in that right frame of mind like lighting up a cigar. I could be stuck on something for like a day. All of sudden, I come to lounge or I'm at my house and I light up a cigar, and it's like all of a sudden everything's clear. It's really bizarre.
Bam Bam:It's all about that cloud of smoke, man.
Gizmo:Yeah, that's right.
Chef:I've had some pretty productive restaurant meetings here at the lounge while smoking a cigar. So it's, yeah. It's being able to smoke while working helps for sure.
Gizmo:Obviously golf's an obvious one, right Pagoda?
Pagoda:Yeah, no, but Pagoda only focuses on work when he works.
Bam Bam:Correct.
Pagoda:No cigars for him. Correct. No cigars.
Senator:He goes two hours during the week without cigars.
Rooster:Yeah. Exactly. The other thing
Gizmo:I do, I drive while I smoke.
Bam Bam:Mhmm. And you eat Caesar salad.
Gizmo:Exactly right.
Bam Bam:Correct.
Chef:I find it hard to drive and not smoke these days.
Gizmo:I agree. Yeah. I agree.
Chef:It's it's
Rooster:Such a bad habit, though.
Gizmo:You were you invented it in this group. You were the first one.
Bam Bam:You're a rolling ashtray, man.
Gizmo:Yeah, man.
Pagoda:I try and develop a clientele who smokes cigars so that I can just take them out to sit out loud.
Bam Bam:Smart. Smart.
Gizmo:Yeah. So I think that's about it. I mean, lizard seagull continues here. I enjoy working, cleaning my motorcycle. It's outside, so smoke's not an issue.
Gizmo:I can work on the bike for about an hour and a half while I enjoy a stick. Today, for polishing a front wheel, always a pain in the ass. Since you are a full house of seven, what happens when you guys have a full house of eight? So he's, of course, referring to the beginning of the episode. Whenever there's seven of us here, I say it's a full house of lizards.
Gizmo:So obviously, with chef coming into the fold, now we have eight. I still have stuck to whenever we have seven, I say it's a full house of lizards. So I guess eight is like a full house plus?
Bam Bam:Correct. Oh, here we go. Seven plus. You were waiting to say that.
Gizmo:Actually just came up
Bam Bam:with it
Pagoda:right now. Chef Ricky loves it.
Bam Bam:How brilliant.
Gizmo:Yeah. So that's just something I kept since day one of recording the intro every week. But, yeah, anytime it's seven or more, I call it a full house of lizards because it's definitely a full house in here when there's seven or more. There's no question about that. So thanks to lizard seagull for writing that great email.
Gizmo:And boys, we are coming to the end of our evening here. It's time first, of course, to do the formal liquor rating on the Florida Kanye eighteen years aged rum, and then we're gonna bring Lizard Henry in and do our rating on the cigar. But let's start with the rum first. Bam Bam, you're up.
Bam Bam:What's the year statement that we really like? I don't remember.
Gizmo:The seven and the '12.
Pagoda:And the '7 and the '12.
Bam Bam:It's the '7, correct Yeah. That we drink a lot of. I happen to love that. And because of the price, I think I gave that a 10. I think maybe we all did at one time.
Bam Bam:I'm gonna give this a nine.
Gizmo:Okay.
Bam Bam:I think it's delicious. I think it's an elevated experience from the seven, but I can drink the seven pretty easily. This one requires more of a measured pace for me. I'll give it a nine. Think that's a great rating.
Bam Bam:Delicious.
Gizmo:Chef?
Chef:Yeah, this is a perfect rum. For me, it's a nine plus. So that's a 10?
Senator:There you go. So you're at
Bam Bam:a 10?
Gizmo:By the way, in my system over here, there's where for me to put a plus.
Senator:So you have to So you'll put the 10 like media.
Chef:That's okay. Just put a 10.
Bam Bam:I'm surprised you don't have that in your system.
Chef:No, it's great. It's, you know, it's not overly sweet. It's complex. It's a little cerebral. I really enjoy it, and I think it's a versatile spirit, and at $60, it's a fucking steal.
Bam Bam:So we don't know what your rating is. 10. It's a 10? Okay. Yeah.
Bam Bam:Got it.
Gizmo:All right, Pagoda.
Pagoda:It's a 10 for me, meaning hands down. I think I'm a big Florida Kanye fan. For $60, this is a fantastic spirit. 18 years age. But you know, just overall, you know, one of the things I must mention is no ice required.
Pagoda:You know? And it did enhance the cigar at some points, or it didn't, or it complemented it really well, I think. It worked really well. I've really enjoyed the experience, and I had a wonderful night. It's a 10 for me.
Gizmo:It's a 10 for me too. When I took the nose on this, before I even sipped it, I was blown away by how smooth it was, how sweet it was, but it didn't taste fake or engineered. It's a very natural sweetness on the nose. And then when you sip it, it didn't have a lot of heat. It had the perfect amount, had the perfect amount of dryness, and the sweetness there really complemented the cigar very well.
Gizmo:Yeah. I'm I would be very happy to have this at home for a holiday, but at 60, I feel like this could be Anytime. A pretty regular pairing for cigars.
Bam Bam:You like this better than the seven?
Gizmo:I like it as much as I do the seven. I would just drink the seven more, I would say, because
Bam Bam:k.
Gizmo:Of the price. Right? The price. So the price of the seven centered Half the price,
Pagoda:$30.
Gizmo:What's it? $30? 20 8 bucks? 30 bucks.
Chef:And I guess it's easier to find. I'll guess the seven's easier to find than the 18.
Bam Bam:Yeah. I don't see the price as a factor because this is a great deal. I just think the seven's so much more drinkable and it's similar to
Gizmo:How could you say there's a drinkability issue It's great.
Bam Bam:We're splitting hairs between nine and ten, but whatever. You're both right.
Senator:But I'll explain why in
Gizmo:my reading. Yeah, I'm very happy at a 10. I think this is a perfect rum. I love it, and I can't wait to get more.
Chef:If I could speak quickly to the construction of the cigar, I have about an inch of vascular
Bam Bam:Look at that.
Chef:Inch of wrapper left.
Bam Bam:He's barely holding on with
Senator:his is ridiculous.
Bam Bam:He has his fingernails This is hard. Are capturing
Pagoda:the extreme edge.
Bam Bam:That's like a Cigar.
Pagoda:A kung fu kind of a hole. Yeah. He's a
Bam Bam:what? It's called a fingernail hole. Look at him.
Gizmo:Incredible. Wow. So for me on the rum tonight, boys, it's a 10. Senator.
Senator:So for what this is and what it's trying to do, I'm also at a 10. You know, why I say you're both right, I'm very sympathetic to what Bam is saying because I wrestled with a nine and a 10. And the only reason I gave it the 10, it's it's a nine for Bam, and in many ways, it could have been a nine for me in the sense that, like, I do agree. Like, the seven is more drinkable. And what what Bam, I think, is saying there is this is a very full bodied expression.
Senator:This is not something that you feel like you're gonna drink four glasses of. You're gonna drink one or two glasses, you're gonna be super satisfied with that. But if you're putting in a really lengthy session, it's like the difference between, you know, the Havana Club seven year
Pagoda:Mhmm.
Senator:And like the Havana Club Selection de Maestros, like, that's a full bodied Cuban rum. That's something you're gonna have more sparingly, and it's the same difference here. So this isn't trying to be that, like, every day you're gonna drink copious amounts of this. This is trying to be Elevated and Elevated. Yeah.
Senator:Full and rich in the experience, and if you're gonna have one cigar, or after dinner, you know, you want a really nice spirit after that meal, this slots in perfectly for that.
Bam Bam:Right.
Senator:If you're gonna have five cigars, you're gonna pull for the seven year.
Bam Bam:I agree.
Senator:Yeah. And I think that's the difference. So I agree with, you know, what both are saying, and I I totally get where Bam's coming from in his nine. I just gave it a 10 because for the occasion it's trying to compete for, I think it does an outstanding job of delivering that really full rich, immersive experience. And, you know, the thing I like best with all these Florida Cana rums and for something this full bodied, there's no additives.
Senator:There's nothing at all that feels out of place or off putting, and you can enjoy more of it as a result.
Bam Bam:Sure.
Senator:Right? With these rums that are super sweet, it's like you have more than two of those
Bam Bam:You're done.
Senator:You feel like crap the next morning.
Bam Bam:Yeah. All.
Senator:Yeah. That's never the case with Florida Cana. Correct. So I think they've done a really nice job, and $60, even if this were 70, even if this were 80.
Gizmo:I think it'd be the same. Yeah.
Senator:Yeah. I mean, it's that good.
Pagoda:Yeah. It's very flavorful. I think with the seven, thinner, if you agree, I think that's a little more versatile in the sense that you could have it in the summer. This is probably a three season thing, like a spring, fall, winter thing. I agree.
Pagoda:Maybe like in the summer after, like if it was a nice night at the end of a dinner, like you mentioned. But it's still, for the experience today, and for the price level and for the flavor profile, it's fantastic.
Gizmo:Agree. Alright, boys. So the formal liquor rating tonight on the 18 years aged FortiCagna rum to 9.8.
Bam Bam:Excellent score.
Gizmo:What an excellent score. Let's compare that to the other Fortecanya rum we've done on the pod. We'll start first. We did the Fortecanya 20, as I said, on episode 126. We did not rate that as we were at PCA with the manufacturer.
Gizmo:On episode 135, we did the 12 years age, scored a 9.7. And on episode 145, we did the seven years age that you guys were just talking about Mhmm. Scored identical to this at a 9.8.
Bam Bam:Interesting. What an excellent product.
Gizmo:Excellent product. Excellent.
Pagoda:That might be We love brand.
Gizmo:Be one of the best scoring products overall. Oh, yeah. Pairing, you know, cigar, spirit, wine, tequila, anything that we've ever done. We've done four of them now. We've rated three.
Bam Bam:Mhmm.
Gizmo:I mean, it's just excellent.
Senator:That sounds great. Is, like, we discovered this by chance, by meeting their brand ambassador at PCA. Yeah. I mean, if if anyone at Florida Conyers listening, Luis does a hell of a job. We would not have found this spirit without meeting him.
Bam Bam:That's correct. Right.
Pagoda:And I hope to meet him soon. We all hope
Bam Bam:to meet Oh, I'm sure he'll
Gizmo:be back.
Bam Bam:Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Gizmo:Alright, boys. It's time now to go into the formal lizard rating tonight on our absolute blind cigar, the first time we've ever done this on the podcast. Thanks to our friend Lizard Henrito Henrito. Who we're gonna invite in in a minute. It's time now to do our rating on this cigar.
Gizmo:Rooster, you're up. So much pressure on me.
Pagoda:Jeez. Oh, there's no pressure. You know what the rating is. I know what you're rating
Rooster:So this cigar, I mean, right from the light, I think Henry just hit a home run with this, picking this cigar. It's a phenomenal cigar. Just on the light, I mean, sweetness that you got from the cigar, and then throughout the construction, the burn, the aroma on the foot, and this room was full of smoke. I mean, what a cigar. It's an excellent cigar.
Rooster:I don't think there's any Ligero in this, or at least I don't think there is any. I think this is a blend of Honduran with some Dominican, possibly Nicaraguan, but I think it's mostly Honduran and Dominican blend with maybe some kind of an Ecuadorian
Bam Bam:Filler of
Senator:some Wrapper.
Rooster:Wrapper. Wrapper.
Pagoda:Yeah, yeah, Ecuadorian wrapper,
Rooster:I think. I don't know what brand it is. I mean, somebody did mention Warped. Maybe it's a Warp that I haven't had. I mean, have had the Warp Reboosta, but it tastes different than that.
Rooster:It's not like a Fuente. It's definitely not a Padron. It's not a Davidoff. It could be a boutique brand. I don't know what the price point of this.
Rooster:But this is a fantastic smoke. I mean, it's a great cigar. I'm gonna
Chef:Go for
Pagoda:it. Yes, we know it.
Senator:Do it. Just do it. Don't know how
Bam Bam:much this thing is either.
Pagoda:You know
Gizmo:how much it is,
Rooster:but I I know that it's not over $40.
Senator:Yeah. You know
Bam Bam:it's under 40. You know it's under $40.
Pagoda:A lot of money.
Rooster:Well, I I don't think it's well, I have no idea.
Gizmo:On the last the last few weeks on the pod, we did the Linea Maestro, which is a hundred and 15. We did the Padron, and we did the Siglas six. So this is a bargain,
Chef:according So long story short, we need a $15 stick.
Gizmo:This is
Rooster:So I'm gonna give this a 10. All right. Boo. It absolutely satisfies every single you know, whatever I look for in a cigar, it's there.
Gizmo:Alright.
Rooster:So I'm at I'm at a 10.
Gizmo:Very nice. Senator. I can't
Senator:believe I'm saying this. I'm in lockstep with Rooster. This has been an outstanding experience from start to finish. Before even getting into the flavor, the construction on this all the way through is flawless. There is not one thing that I think any of us has had to complain about with this cigar.
Senator:The burn was perfectly even, the ash held on, even Pagoda's pants are relatively clean. Relatively. I mean, chef had inches of I mean, probably the first half of the cigar, he didn't even need to ash,
Rooster:which is bright, bright, white ash.
Bam Bam:Chef had to use a kung fu move to hold on to the to the very end of it.
Senator:Just a a beautiful, handsome cigar. The flavor profile, I think for for myself, and and all of us, if not almost all of us, exactly the kind of notes that we chase in cigars. Exactly. Yeah. I think it was like the perfect balance between like sweet and savory, but more sweet, which if I had to pick one way I would hope it would lean, it would be a little sweeter.
Senator:I think you got a complexity of flavors from dried fruit. Even when chef had called out the raspberry at one point, I got that in the middle of the cigar, and then shockingly, and that's why I'm firmly at a 10. Right now. I mean, I've got you know
Bam Bam:Right now.
Senator:Less than an inch. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm getting berry. It's happening now.
Senator:Exactly.
Bam Bam:Like a deep like a deep berry.
Senator:For sure. Getting currant, my
Bam Bam:dear. Exactly. Currant.
Senator:I'm getting no rough edges in this cigar at all despite yeah. I I can't imagine this is aged with any significant, you know, number of years, but not one rough edge, nothing indicating really its youth that I'm sure has to be present. There's a creaminess about this cigar for most of the way through. The smoke output was excellent. I mean, we commented how the room was filled with smoke.
Senator:We've recently done some like 54 ring gauge cigars where you wouldn't even know that we smoked a cigar in this room. This is what you want when you're having a cigar and you wanna just relax and really unwind. I'm just blown away, and the nuttiness in this cigar, which also, you know, I love the nuttiness in Upmann. Obviously, it's not a Cuban cigar. Very present, paired really well with the rum.
Senator:I would absolutely recommend this. I'd buy it.
Bam Bam:If we knew what it was. Mean, there's so many things
Senator:to like. And I think as far as the the blend, you know, similar to what we've been talking about most of the way through, I think there's gotta be more Honduran tobacco than there is Dominican tobacco in this, but there's definitely gotta be both present in the sense that, like, this ends firmly medium. You know, I think if this were all Honduran tobacco, this would be milder than the experience you get in the last third of the cigar. You know, we talked about the wrapper, you know, likely being Ecuadorian, maybe an Ecuadorian Habana. We've talked about some other types.
Senator:Oral Connecticut shade. Yeah. Could be. I I don't I don't believe that to be the case, but we'll see. There's just man, I am truly blown away.
Senator:So Henrito has absolutely hit with the same whimsie.
Bam Bam:Redemption. Redemption. Out of the park.
Rooster:Out the park.
Senator:Mean, there's no other way to say it. I can't wait to light another one of these.
Pagoda:I hope it's a $5 cigar, then I love you. I'll come and out.
Gizmo:So it's a 10. It's a 10.
Bam Bam:Alright.
Gizmo:And I am with you both on that. This is a 10. This cigar, from the moment we took the cold draw, was relaxing. It was enjoyable. We didn't have to think about it.
Gizmo:The construction was all there. It was perfectly burning the entire way through. I think I touched it up once because I was talking a lot. It it just burned the whole way through, and it took us on a real journey that didn't change a lot but changed just enough in the right ways to keep your interest there. The flavors were there the whole time.
Gizmo:And like I said, from the cold draw, the flavor was just amazing. I mean, I was getting, like, Fig Newton I noted on
Bam Bam:on the
Gizmo:cold draw. Yeah. And then as we lit it, it just really took us to another level. I mean, I I'm completely blown away by this. This cigar credit to Lizard Henrico, as you guys have said, this cigar is right in my wheelhouse.
Gizmo:Like, I'm absolutely gonna order a box or a bundle or whatever, you know, quantity these things come in when we find out what the cigar is.
Senator:Bundle a 50. Luckily, Henrico is our new procurement. Correct. So he'll
Pagoda:take care
Gizmo:of it
Senator:for us.
Bam Bam:Exactly. No salary, but a lot of work.
Gizmo:There are benefits. Yes. You know, I love the chocolatey baking flavors, the fruit notes, little bit of coffee we talked about or I talked about. I thought it was great. And I just honestly, I think the last third might have been the best of the entire cigar.
Gizmo:It's shocking to
Rooster:say that.
Bam Bam:I have a lot to talk about
Gizmo:that final It's to say that. I'm completely blown away. Yeah. I do agree. I think this is a Honduran constructed cigar with mostly Honduran tobacco and either a touch of Dominican or Nicaraguan tobacco in it.
Gizmo:That is my gut feeling on this. But all in all, what an excellent experience tonight. I'm so glad we did this. It's a 10 for me. Pagoda.
Pagoda:Ten ten wins. Little Henri Toe. Redemption all the way through.
Bam Bam:All the way through.
Pagoda:No. But this has been a fantastic experience. You can see that we all are giddy up here. This has been a cigar which has been fantastic from the very beginning. It didn't even need to develop.
Pagoda:I think Roussard mentioned that even on the light, there was no, you know, blast of spice. So you know how even Lilith Poohba's here, he mentions, you know, the first quarter. There's nothing like that. It was pleasant from the start. You know, for me, I think as soon as I touched, even, you know, my tongue touched the end of the cut portion of the cigar, I felt a little bit of tea.
Pagoda:It was very complex. Obviously milk chocolate on the smell of the wrapper, a little of the flavor, the creaminess, the nuttiness. Oh man, this has been a fantastic, fantastic experience, leaving a very pleasant flavor profile in the palate. It's been wonderful. And you know, to echo everyone, this has been one of the more pleasant experiences, you know, while smoking cigars, especially not knowing what it is, also leads to some excitement.
Pagoda:The pairing's been fantastic, and you know, lockstep with everybody. I think Honduran definitely has a lot to play in this. You know, I think we were discussing the Ecuadorian rapper. You know, it could be one of the, either the Ecuadorian Connecticut or the Ecuadorian Havana. And yeah, meaning maybe a little bit of Dominican.
Pagoda:I'm not sure. Fantastic for me. Ten, ten wins. It's a 10.
Gizmo:Alright. Well done. Chef.
Chef:Is it Henrietta, you, Aaron, judged the shit out of this cigar. Right off the bat, you know, the aroma, milk chocolate. And then there was for me, just the smallest, slightest hint of pepper, which I enjoyed because it wasn't overpowering. Then it went into baking spice and I got a little shortbread cookie with raspberry jam, some coffee notes there, just very light with cream, creamy cigars, sweet, delicious all the way through the burn line offered a potpourri of aromas. You know, it was just it was a mind blowing cigar.
Chef:And I don't know what it costs. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's a warped. Maybe because of this Henrizo sourced it, I'm kind of leaning Dominican. But, you know, I am feeling it's a boutique cigar.
Chef:As I said earlier, I know some of prominent Honduran markers are Placencia and Camacho, and obviously I don't think this was any of those. It could be a fabric of five cigar, but it was whatever it was. It was delicious. It was a 10 for me. I enjoyed it.
Chef:I mean, the burn line was one of the most perfect burn lines I've had, if not the most perfect burn line I've had on this pod. Just even towards the end, they're holding an inch of ash with a quarter inch of wrapper. It was ridiculous. I mean, just absolutely amazing experience through and through. It's a 10.
Bam Bam:Very nice. Alright. Bam. So I I'm not going to talk about where it's from, who made the cigar. I can only talk about the experience.
Bam Bam:And for me, right off the bat, it was biscuity. It was toasty. There was that sweet, doughy type thing for me that really took me all the way down to the final third. But Rooster mentioned that it got fuller bodied in the final third. I don't agree with that completely.
Bam Bam:For me, it became savory. So it transitioned from that sweet dough experience to that savoriness, and now, about a half inch down from the bottom, they married beautifully together.
Rooster:I just said it got a tad fuller.
Bam Bam:Yeah, you're wrong.
Pagoda:That's all. But
Bam Bam:Wow. I don't see it being full. I feel it got savory.
Senator:He's not saying full.
Gizmo:Fuller strength, but fuller. Medium plus. Let's go back to medium plus. Let's agree to disagree.
Bam Bam:He'll get some reduced
Rooster:Everybody's wrong. This
Bam Bam:is really quite a unique cigar. I don't think I've ever had anything like this. The toastiness was so unique for me. So I'm
Gizmo:at a 10. Alright, boys. That puts the formal lizard rating tonight on our first ever full panel blind cigar at an unbelievable 10 would like to
Rooster:guess Henry's score.
Gizmo:Oh, okay. What do you think that is? As we invite lizard Henry into the room?
Bam Bam:Well, he's
Gizmo:I mean, can I see Henry? Henry, where are you?
Bam Bam:Oh, Henrico's in the room. He's got a game face he's got his game face on tonight, boys. Oh, yeah.
Gizmo:He's ready.
Bam Bam:There he is.
Rooster:I think he gave it a nine.
Bam Bam:Okay. That's what I'm thinking.
Senator:That's right.
Gizmo:I think so too. Alright. So let's welcome in our good friend.
Bam Bam:He's a tough critic.
Gizmo:He is. And our colleague and the man who provided this great evening for us tonight, completely blown away. Think, you know, the rating here speaks for our in you know, the entire panel's feeling on this. Well done, Lizard Henri. So I'm gonna give you a round of
Senator:applause. Yeah.
Gizmo:First ever round of applause on the podcast for Lizard Henrito, our close friend and confidant. And you took this whole thing very, very seriously. And I gotta tell you, man.
Bam Bam:Great job. I'm impressed. Great job.
Lizard Henrito:Excellent. Yeah. I had a great time doing it.
Gizmo:Well done.
Lizard Henrito:I'm kind of blown away. I really am. I I did think it was gonna do well, but perfect 10 across the board.
Gizmo:Yeah.
Lizard Henrito:It's mean, that's that's Dude.
Gizmo:It's mind
Bam Bam:blowing, dude. For a blind cigar, it's definitely worthy. In this group,
Pagoda:we're gonna need to get him a hoodie.
Bam Bam:We are very hard to please. This is this is outstanding. So, Lizard Henry,
Gizmo:tell us first, what is your rating on the cigar? And I'll verify this with the hidden note in my phone. What was your rating
Lizard Henrito:on this cigar? It was a nine. Oh.
Gizmo:Well done.
Rooster:Wow. I'm
Bam Bam:like, I tough critic.
Gizmo:Okay. So first, before you tell us what it is, tell us where you got it. Who helped this project? You know, he you know, whoever it was delivered these cigars with no bands on them, nothing. How did you pull this off?
Lizard Henrito:How it started was I I really started reaching out to all my resources, Facebook groups, cigar chats that I have. The one group that I belong to, he's our resident in house retail shop, mom and pop. His name is Matt Morris. He's based out of Akron, Ohio, Summit Cigar Company.
Gizmo:Lizard Matt at Summit Cigar Company. I am impressed.
Bam Bam:In Ohio.
Lizard Henrito:Amazing. Yeah. Was all in on this project. He was very excited about it, he wanted to participate, and he he executed.
Gizmo:Yeah. So he sent those cigars. You, Bam, and I were in Havana. We actually had these cigars sent to senator's house, and he sent them with no bands on them, took the bands off, no receipt, no information in the package of what these cigars were. So shout out to Matt at Summit Cigars for doing this for us.
Gizmo:That's huge. Huge. I also have to say,
Senator:it's nice to see a true tobacconist in the sense that you know, we've all been to different cigar shops in our area where you ask someone for a recommendation, you tell them the flavor profile that you like, and you don't get a whole lot out of them. For Henri to to be able to go to this guy and explain the project and what we're looking for and deliver something this outrageously satisfying, this guy knows what he's doing. He deserves
Chef:a world
Gizmo:of very pod
Rooster:or has he? He has not.
Bam Bam:No. Well, he will now.
Lizard Henrito:He will now. Yes.
Gizmo:Alright. So tell us the price of the cigar.
Lizard Henrito:Shipped, $10 and 99. No way. Oh
Bam Bam:my god.
Senator:It's an 11. I wanna change my score.
Bam Bam:That includes shipping. Yeah. Wow.
Gizmo:To the door under $11.
Lizard Henrito:Might be slightly cheaper. That was shipped to two locations. Sent me. I didn't tell you guys. I bought 30 of them.
Senator:You got
Bam Bam:10. So you'll be distributing tonight. I I could definitely
Lizard Henrito:supply the group for Wow.
Gizmo:Okay. So now it's time for the big reveal. So we rated our blind cigar tonight a 10, boys.
Bam Bam:Hold on. I need a sip before this.
Rooster:Yeah. Can you tell us the blend?
Lizard Henrito:So the blend is not a % disclosed, but I do have this information. There's seven different tobaccos from four different countries. Wow. What? So this really stuck true to the April fools theme because you guys, everyone guessed at least one of the countries,
Rooster:which is
Lizard Henrito:Dominican, Ecuadorian, United States, and a South American, but he did not wanna disclose the country.
Rooster:Brazil.
Lizard Henrito:He said it's probably one that you wouldn't guess, but if you pick up on a bright citrus note, that's it.
Rooster:Oh, we didn't really get a
Gizmo:bright citrus. I
Chef:think there's citrus present in raspberry. There's an inherent citrus present
Pagoda:in raspberry.
Bam Bam:Acidity. I didn't get
Senator:any There's tartness in raspberry. Yeah. Like a like a citrus smell. What means? None of us called out true citrus.
Gizmo:So the big omission on what Lizard Henry just said was Honduras. It was not explicitly stated that it was I am blown away that that is not the primary component of this cigar. Where was the cigar manufactured? Do you know that?
Lizard Henrito:Santiago Dominican Republic. Dominican.
Gizmo:It's a Dominican cigar. Wow.
Senator:Okay. So So wait. There's no Nicaraguan tobacco? Tobacco?
Bam Bam:No. No. Alright.
Senator:Wow. That checks.
Chef:I think we all knew that one. Yeah.
Gizmo:What is the manufacturer? What is the name of the maker of this cigar?
Lizard Henrito:Stoic Cigars. Stoic
Gizmo:Cigars. That is absolutely petite. Correct?
Lizard Henrito:Very brand new brand, about a year old. This is his first blend. Wow.
Bam Bam:This is his first cigar? I certainly hope they're ramping up production because they're about to explode. Correct.
Chef:This guy's a savant. The creator
Lizard Henrito:of this this cigar, actually, his name is Vance Taylor. I know him personally. And he was part of a project years ago under another brand. This is his first project under his own name.
Bam Bam:Unbelievable.
Lizard Henrito:It's one blend, four different sizes, and he's working on other things.
Chef:Wow. Dude. Wow.
Gizmo:What is his first blend, dude?
Pagoda:That's crazy.
Senator:It's insane. I'm blown away. He's hired.
Bam Bam:Oh, yeah.
Senator:Lizard master blender.
Chef:You need get that guy in the pod.
Gizmo:So what is the name of the cigar? Does he have a name for this?
Lizard Henrito:The Courage.
Gizmo:The Courage. Five
Rooster:by 50 Robusta. The Stoe 50. Courage.
Gizmo:It was 50. It 50. It felt a little smaller than fifty fifty.
Bam Bam:Please observe, Benavito. A quarter of an inch left. I'm burning my fingers. I don't want to put it down. Which means I need to have another one.
Senator:Correct. Tonight. Yes.
Rooster:So I'm curious, Henry, why did you give it a nine?
Lizard Henrito:To give it a 10, I'm not allowed to because that would be the absolute best cigar I've ever smoked, in my opinion.
Gizmo:Okay. Fair enough.
Lizard Henrito:Fair And there's other things that I think I would put as a perfect 10. If I was allowed to do fractions or decimals, I would have definitely gone like nine five. So part of the process, I smoked five other cigars before this one. The moment this thing touched my hand, it felt premium. The weight, the feel of the wrapper, it did not feel like a cheap cigar by any means in my hand.
Bam Bam:We mentioned that earlier that it did have some weight to it, but the draw was so beautifully smooth and elegant.
Lizard Henrito:And and when I smoked those five other blends, the moment this touched my hand, I I was like, I didn't even light it, and I knew it was gonna be special. I I really enjoyed it, and it was the only cigar, not only in this this little trial. It was the only cigar that I smoked back to back.
Gizmo:Yeah. You were saying I I remember you saying something that you had for the first time two cigars back to back, like you were craving another one. And it was this one that we're doing tonight in the pub. Then I came
Chef:here the
Lizard Henrito:next day,
Bam Bam:and I saw Two. We're all there right now. I can do another one right now.
Gizmo:This is impressive.
Senator:I could do four of
Gizmo:these.
Bam Bam:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you.
Rooster:I've already smoked
Lizard Henrito:six. Wow. Yeah.
Bam Bam:In one sitting. Not in one sitting. No. But
Gizmo:So are are is Stoic cigars, is that a brand that's available on the Internet? Is it only available at select retailers? Like, where can the listeners find this sub 11 dollar Robusto?
Lizard Henrito:I I know for sure Summit cigars.
Gizmo:Yeah. Mhmm.
Lizard Henrito:If you reach out to Matt Wors, he's all over Facebook, and, you know, he's he's easy to contact. A lot of people do know him. But I believe Small Batch might carry them. I didn't do the research on who actually has it.
Pagoda:Okay.
Lizard Henrito:But, it should be easily accessible. If you go onto stoiccigars.com, there's tons of details on the project. And also, I think he lists who carries them. Unbelievable.
Rooster:So these are handcrafted at the Kellner cigars factory in Santiago. Really? There you go. Is that Henrik Kellner?
Bam Bam:Yeah. Yeah.
Gizmo:Yeah. I am completely blown away. Absolutely. I never expected to come in here tonight
Bam Bam:With a 10?
Gizmo:And rate the cigar a 10. Just Impressive. You know, because you don't know. There's no know, like, we love brand stories, interesting histories, etcetera. Like, to come in here, we didn't talk about any of that.
Gizmo:No. And to smoke a cigar like this that completely blew us away. We knew it was something we hadn't had before. Yeah. Obviously, with different components that Lizard Henry just laid out.
Gizmo:Like, obviously it's something that's unique, but I never thought it would be like this.
Senator:You wanna know where this is rolled in Santiago? Kellner Cigar Factory.
Bam Bam:Yeah. Mention it.
Senator:Oh, I missed that.
Bam Bam:You were doing your I was. I wasn't listening.
Chef:Hey, guys. Limited it's limited to 750 boxes.
Bam Bam:Uh-oh. So
Chef:we should get on this.
Bam Bam:Henri, get on that. You're the procurement guy. Sure thing.
Gizmo:Well, Lizard Henry, I'm gonna give you one more round of applause. Excellent job. Many, many thanks. Yeah.
Lizard Henrito:I actually wanted to add one more thing about this project that makes it really, really cool.
Pagoda:Okay.
Lizard Henrito:So every single band has a QR code, and you scan it. When you get to the website, you can create a little bit of a login, but every single cigar comes with a specific code for you to enter, and you're going to rate the appearance, the draw, the aroma, the burn, the flavor, and overall satisfaction with the Wow. If you're thinking about someone who cares about their cigar and is looking at consistency, and it is fantastic. I've never heard of anything like this.
Pagoda:Nothing like when you
Lizard Henrito:do that, you're earning points that you can trade in for swag, and I'm sure he's gonna do other projects. Wow.
Gizmo:I like this story, I
Bam Bam:do too.
Lizard Henrito:So it's really cool here. Look, I
Bam Bam:brought you a smart for I from Senator's point of view, the whole market testing thing that he's doing
Senator:here is fantastic. Brilliant market research. Absolutely brilliant. And the funny thing is, like, are other brands that do QR codes. Think, like, Foundation, I think, has on the back.
Senator:But I've yet to see where you actually rate, you can get that feedback in real time. Brilliant, brilliant move.
Lizard Henrito:Smart. Includes where you're smoking it, length of time that you took to you to smoke Wow, dude.
Gizmo:I'm pretty impressed, man.
Lizard Henrito:Yeah. If you're looking at something that is and you're looking for consistency, I'm sure he's looking at those numbers. I think he cares. Wow.
Gizmo:So Lizard Henry just handed me the actual band of stoic cigars. What's the design? Pass that around? Yeah. Yeah.
Gizmo:It's awesome. It's an embossed, kinda lifted, very classy looking, but simple band that we talk about all the time that we really, really like. Mhmm. And I actually love the color. It's like
Senator:a steel blue on black. What are you holding now?
Gizmo:So Lizard Henry handed me one of the cigars with the custom code on it, which is on a second white band
Bam Bam:So this is
Gizmo:has a six digit code on
Bam Bam:it. So the cigar comes with two bands?
Gizmo:The cigar comes with two bands. Okay. Got it. Is the white band under the main band? Yes.
Gizmo:Okay. So this second band with the code is hidden under the band that I just passed around
Bam Bam:Oh, really?
Gizmo:The actual main band. So you don't see this until you take that off.
Bam Bam:Oh, that's cool.
Gizmo:Pretty cool.
Lizard Henrito:Yeah. And every cigar has an individual code.
Rooster:So that's the same size, right? The one we
Gizmo:small Yeah. Is the exact same cigar.
Chef:The box is currently out of stock on small batch.
Bam Bam:Dude, every single cigar has its own code.
Senator:It's pretty amazing. That's incredible. Every single box. Cigar.
Gizmo:Every cigar.
Bam Bam:Every cigar. It's quite the coordination.
Pagoda:I'm pretty blown Very nice guy. Yeah.
Bam Bam:Love it.
Rooster:Great job, Henry.
Pagoda:Thank
Gizmo:you. Well done, Lizard Henry.
Pagoda:No. Excellent. Thank you
Gizmo:for doing this project for us, man. Is obviously the first of I'm assuming many now with this Listen.
Pagoda:You know, I'm sure it took a lot of courage to do this.
Gizmo:Yeah. It did.
Pagoda:Absolutely right to God. That's fantastic.
Gizmo:Absolutely. This is huge.
Bam Bam:In this room, it does take a lot of courage. Well done.
Gizmo:Yeah. Well, thank you, man. We really appreciate you, and that's awesome. And boys, that's it for tonight. What a great evening.
Gizmo:Thanks to Lizard Henry and Lizard Matt over at Summit Cigars with this amazing 10 blind panel cigar tonight for our April fools episode. Let's go through everything one more time.
Rooster:I think lizard Henry should be the lizard of the week.
Bam Bam:Henrito.
Gizmo:He's the lizard of every weekend for us here. Alright, boys. So on the 18 years age, FortiCagna rum, we had a 9.8. And on the stoic cigars, the courage, our blind cigar tonight scored a 10. Of course, we have to thank all the lizards who write us each week, including a second time winner, Lizard Craig, who won lizard of the week.
Gizmo:Anybody out there, of course, can win lizard of the week. As I said, just write us. Tell it what you're smoking. Stay in touch with us. Thanks, of course, to Fabrica five, our amazing sponsor.
Gizmo:They're a great partner to us. Try some of their cigars as well. And, happy April fools, everybody. Thank you again to our man, lizard Henrito, and, we'll see everybody next week. Hope you enjoyed this episode.
Gizmo:Thanks for joining us. You could find our merch store and ratings archive at our brand new website, loungelizardspod.com. That's loungelizardsp0d.com. Don't forget to leave us a rating and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. If you have any comments, questions, if you wanna reach out, say hello, tell us what you're smoking, email us.
Gizmo:Hello at LoungeLizardsPod.com. You can also find us on Instagram at Lounge Lizards Pod. We really appreciate your time, and we'll, we'll see you next week.