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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!
**Gizmo:** [00:00:00] Welcome to the Lounge Lizards podcast presented by Fabrica5. It's so good to have you here. It's a leisure and lifestyle podcast founded on our love of premium cigars, as well as whiskey travel, food, work, and whatever else we feel like getting into. My name is Gizmo. Tonight I'm joined by Rooster, Pagoda, Chef Ricky, Grinder, and Bam Bam, and our plan is to smoke a cigar, drink some tequila, talk about life, and of course, have some laughs.
So take this as your 168th Official invitation to join us and become a card carrying lounge lizard. Plan to meet us here once a week. We're going to smoke a Cupid cigar tonight, share our thoughts on it, and give you our formal lizard rating. We do our first ever revisit to a cigar we smoked years ago, we answer listener emails on cigar storage and towers, and we play a voice memo about eating while smoking, all among a variety of other things for the next two hours.
So sit back, get your favorite drink, Light up a cigar and enjoy as we pair me Henta tequila Blanco with the Juan Lopez Selección number one a Cuban Corona Gorda on the pod tonight [00:01:00] It's the Juan Lopez Selección number one and it's a 46 ring gauge cigar by five and five eighths inches long and boys We talked about this two weeks ago on the little Florida Cano Elijidos episode this is the first time on the pod that we are revisiting a cigar that we have already reviewed.
So, we did this cigar in episode 15. Wow. Which is crazy. That's 153 weeks ago.
**Bam Bam:** And according to you, that was complete amateur hour.
**Gizmo:** Oh yeah, I was listening to a little bit today.
**Rooster:** According to him, it still is.
**Bam Bam:** You're not wrong.
**Gizmo:** So we are revisiting cigars that we've reviewed in the past and cigars, namely that originally scored under an 8.
0. That's the plan, uh, to give them another. You know, another shot, certainly going to do a different run of each of these cigars. We'll talk about all those details in a minute, but that's the, uh, that's the idea here tonight. And, uh, so we'll see how this does.
**Rooster:** I can't believe [00:02:00] I gave it a very low score. I don't think you did.
I
**Bam Bam:** think I'm going to guess you and I. Probably gave it the highest scores in the room. Cause we both love this cigar. I do. But I have to tell you. All
**Gizmo:** will be revealed, Ben. This is gorgeous. It is. This is a really. Glistening. Good looking box that we just got. Beautiful dark wrapper.
**Rooster:** Beautiful wrapper. Great size.
It's like an Oppmann 46.
**Gizmo:** It's an impressive, expensive looking cigar. Well, let's cut this thing, boys. See, we're getting on the cold draw on the wrapper. As Rooster just noted, this is the same size as the Magnum 46 from H. Upman and the Kohiba Sigla IV, the Corona Gorda. And a Punch Punch, excuse me, I almost forgot the Punch Punch.
Correct. Which is another one on the list for a revisit. So we're going to do these, uh, sparingly throughout the year. Revisit some cigars. It's, uh, kind of like the turning point, I believe, is around three years of going back to revisit regular production. Cuba's, there are plenty that we haven't done, but we have to hit the staples.
It's just [00:03:00] incredible how much,
**Bam Bam:** how many episodes have passed. It's crazy.
**Gizmo:** It's three years.
**Bam Bam:** Cause it does still feel like last month to me that we just started.
**Pagoda:** Well, I love this when I cut it, the gap just came off. Really. That's what you want to do. It's perfect. It's really good.
**Gizmo:** Perfect.
**Pagoda:** You know why? You used an elevated cutter.
**Bam Bam:** It
**Pagoda:** is, I'll tell you, I must say.
**Gizmo:** He used your cutter, right? Correct!
**Pagoda:** That's correct! That was really sharp. I must say, it was really sharp. That's awesome.
**Gizmo:** What are you guys getting on the cold
**Pagoda:** draw
**Gizmo:** here?
**Pagoda:** Cedar.
**Gizmo:** Mm
**Pagoda:** hmm. I
**Chef Ricky:** feel like I'm getting a little mint, hay. Maybe a little
**Gizmo:** fig.
**Bam Bam:** Fig, I Yeah, fig or raisin. Yeah, for sure.
**Chef Ricky:** My draw is a little tight. I'm not getting all of that just yet. I'm a little tight here. It's very dense.
**Grinder:** Mine was very tight when I took the cap off. I just had to take a little
**Bam Bam:** bit more. I just wouldn't mind passing you the perfect draw. You may want to start working on that. Oh, I would light it first.
You think? Mine's tasting like [00:04:00] pecan
**Pagoda:** chocolate chip cookies. Of course it is. But you just had them.
**Bam Bam:** Courtesy of Mrs. Shefrick. This is not, for me, this is a serious, this is another pet peeve. Before the recording, I really try not to eat anything right before we start, you know, the press button. Pagoda's still chewing.
I'm telling you, it affects, I don't know, maybe I'm being crazy, but it does
**Grinder:** affect your taste buds. I think he's right. I think there's some, I think there's actual truth to that, scientific truth. Like I
**Bam Bam:** had dinner an hour and a half ago, right? Had a glass of water, took a nap, I'm ready to go. No food, no contaminants, nothing.
Pagoda, you ruined the whole night. You fucked up. No,
**Pagoda:** some of, some of us don't have the luxury of working from home. This is true. Where we can eat a dinner an hour and a half before going to bed.
**Rooster:** And take a nap.
**Pagoda:** Yeah, take a nap. Maybe goggle our mouths, you know, do some exercises. I'm a senior. Just so that the voice sounds good.
I'm a senior citizen, you know. Hit the gym. [00:05:00] Right? Right? Get some bench press. Right guys, don't they do the vocal cord exercise like Yes. Yes. Bam
**Gizmo:** and I have a whole exercise routine for the voice. We do. Unique New York. We do. Yes. Unique New York. All right, boys. Let's light this thing. The Juan Lopez Seleccion No.
1. Again, it's a Cuban Corona Gorda, 46 ring gauge cigar by 5 and 5 eighths inches long. The first cigar that we're ever returning to on the podcast, one that we've already reviewed, but we're going to do it again and see if it has a better performance from a different box code, which we'll talk about in a minute.
Great aroma.
Oh, that's stellar on the light. Smells delicious on the light. This, this
**Bam Bam:** is,
**Rooster:** it's heaven. It's awesome. Wow.
**Gizmo:** That's
**Bam Bam:** a great cigar. This is a [00:06:00] quintessential Cuban cigar. You get everything you want here.
**Rooster:** Can we rate it?
**Gizmo:** This is really nice on the way. There's
**Bam Bam:** fruity sweetness, there's some savory notes here, there's a good amount of walnut for me and some cedar.
Coffee. Baking spices are out of this world right now. What's going
**Gizmo:** on here? It's like
**Bam Bam:** charts right
**Gizmo:** now. It's kind of tangy. I'm getting a classic BAM note. Grapefruit. Citrus.
**Grinder:** Mmm. That's the tanginess. There's a citrus there, BAM. Maybe like a lemon
**Gizmo:** type
**Grinder:** thing.
**Gizmo:** Absolutely.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah.
**Gizmo:** Wow.
**Bam Bam:** It's really
**Gizmo:** nice on the light.
Yeah.
**Bam Bam:** Now, Chef, have you had this cigar? I have not. It's your first JL1. It's my
**Chef Ricky:** first JL1. Wow.
**Grinder:** Good for you. The shape not only reminds me of the Mag, but the flavor as well, right? Is that, is that This is
**Gizmo:** a little divergent from the Mag 46 for me. I think Mag 46, you get more of that up and baking spice. I think that's a little more full than this is.
I think that touches a little higher on the medium end.
**Bam Bam:** I agree [00:07:00] with that.
**Gizmo:** I think the espresso or dark chocolate is there on both. I think the citrus thing makes this stand out for me.
**Grinder:** It's a very apparent flavor profile. Kind of smacks you in the face.
**Chef Ricky:** Is this in the budget category for Cuban cigars?
Let's talk about that. Well, we
**Gizmo:** can talk about that. Good question. I
**Bam Bam:** can't wait for this conversation. You don't know what's in store. It's very cool.
**Gizmo:** So, to answer Shefriki's question. The, let's start with the box code. So the box code on episode 15, we reviewed a long time ago was December, 2019. This box is September 22.
So almost three years later, uh, on the run of cigars. Uh, very nice on the light. So let's talk about the prices boys. When we first reviewed this cigar on episode 15. February 15th of 2022, that episode came out. The price of the cigar at that time was 11. 80.
**Pagoda:** Oh my god. Wow.
**Gizmo:** 295 a box. Value. Value stick. That [00:08:00] is insane.
So to answer your question, I think at one point it was a value stick. When I purchased this box around a year ago, the price was 18 a cigar. 450 I paid for this box. Oh my god. For 25 cigars. Now, today, to go out and purchase this, you're going to find this box. For 555 ish, give or take, and the price of the cigar is average, 22.
50. It's double the price. So it has doubled in price since we reviewed it. Three years. In three years.
**Rooster:** Yeah, but what cigar has not doubled in price? Just the Habanos. Just
**Bam Bam:** think
**Rooster:** about that. Name one that hasn't doubled. That's just insanity. If not tripled, or quadrupled. Cohibas and Trinidads have Tripled or quadrupled.
But
**Bam Bam:** this is not a luxury brand according to Habano's.
**Rooster:** Yeah. But they go across the board. Right. It's insane. I mean, a D4 was half the price. Yeah.
**Pagoda:** It's crazy. Or less, They run it like a local store, like a local a new store. Let's just [00:09:00] price of this and double the price of that.
**Grinder:** I, you know, they did this, they did successive waves of price increases though.
Right? So they had They were looking three years down the line and they're like, okay, this is our pricing strategy for the next three years. You know, we, we, we think that we can capture more of the market with this price and, you know, make more money, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they did it. And then
**Gizmo:** guess what?
They probably are. Well, you know, initially I think it was a reaction to the supply issues. Right? They, the entire world, all of the LCD ages, all the stores around the world, the retailers were out of cigars. So I think that that was a, the corrective measure with the supply demand issue they were having.
That could have been, that could have been intentional, by the way. Of course it could. And as supply has picked back up. Certainly the prices are continuing to increase and will continue to increase probably five to 10 percent a year, I would think. So boys, I also pulled just for context. I thought this was cool.
I pulled some information [00:10:00] around that episode just to kind of remember that time period in our lives. So like I said, we released that episode February 15th, 2022 and Russia invaded Ukraine 11 days later. Pretty wild. That's wild. My, my daughter was born 10 days later. I was getting there. Your daughter was born 10 days later.
And we joined baby grinder 1086 11 days after that episode came out one day after his daughter was born. Look at that.
**Grinder:** I
**Gizmo:** was in the hospital in the hospital, filling
**Grinder:** out this like check and registration, the
**Rooster:** membership form.
**Grinder:** They're like, we got
**Rooster:** a new lounge.
**Grinder:** I'm like, okay, book me.
**Gizmo:** I remember that. Pretty amazing that it's been three years since all of those events and coming up now in three years since uh, We last smoked a cigar together.
Incredible. We'll do that as we revisit cigars in the future here We'll go through some of the pricing stuff. We'll talk about the box code differences We'll talk about some current events that were happening kind of place the context and Then [00:11:00] toward the end of the episode tonight when we rate it we'll compare To our original ratings, and we'll see how, uh, see how these runs have changed.
So what are you getting right now, boys, on the Selexio No. 1?
**Bam Bam:** I think it's a continued concentration in baking spice, and, um, for me, a bit of walnut, and fig and raisin. That's pervasive for me.
**Chef Ricky:** Yeah, some dried fruit, a little milk chocolate.
**Rooster:** Yeah, milk chocolate or coffee? One or the other. I can
**Bam Bam:** see some coffee there.
Maybe some espresso. But it's so enjoyable, like very tasty, isn't it? It is. Velvety smoke. I think it's almost like, uh Giz like sprayed these with something.
**Grinder:** It's like, uh, it's like a digestive. This is like an after dinner. Absolutely.
**Gizmo:** Well, I, for one, at this point in the cigar, I'm so happy that we have decided to re review it.
It's a great idea. This is. Superb right now. Yeah,
**Bam Bam:** absolutely. [00:12:00] Excellent. So good.
**Gizmo:** I'm thinking about what, I'm like plotting in my brain when I'm going to have my next one.
**Bam Bam:** You know? Is that the only box of JL1s that you have?
**Gizmo:** It is, and I cracked it tonight with you guys. I had not had any of the cigars out of this box.
I bought it about a year ago, never intending to review it per se. But as we were discussing the turnaround and kind of hitting reset on regular production Cubans, sprinkling them back in.
**Rooster:** Yeah.
**Gizmo:** This was the first one I went to.
**Rooster:** I do prefer these over the Juan Lopez number two. Yeah. Me too. I'm not a fan of
**Bam Bam:** the number two.
**Chef Ricky:** Yeah. I like these a lot more. You know, what I'm enjoying about these here is that, you know, the baking spice, it's a little velvety on the smoke, but there's just enough, uh, of a light spice there that's separate from the baking spice to make it complex and interesting for me. Like there's a little bit of a bite, uh, that's, it doesn't feel totally mild.
**Bam Bam:** So for me, the only place where I could see that is at [00:13:00] the finish of my retrohale. Yeah. I'll get very slight pepper, which is really enjoyable. Usually that makes me sneeze, but not, not with the stick. It's very smooth.
**Chef Ricky:** Yeah, I'm enjoying that very much.
**Grinder:** The spice is kind of funky.
**Chef Ricky:** Yeah. It's got like a,
**Grinder:** it's got like an aged beef.
Yeah,
**Bam Bam:** almost pungent type of thing. Yeah. I'm serious. I like that.
**Gizmo:** So boys, let's go through some Juan Lopez history. I reviewed what we had discussed on episode 15 and also on episode 92 when we did the Juan Lopez Selección No. 2 you guys were talking about. And I feel we could fill some of the gaps. So Florida Juan Lopez was founded in 1876.
It was established by Juan Lopez Sena, also known as Juan Lopez Diaz in Havana. Originally located on Calle de los Dragones y Industria, right around the corner, bam, from the Partagus factory, the old Partagus factory, right near the Capitol building. By the 1890s, the brand was very well respected for its quality and craftsmanship and quickly became a [00:14:00] top seller.
of Cuban cigars. Before 1900, it was sold to a guy named Thomas Gutierrez, who proudly advertised on his building being the successors to Juan Lopez. So on the front of his building, it said Fabrica Tobaccos y Cigarillos. And then on right in the center, it said successors to Juan Lopez and then a Fabrica de Tomas Gutierrez, which I thought was pretty cool.
And then again in 1918, the brand was sold to Sociedad Cosme del Peso Isia, which is no, I want to note because before they changed the bands in 2005, the original Juan Lopez bands that you find on some of the older cigars Actually noted that ownership, even though obviously in 1960, the Cuban government took all these over.
They kept the name of the company on the band, uh, up until 2005. Following the Cuban revolution, the brand's production was nationalized, of course, and continued under government control by the late 1970s. [00:15:00] The brand's prominence had waned leading to a smaller production range by the 1980s. They had canceled a lot of stuff in 1990.
To meet the growing demand for Corona Gorders, like we have in our hand at Robusto, the two models, Seleccio No. 1 and Seleccio No. 2 were introduced. Some cool stuff, boxes from the 1940s and the 1970s showcase distinctive designs that set them apart from contemporary package. So if you look at what they had during those periods, they were kind of standout packaging.
Because we know that, you know, they didn't really start even putting bands on cigars. Until the 1930s, I believe 1940s, but they had always, always had great, uh, packaging. And then I thought, I found this interesting as well for a long time. These cigars were hard to find outside of Cuba, especially in Europe.
So Europeans had to travel elsewhere to find them. Finally, uh, Habanos I say classifies Juan Lopez in the other category. The other marketing category, Juan Lopez is a favorite for regional additions with 23 [00:16:00] regional additions since 2006. So right now currently available are only two cigars released in the early 1990s, the Selexio number one and the Selexio number two, uh, before 2005.
Funny enough, these cigars did not come with bands. They do offer them in slide lid boxes of 25 cigars like we have tonight, and they have a discontinued slide lid box of 50 cigars in both of those. There also is a, an LCDH exclusive called the Seleccion Especial. The factory name is a Fortunas, 52 ring gauge by six and three quarters inches, tons of discontinued cigars, as I said, and the list of regional editions that you see here on cubancigarwebsite.
com. Is endless. So if you are interested out there and seeing what they offer as far as regionals going back to 2006, check out Cuban cigar website, and that is Juan Lopez. I'd like to try that LCD H 52 ring gauge. It's on the list. I'm going to get that. That sounds [00:17:00] interesting.
**Rooster:** Is that the one that comes with a really ornate, like a white box lacquered box?
**Gizmo:** Yes. You're a hundred percent right. It was released in, uh, late 2021, announced during covid and comes in a very nice yeah. Lacquer cedar box. Mm-hmm . And it also has a kind of Ramone green. Outer, uh, velvet cover for it. I've seen that. Oh, wow. Yeah. Pretty cool. I'm sure they're very, very expensive. So, we'll earmark this for a, uh, It'll be interesting to have, uh, Juan Lopez
**Bam Bam:** in that ring gauge.
**Rooster:** Yeah, I think when it, when it came out, it was, they were going for about 1, 200 to 1, 300 a box. Wow. Wow. That range. I don't know what it's currently, but, It's driven by the
**Bam Bam:** LCDH band, no doubt.
**Rooster:** Yeah.
**Gizmo:** Yep. And the
**Bam Bam:** box. Yeah. Ha ha ha. Unbelievable.
**Gizmo:** So yeah, Juan Lopez has some murky history, even though they've been around for a long time.
It took me like six to eight sources just to put together that little. Tidbit of info, you know, [00:18:00] went to Min Ran Nhi's book, went to Cuban Cigar website, was on the internet. I was all over the place and there's just not a ton of info out there. Yeah,
**Rooster:** so it's not a really a sought after cigar like not, not a lot of people talk about it.
It's unfortunate because it's delicious. It is, right?
**Pagoda:** There's
**Rooster:** only two
**Pagoda:** Two more, two
**Gizmo:** Vitolas. Two Vitolas, yeah.
**Rooster:** Yeah. It's a shame. It's true.
**Gizmo:** Yeah, I mean that LCDH release was the first release in 30 years. Unbelievable. For Juan Lopez. From 19, early 1990s to 2020.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah. Well, it's like you said, it's a vehicle for regionals.
Exactly. Do
**Grinder:** you think this is worth 22?
**Gizmo:** It's hard for me to say any cigar of this size is worth $22, but that's where Haos has pushed us. So, you know, inside the Haos catalog, comparatively, I think it's performing very, very well.
**Bam Bam:** Aren't we paying roughly that for a Mag 46 and a Punch? Punch? We're in that price range.
Yeah. They're all on the same price range at the same size. It's where we are now. So I, and the way this is tasting and performing, I, I'd, I'd pay [00:19:00] $22 for this 'cause I know I'm gonna pay this for a punch. Puncher a mag 46.
**Gizmo:** Yeah.
**Bam Bam:** Very comparative to the, uh, sister cigars.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. You know, same size.
**Bam Bam:** It sucks that I have to pay that, but it is what it is.
Great construction on the cigar. This is a fantastic Like, I am This is Grinder's ashes stacking dimes. Look at that. Perfect burn line. It's perfect. I think we all have great ashes.
**Gizmo:** Yeah.
**Pagoda:** Yep. They just want to clarify you said ashes. Correct. You have a great ash. You have a great ash. Well
**Gizmo:** done old boy. Am I the most aggressive smoker right now?
No,
**Grinder:** we're all right there. I'm right there. I'm right there. Oh, no, you
**Bam Bam:** must have, you must have. I
**Gizmo:** ashed out a bit, yeah.
**Pagoda:** It's like one of those cigars, which, you know, which for me, which I call I know we have discussed this often. I think it gives me one of these floral, salty kind of flavors, which, you know, envelopes my top of my palate and I love it.
And it's, it's, uh, there's something about these kinds of cigars, which I think like medium to long [00:20:00] finish for me, like this is fantastic. I think the finish is very long.
**Rooster:** Yeah. No one has mentioned the floral note so far, but I think you're spot on. There is a floral component to the cigar. There's
**Gizmo:** a very floral component to the burn, the smell at the burn.
So that's
**Bam Bam:** exactly where I'm capturing that. No, not in the traditional drawer retro, but the aroma it's really spectacular. It's not bitter in any way.
**Grinder:** It's like the, the retro, there's, there's a kind of spice in this cigar that's not pepper spice. It's, you know, as, as BA mentioned, it doesn't make you sneeze on the retro, but it gives you that tank, the tingly feeling like you're eating horseradish or something, you know?
Yeah.
**Rooster:** Yeah. E either that or kind of like the, uh, you know, when you said citrus, it's kind of like the citrus peel. Yes. The orange grind. Right. Orange grind. Yeah.
**Pagoda:** Like the marmalade.
**Rooster:** It all comes back to the marmalade. Marmalade.
**Pagoda:** Yeah, no, but it was definitely the oranges, got the [00:21:00] rind. You know
**Gizmo:** what it is for me?
It's almost like a very, very fresh lemon. Like not one that's been sitting, you know, in the store. Sitting in the store or on your counter for a while. Like it's, it's like it was just picked. Very, very fresh. I'm getting that kind of intense. citrus kind of flavor. You know, as the lemon sits, it kind of softens and becomes a little more sugary.
**Bam Bam:** You are the lemon expert.
**Gizmo:** Love lemon.
**Bam Bam:** Correct. You know, everything you guys are talking about describes a very complex, sophisticated cigar. It does. Everything that you're discussing really is. Back in that up here, you said, you
**Chef Ricky:** said sophisticated, the way a pagoda spelt it.
**Bam Bam:** I am slightly dyslexic.
**Chef Ricky:** No, this is, this is great.
And I gotta say my time here is done guys. I mean, the way you guys are just throwing away flavor notes and aromas. that are food basis. It's incredible.
**Gizmo:** Well, see, on a cigar like this, it's easy. Yeah. You know what I mean? [00:22:00] Yeah. I think this is easy. I don't think it's It is very clear. Like this cigar has very distinct notes that I think, and this is for a smoker out there who's listening right now.
We get some of these emails sometimes from listeners who say, Hey, I can't pick out notes. I can't taste anything more than, is it a good cigar or is it a bad cigar? I think this is a great example of a cigar that is very distinctly pointing you to five, six, seven different things. And it's not muddled, very clear, it's complex.
And what I love is it's all working together.
**Bam Bam:** Agreed. And for those guys and gals that can't pick out notes, you got to go through a lot of cigars, take your time. I wouldn't. Be out of the question to sit and take notes on some of the cigars that you really love and go back to those notes to see if you're getting those after smoking four or five or ten of them.
**Chef Ricky:** I also think it's important to smoke with people that enjoy doing the same thing. Yeah, you can share your part of the conversation and, you know, you start and sometimes that's, you know, if you're not picking up on those [00:23:00] flavors or you're picking up on a flavor and you don't know how to describe it.
Right. And someone, someone mentions it and you're like, that's it. Like that's what I'm, you know, yeah. You hit
**Pagoda:** it so right because oftentimes, even when I'm smoking with a lot of the other guys, people can experience certain flavors, but they don't know how to describe it. And I think for me, I go through that even now, like, I don't know how to very specifically describe it.
And it is, you know, you're just right about it. So the more I hang out with you guys, and when I learn how to describe it and identify a particular flavor profile as that particular note, and we have listeners
**Gizmo:** now, Pagoda that Do that with us. Yeah. Sit and there's listeners right now. We're smoking the Juan Lopez number one and are telling us we're crazy or, and there's others that are totally agreeing with us and we'll get emails about it.
Right. So that's the beauty of this whole thing is being able to smoke with others in the room or not. Yeah, I mean, it's great
**Chef Ricky:** outside of the, the, the relaxation component of smoking. This is my favorite part is talking about what you're smelling, what you're tasting, how things [00:24:00] feel, you know, and just get giving the, especially, you know, you're paying 22, 50, 60, a hundred, 150.
If you know, now we're getting to the point where cigars are. And a few hundred dollars per stick. I mean, what can we do to extend the experience? All right. So this is just one of those exercises that I think makes it a complete activity for me anyway. Um, yeah. And I love your call out right there on the horseradish because last week I mentioned, or two weeks ago, I mentioned radish in a cigar and it just, you know, it kind of brings that sort of pungent astringent note to.
To the nose there. This
**Bam Bam:** is easily one of the
**Chef Ricky:** best
**Bam Bam:** jail ones I've had in a long time. Yeah, this is, this is
**Pagoda:** fantastic. Nicely kept.
**Bam Bam:** It's a
**Grinder:** shame, uh, we have fellow
**Pagoda:** lizards that don't like it. I know. Yeah. They're missing out on a good experience. More for us. Yes. I
**Gizmo:** think Senator, I'm going to give Senator one of these.
He's not been a fan of Juan Lopez for quite some time. Puba as well. Yeah. I, I'm going to give Senator and Puba one of these out of this [00:25:00] exact box to smoke because I think that it's going to change.
**Grinder:** Their perspective. Their
**Gizmo:** perspective on the, on the marca. Because I came in very positive tonight. I, I was, my expectation was this was going to be very good.
You know, I, I, um, I don't actually remember my, I don't have a memory of when we spoke this three years ago. I haven't smoked one since. I was going to ask you, so you
**Bam Bam:** haven't had one of these since that last recording? No, you're crazy. No, I can't live. I had that box and I just didn't crack it. Wow. Thank you.
Worked out. I'll reach for one of these every few months. I can't say that it cracks my weekly or even monthly rotation, but when I do it, I'm, you know, I'm blown away by it. See, but
**Gizmo:** this cigar that we're smoking tonight is making me rethink that. Oh
**Pagoda:** yeah. No, but do you, do you get a similar flavor profile?
I do. Do you get the same experience? I do. Wow. Yeah. So that means these are consistent.
**Bam Bam:** They're pretty consistent. I haven't had a plugged one yet, but I think some people have had that experience, but I have, I got a little, a little more than a box and a half of these. I'm going to. Let them sit a little [00:26:00] longer because I think the ones you have are aged longer than these.
See what they're like.
**Rooster:** Well, this is a 2022 box.
**Bam Bam:** Uh huh. Yeah. September 22. I'm not sure what mine are. I think I have a 22 right here. But these are all I think fantastic.
**Rooster:** And these do have a great potential to age because I have, I have like an older box and it is, of course, it is awesome. It is fantastic.
From 1910.
**Gizmo:** He has an original release.
**Pagoda:** 1876. Without, he opened the factory with a guy. He got it at the present. Juan Lopez sold it to Gutierrez.
**Chef Ricky:** Came here from India with the
**Grinder:** box. He actually brokered the sale.
**Rooster:** I'll never
**Grinder:** mention
**Rooster:** it
**Grinder:** again.
Is anyone getting, this is going to be out of this world probably, which is not surprising. [00:27:00] Jasmine on the retro. Jasmine. I feel like like jasmine green tea.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah, I mean, I do get a lot of tea notes and a lot of cigars.
**Chef Ricky:** I think that's going back to the floral notes that Pagoda was holding earlier. Yeah, I'm not getting jasmine per se, but yeah.
So not the
**Rooster:** jasmine flower. Flower? Yeah. Jasmine flower? Well, like, I don't know. Well, I don't know, actually. Like when I get jasmine green
**Grinder:** tea, that's what I'm thinking of.
**Rooster:** Jasmine flower has a very distinct smell, aroma. It only blooms at night. It's like little, small little white flowers. Oh really? I think Pagoda would know what I'm talking about.
Oh
**Pagoda:** my lord, those are really, that's a very strong, strong, yeah. Were you guys picking jasmine as kids running around the fields at night?
**Rooster:** We had them growing in our, in our yard. Yeah. So
**Pagoda:** at the, at the entrance of my house on both sides, we had it. That's cool. And it smelled and it would only bloom at night.
Are you serious?
**Rooster:** So when you come home, you [00:28:00] know, kind of late at night, it's like a raft of like jasmine. How luxurious. You guys
**Bam Bam:** live on like an estate? I didn't know. A resort. They live on a resort. Memories of jasmine.
**Chef Ricky:** I didn't know it was called jasmine. I'm just having, uh, these visuals of like, pouncing Indians hitting flowers.
Pagoda and rooster out there.
**Grinder:** We gotta mark that down for the year in review. Oh yeah. Dancing Indian. Pouncing Indian hidden flowers,
**Chef Ricky:** like Pouncing Tiger, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, whatever the hell that movie was. But yeah, that's.
**Pagoda:** No, it had a very distinct flavor. No flavors. Very distinct smell.
Jasmine then. Oh, oh wow.
**Chef Ricky:** It is, it is an aroma I enjoy. Um, but yeah, you're right. It is pretty strong. So not Jasmine. No, I think it can be, but obviously in tea it's dried and all of that. So a lot of that flavor [00:29:00] dissipates and kind of mellows out. Um, so it could be.
**Gizmo:** So boys, let's talk about our pairing tonight.
We are back to tequila. We had a great tequila two weeks ago. The Valonze Tequila Blanco. Tonight, we have the Mijenta Tequila Blanco. We had this in the queue as well. Wanted to do something light alongside the JL1. So let's, uh, let's try this tequila and see how it pairs. Cheers. The Cuban Cigar. Cheers, boys.
Cheers.
**Chef Ricky:** Salud.
**Gizmo:** Even before I taste it, I can just taste butter. Yeah,
**Chef Ricky:** I smell butter. It's like
**Bam Bam:** creamy butter. I actually, on the nose, it's salty, briny, like Yeah, buttery. The ocean. And a beautiful butteriness on the palate. This is, this is exquisite. That's really good. Oh yeah.
**Chef Ricky:** Oh, that's tasty.
**Bam Bam:** And
**Chef Ricky:** refreshing.
Oh, it's so easy to drink. It's so bright. It has a refreshing quality to it. Oh, you're going to have to pass that bottle.
**Pagoda:** Wow, yeah, I think. That's a [00:30:00] really good tequila. We're going to kill that. My immediate reaction is slightly better than Volant. We're going to kill that bottle. I shouldn't say it.
**Gizmo:** I don't know.
I don't know if I'd say it's slightly better than Volant. It's a different. Yeah, it's more brighter and more. Yeah, yeah, no. But I, I'll be honest, I'm really liking how it's pairing with the cigar right now. Outstanding. It's excellent.
**Rooster:** I bet it's complementing the citrus notes of the cigar.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah, I don't get much citrus on the cigar, but it does complement the sweeter notes of the cigar because I'm getting a sweet finish on the tequila.
Oh, by the way, Rooster here. Why don't you take a
**Chef Ricky:** sniff?
**Gizmo:** I also think while Rooster sniffing the glass, I think that the saltiness of the tequila, that brininess of it. It's giving the smoke structure. It's making the cigar pop. Like a lot of those flavors we're talking about are just like really highlighted.
**Bam Bam:** Gives it structure.
**Rooster:** Yeah. I get floral notes out of the tequila when I, when you sniff it.
**Chef Ricky:** Yep. You're not wrong. Um, so this tequila has a maestra. [00:31:00] Versus a maestro. This is a distil, the master distiller here is a woman. She oversees the brand here. Her name is Ana Maria Romero Mena. So the background here, Ana Maria Romero Mena is a distinguished maestra tequilaera from Mexico.
Renowned for her expertise in tequila craftsmanship and sensory evaluation. She began her career in the wine industry, studying business administration at the university of the Americas and specializing in sensory evaluation at UC Davis.
**Gizmo:** Sensory evaluation was her major. I know what
**Chef Ricky:** that is.
So this is do explain. So this is great because we'll get to graduate.
**Gizmo:** What's like the final exam? Like I think Bam Bam's the proctor in that class.
Professor Bam.
**Chef Ricky:** Yeah, so she identified over 600 unique scents culminating in the creation of an aroma wheel. So this woman's credited with creating the [00:32:00] aroma wheel that's become an industry standard. The Aromas of Tequila, which is a book she published in 2007, is a comprehensive guide that delves into the sensory notes of tequila and their development over time.
Uh, she served on plenty of advisory boards for institutions like the tequila, the tequila regulatory console, the TRC, CRT in Spanish, and the National Chamber of the Tequila Industry, contributing significantly to the evaluation of tequila's global image. Uh, she's helped with other brands. I think in our last pod, uh, we mentioned Vocal de Mi Tierra.
She's helped those guys out, uh, with developing their aromas. and flavor profiles and marketing and yeah, she's behind Mijenta here and I think this is a genius way the way she develops her, uh, her flavors, her aromas. She's using a low pressure autoclave stainless steel tanks for fermentation without fibers so you'll get a much cleaner, almost purer Or feminine nose and, and, and on the palate.
Whereas I think with some [00:33:00] other tequilas that use, uh, copper pot stills and, uh, either concrete or wooden fermentation tanks, there's a lot of petrichor present. Since Grindr's here.
So, you know, this is just a lot more, um, as some would say, maybe cleaner. I will say when I was,
**Gizmo:** when I was pouring it. We talked about this with the LANs when I was pouring it, it, I, it was as if I was pouring water.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah.
**Gizmo:** This is not a very, that's extra extraordinarily
**Bam Bam:** clean,
**Gizmo:** viscous spirit. It's
**Bam Bam:** very pure.
Similar to the LANs, not much legs on it, but similar. It's
**Chef Ricky:** very, very easy to drink. And like the volans, although it didn't have much viscosity, the butter is on the nose. Was it? It's, it's, it's very ative. So that, that's what
**Bam Bam:** was so perplex perplexing about that tequila. Regardless of the fact that it was so, wasn't so viscous, it was very buttery and creamy.
We're kind of getting that today, too.
**Chef Ricky:** This isn't as buttery, but yes, definitely, yeah.
**Gizmo:** I like that this is a, it's divergent from [00:34:00] Volan's. I could see two different applications for those two tequilas. This is incredible. This is really good stuff as well.
**Bam Bam:** And how much is this
**Gizmo:** bottle? 50 bucks.
**Bam Bam:** Oh, come on.
Another 50. Another 50 one. Honestly, this is why
**Gizmo:** I wanted to do them.
**Bam Bam:** You wouldn't get a bottle of these. Oh yeah.
**Gizmo:** This is why I wanted to do them back to back on the Cuban episodes. I know that we've had some folks saying, why are you going so deep into agave? Cause at the, for the love of agave event, the two standout Blancos that we did, that we tasted, you know, I guess that was sometime in the summer, late summer was, uh, was the Valons and the, Uh, me, uh, me Henta.
So that's why I wanted to piggyback these two and then we'll take a break from tequila for a little bit. Yeah. And then great choice tonight.
**Chef Ricky:** It's a good one. Did you get this when you picked up the, uh, full on? I did. I bought them at the same time. Yeah. Very nice. So the, I've had all the expressions. I think they're up to an extra on the, I'm not too sure because it's been a minute.
Uh, but the [00:35:00] Blanco is one of my favorites. Uh, and then I might be getting it confused with Volans, but I think they also have a high proof Blanco that's delicious. But if not, it's Volans that does.
**Bam Bam:** What's funny is, you know, I still get the raisin and, and um, plum in this cigar. But when I take a sip and then a draw, it gets to a buttery note.
Buttery, but almost like a berry. A raspberry type of experience when I have the two together, especially on the retro hill. Yeah. One right after the other. What an excellent pairing.
**Gizmo:** Worked out good.
**Rooster:** I'm getting like a buttery croissant, like almost a bready note. On this, right?
**Grinder:** On the cigar.
**Rooster:** On
**Grinder:** the JL1.
Absolutely. There's a lot of complexity. A lot of layers. Just like a croissant.
**Bam Bam:** And I just like how clear they all are. I think we fucked up that original rating. Well, that's why we're back.
**Gizmo:** What do
**Bam Bam:** you
**Gizmo:** think? What do you
**Grinder:** think happened there?
**Gizmo:** No, I think that it was a different run of the cigar. It's a three year difference in the run.
I mean, the recent stuff has been performing brilliantly. [00:36:00] Ready to smoke? Yeah, ready to smoke. I've had them for quite some time. I don't remember what the humidity situation was. I don't think we were as keen. Uh, on humidity three years ago. No kitty litter yet. We weren't dialed in yet. Mm hmm. No kitty litter yet.
This, I mean, this
**Grinder:** is perfectly kept. Cause this, uh,
**Gizmo:** It's perfectly Only a perfectly kept cigar
**Grinder:** could have this kind of burn.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah. It's not spongy at all. It's nicely firm. Right? But not too firm.
**Gizmo:** I'm gonna clip that and send that to Senator DeMars. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha,
**Bam Bam:** ha. Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha.
Ha,
**Chef Ricky:** ha, ha. Do it tonight. I will. At 2am. I don't know if you guys peeped this bottle, but I think the bottle here is really attractive. It has this beautiful, pale, purplish, lavender. It's a gorgeous label. Label. And then the top of the cap here, that's also glass. There's a rabbit. So that's a reference to the Cuatrocientos Conejos, or Maya Wells children.
Maya Wells is the Mexican deity for agave. Right? So. So that's uh, that's just really
**Grinder:** kind of
**Chef Ricky:** cool. There's
**Grinder:** a rabbit on the bottom too. [00:37:00]
**Chef Ricky:** Yeah, you're right. Yeah, there's a bigger rabbit on the bottom. So it's almost like going down the rabbit hole. Going
**Grinder:** down the rabbit
**Bam Bam:** hole. We have done that. For a 50 bottle, that's a beautifully elegant product.
**Gizmo:** It looks good like sitting on a table. It does. It's an, it's a.
**Pagoda:** I remember the rabbit tattoos. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic.
**Gizmo:** All right, boys, let's go into some listener email. We have a couple to get to tonight. First one here is from Lizard Enrique. He writes this a lot. Always a great email. He says, Happy New Year.
Our new puppy woke us up at 5 a. m. So I have already listened. To the new year's eve episode. It was awesome. And the best of was terrific. It was an incredible way to end the year. And thank you for answering my question about podcast origin. I can't believe there could have been an additional lizard after a nine year hiatus from having any cigar.
2024 was my year of rediscovery and the podcast shortened my learning curve dramatically in terms of trying out cigars and where to even begin tackling new worlds, the [00:38:00] Danilo episode. Is the best thing I've heard so far on cigars in general, that coupled with so many hilarious moments. It was the best year yet.
We hope you and yours have had a happy and prosperous new year. PS. He sent a picture. He said, one of my Christmas gifts in the wild at our coast house. And he had the lizard sippy cup, our, uh, our thermos with the lizard logo that he got for Christmas. I thought that was very cool. Here's another one. This one is from lizard.
Shawnee bro. He says lizards as an avid smoker and collector of cigars. I now have somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 cigars. That's a, that's a lot of cigars. That's awesome. My long term goal is to buy a steady supply of regular production Cubans like we're smoking tonight so that I have a backlog to smoke for years to follow, which probably means my stash will swell to somewhere around four to 5, 000 cigars.
What cabinets do you guys recommend for long term storage? of larger collections. [00:39:00] These will be for boxes mostly. And do you guys stick with Boveda for humidification or do you have an active humidification device? Thanks so much, LizardShawneeBro.
**Bam Bam:** Good email. Great email. I, I definitely prefer my Oasis to Boveda.
Mm hmm. No doubt about it. Especially with that many cigars. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,
**Gizmo:** with that many cigars in a, in a
**Bam Bam:** A tower. In a
**Gizmo:** tower, I mean, your, your Boveda costs every year. It's, it's You're also, yeah, you're also
**Bam Bam:** risking The loss of possible cigars, if you're just solely relying on a Boveda.
**Gizmo:** And you're not checking them all the time to make sure they're not drying out, especially right now in the United States here in the Northeast United States, it's very cold and dry.
So if you have a Boveda situation and an imperfectly sealed humidor, those things are going to dry out very fast.
**Bam Bam:** So I've been lazy with my Oasis. I just put it in. I'm shocked. Yeah. Two days. All right. Forget it. So you just put it in two days ago. I'm just trying to impart some knowledge. So if you live in this area, I just recently put my [00:40:00] Oasis unit back in.
But prior to my readings, they went steadily down from 65 to 62. Now I'm at like 50. I was at 58. Oh yeah. So I was. I got up late.
**Grinder:** You're on the limit.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah. No, no, no. I was up late in the morning. I said, I got to get my, I recharged the whole thing, put it in there. And then.
**Rooster:** Wait, but why, why did you take the unit out?
Couldn't you have just left it in? No.
**Bam Bam:** I take it out during the spring and summer. No. Because in my basement, it's very humid in the summer and spring. Right. So my humidity with that Oasis in it, without it running, goes up to 68, 69. Yeah. So
**Gizmo:** I'm in the same boat. Easily. Same boat too. I don't take the. Oasis out of my tower, what I do is I empty out the distilled water and then I have fans at the top that run 24 seven filtering air.
So when it's humid, I just take the water out and they recommend every year you change the water beads. That's true. So then when it starts to get a little drier, I put new beads in, I put distilled water in and that's that.
**Rooster:** So, right. I mean, me and you have the same exact setup, [00:41:00] exactly the same unit, same, uh,
**Bam Bam:** but different basements.
And we have, I
**Gizmo:** think our ambience a little different rooster that matters. I think his is a little bit more naturally humid than mine is.
**Bam Bam:** Ambient humidity in your home, depending on where your tower or wherever you're keeping your cigars matters. It's going to definitely have an effect.
**Gizmo:** So let's talk about storage.
So we talked about humidification here. His first question of course, was what do we prefer as far as storing stuff? So I'll start with what rooster and I have. We have vigilant vault two thousands. They make a few different sizes of them. Um, I think ours probably can fit 2, 500 to 3, 000 cigars. If you're, if you're being efficient.
Your,
**Bam Bam:** your towers are double wide than the one I have. You have more capacity.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. We have a double wide, uh, bam. Which one do you have? Tower of Power. You have the Tower of Power and, and that's what Pagoda and Senator has as well. Uh, Grindr, you have a double wide as well, but is there a brand on it or?
It's called Elegant [00:42:00] Bar. Elegant Bar. Cedar
**Grinder:** cabinet, uh, two big doors. It's about six, seven feet, six and a half feet tall. Um, it's huge. I've got two different sections. So the bottom, uh, is just shelves, flat shelves, and then the top are angled shelves for display purposes. Um, and then in the middle, it bisects the cabinet and it's just a layer of drawers.
So I've got a lot of storage space. I could probably fit like, you know, maybe 25. 3, 500 cigars in there. It's big. Yeah. I have a, uh, Boveda. Uh, I have like, Wi Fi, Boveda, Bluetooth. Yeah,
**Gizmo:** that device they have. Temperature monitors on
**Grinder:** every level and across, like, I have three on each level. So I have a lot of Boveda things in there and um, I have the Oasis down on the bottom and then I have like a couple, [00:43:00] a lot of the Boveda packs up at the top.
**Rooster:** Nice. And
**Gizmo:** don't forget the spray bottle. And the spray bottle distilled. The misting. The spritzing.
**Bam Bam:** spritzing going on. Oh, I like that better. The spritzing. A lot of spritzing going on. It's a spritz. It's definitely. It's a grinder house. I haven't,
**Grinder:** I haven't spritzed in probably, probably since you've, you've, you've, uh, you've publicly embarrassed me.
I was shamed enough into not ever doing that again. If
**Rooster:** it helps, a cigar is something. It's helped. Yeah. But I,
**Grinder:** I, you know, I also, I, Just got, you know, more dialed in on the top level is where I was having troubles. Uh, especially
**Rooster:** in the winter time, you know,
**Grinder:** if it works, it works. Yeah. It's true. It's true. I used to spritz a lot, but I just hit it a lot with, uh, the Boda packs, um, uh, like across the shelves and I have them like tucked in between different boxes and stuff, and it works pretty well.
**Gizmo:** You know what the unfortunate thing is for, you know, Shawnee bro here or anybody else who's considering getting something is you actually aren't going to really know what your situation is going to be until the tower's there. You have cigars in it and you [00:44:00] go through a year of changing seasons and constantly monitoring and watching.
And, you know, you have your Govee devices on, on wifi. So you get updates if it's high or low, you know, you gotta go through a year. Yeah. Of these seasonal changes before you really 100 percent know.
**Bam Bam:** A more impactful like look back for me is I wish I had a bigger tower. You know, the moment I stacked and filled the tower, I realized I wasn't, I didn't have enough room.
So now I have six huge Tupper doors on the side, also full of cigars. And that's the pain in the ass. Cause if you want something, you've got to unpile and take everything out and to look at what your inventory is. The beauty of a double wide tower, like the two of you have. You can keep almost everything you have in that tower.
The thing about most,
**Gizmo:** the thing about the tower that Rooster and I have too, and I'm assuming I'm going to speak for Rooster with this statement, but when I purchased that, it was a little more expensive than what you'd find on your elegant bar. It was more expensive than, than the one you have. I got a great
**Bam Bam:** deal online.
**Gizmo:** The thing [00:45:00] about the one that, that Rooster and I have is first off, it's a piece of furniture, custom built to our spec by Vigilant. But also it's kind of like the one and done, like I am not going. I have no plan to have a bigger tower, have a different tower. You're all set. I'm done. You guys are both set.
I think it works very well. It's, it looks great. He's
**Bam Bam:** shaking his head.
**Rooster:** Yeah. I mean, ideally I would like a new world tower and a Cuban tower. You're not wrong. That's the way to get a second one. Yeah. But the only, only, uh, The only thing is, once you get a tower, you want to fill it up. I mean, you end up Yeah, so your
**Bam Bam:** buying practices ramp up dramatically the moment that thing's in place.
**Rooster:** Yeah, but having said that, when we got the towers, cigar prices had not seen this kind of a jump. Right? I mean, the cigar prices were quite a bit more reasonable. So if you get the Juan Lopez boxes at like 250 or right around 200, [00:46:00] I mean, we were all in. You know,
**Bam Bam:** we were giddy actually with those prices.
Yeah, but had we
**Rooster:** known what the prices would go up to? Oh yeah, I would have
**Bam Bam:** mortgaged my house. I would have done something.
**Chef Ricky:** Well, let me, let me speak more for the guys that haven't grown up yet like myself. Uh. I have a Winodore. I think, I think the brand is all due. It holds 250 cigars. Five levels, two drawers, and the rest are kind of like sliding wooden panels, uh, with no walls on them.
On each level, I have a Wi Fi Govee. I used to have the Boveda Butler's, but they were only Bluetooth, so they didn't really They didn't give me any information if I wasn't home. And one day that saved my ass. Cause I left to a friend's house for a holiday and I grabbed cigars on the way out and the door didn't close all the way.
And I remember getting the notification while I was at my friend's house saying, you know, showing my humidity going up. And I called my daughter's babysitter. And I'm like, I need you to go to my [00:47:00] house and close my humidor. Those are important things. Oh yeah. Yeah. It took her a couple of hours. And I remember just like constantly texting her, like, are you there yet?
Did you make it? You know, like this is important. Um, but yeah, so the wifi thing is, is. critical. Um, and yeah, I'm using Boveda packs. I did dive into the cat litter a little bit because in my previous house, I was, I did have a high
**Gizmo:** dried unscented silica. Yes,
**Chef Ricky:** it's not cat litter, like the clay stuff. It's, it's crystal beads.
Um, dry
**Bam Bam:** unscented silica. Which holds humidity and creates a consistent environment. That's what it does. It
**Chef Ricky:** did help dry out my situation a little bit. So what I didn't know, and I got to back up, I got to back the kid up, man.
**Gizmo:** Thanks, man.
**Chef Ricky:** Well, what I didn't know, and I, and I learned going through some Reddit posts is that in some of these wine doors, they, they were wine fridges or repurposed wine fridges. So oftentimes they have, uh, drip pans or they had drip [00:48:00] pans, which they no longer do, but they still sometimes have the holes.
Right? So if that hole is not properly sealed, then it's letting in humidity or letting out humidity, depending on the time of the year. Uh, so the first thing I did was seal that hole and that helped. And then the cat litter helped me, the crystals helped me dry. Silica beads, Ricky,
**Gizmo:** come on, dried.
**Chef Ricky:** And I'll, I'll be up.
My favorite thing about the silica beads was that it was just a matter of microwaving them to dry them out. You know, you didn't really have to keep buying something new. You could have continued using that. Yeah. You recharge it with water. Exactly. Or still, or dry it out. I think I, I like to upgrade to a tower at some point.
Right now I'm okay with this and a few Tupper doors that I have with cedar drawers in them. But for now, this is, uh, you know. Can you
**Rooster:** fit boxes on the bottom shelves of yours or? I
**Chef Ricky:** could fit boxes, but not many. I could put, I kind of have to choose. I could put a box or I could put loose sticks. You know, I can't put a box on sticks.
**Bam Bam:** Did he mention in his email that he has a tower?
**Chef Ricky:** [00:49:00] I hope so. At 3, 000 sticks, I'm surprised. I'd be surprised if he doesn't.
**Bam Bam:** So
**Pagoda:** where's he keeping
**Gizmo:** them now?
**Chef Ricky:** Yeah. And how's he keeping them? Yeah,
**Gizmo:** I, I don't know. I don't know if Shawnee Bro has a tower now, or if everything's in Tupperware. I mean, listen, the Tupperware solution, Is a great solution for cigar storage.
The problem is it's just a pain in the ass and it doesn't look great. So, there's no knock on anyone using Tupperware. If you have a nice closet, you can put it in, get it out of the eye, you know, out of, out of view. The, the benefit of getting a nice tower is it turns into a piece of furniture and you can display your collection.
And you can stand there in front of it and say, what do I want to smoke right now? Exactly. Open the door and pick it out. As opposed to Tupperware, you're like ripping through it. Yeah.
**Bam Bam:** That's ideal. So, honestly, the ideal scenario to store your cigars is to have a tower that's large enough to hold everything you have that you can visually see before you go out for a night.
**Pagoda:** Yeah, I'm laughing at that. It's down in front of it, uh, whenever you want to.
**Grinder:** Engage the air collection. I'm [00:50:00] laughing at it. Which I do a lot. I'm laughing at the, uh Get it out of sight. I got my tower in 2017 after I had moved in with my girlfriend at the time, you know, my now wife, and she got tired of seeing, we had an extra bedroom and it was half full of Tupperware.
And she's like, I can't, like, you can't, this isn't going to work if we're going to live together. So I, I just went out and bought a nice, piece of furniture, as you said, and, and it's worked great. You're the first guy that I think in this group that's at, that has a tower.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah. He was the first one. Yeah.
**Gizmo:** By, by a long shot, probably by five years.
So 2017, I got my first tower. So the other thing I want to say to piggybacking on Ricky's story was that when I was in Cuba. A year ago in January, I got a notification through my Wi Fi Govi devices that my humidity was dropping like crazy. So then I had my stepson go down and I discovered that I didn't check before I left, it was completely out of [00:51:00] distilled water.
So I walked him through on text from Cuba. you know, filling it up. So those wifi devices are really great because no matter where you are in the world, you go away on business on vacation or whatever it is, you know, you have a problem. And like Ricky did, and like I did, you send someone in to solve it.
And if you're, if you're
**Chef Ricky:** in the minority, cause you know, although here we all have lockers and we have a home lounge, I don't think any of us actually store some bars there. No, never. But if you're, if you're one of those that. actually do, then I recommend a Wi Fi, uh, hygrometer, so that way you could see how your cigar, how the ambient humidity is being maintained in your locker.
**Bam Bam:** So that's a question I have for all of you. We've all belonged to multiple clubs, still do, or have, and will be. Have any of you ever kept cigars at any long term or short term in any of your lockers at your places? Firstly,
**Pagoda:** I just want to clarify, there's only one person over here who belongs to. That's not true.
That's not true. That is [00:52:00] true. That is true. That
**Rooster:** is true. Okay,
**Pagoda:** well, okay.
**Rooster:** So
**Gizmo:** why don't you answer? Answer your own question, man.
**Bam Bam:** He
**Gizmo:** threw the t ball up to himself.
**Bam Bam:** Hey, come on. That's not true. You belong here, so. I don't keep cigars at any of my clubs. I just don't trust the level of humidity in the lockers.
Yeah, I don't trust anybody
**Gizmo:** to take care of my cigars except myself. That's it.
**Chef Ricky:** But if you do, it's probably best to put them in a Tupper door because that way you get to control it yourself.
**Gizmo:** Or, you know, if you're going to leave cigars at your lounge, I would recommend putting a bova, an appropriate bova, in a small Tupperware fiddle fit or even, you know, sorry Bam, a Ziploc bag.
That'll keep those cigars well in your locker. So, I mean, that's the better way to do it.
**Bam Bam:** The Ziploc in the locker, very appropriate. Oh, you're okay with that? Not sitting among the membership with a bag next to you. That's awful. I feel like there's some personal
**Gizmo:** mm-hmm. [00:53:00] He's just on, he's on a, uh, he's, he's got a vendetta.
He's got, he got a 2025 vendetta. I got
**Grinder:** lots of faux pa man. You got a lot of faux pos, correct. I used to keep, uh, cigars in our, um, in our humidor locker at our former lounge. Yep. I think we all did. Yeah, we all did. Just because, you know, it was very convenient. And it wasn't bad, but there were times where it just got a little too wet, you
**Rooster:** know?
I think at that time we, at least I didn't have a tower at that time. So most of the cigars that I had were either kept at home in two big humidors that were like desktop humidors or at the lounge.
**Bam Bam:** So it's interesting, at that time I didn't have a pouch that I could bring my cigars from wherever I went.
So I did keep my cigars at that particular lounge, that's true. But once I purchased the proper cigar pouch, I stopped doing it. You know, I just didn't trust it.
**Gizmo:** Yeah, I've never kept cigars anywhere other than my own setup.
**Grinder:** [00:54:00] I don't, I don't think I cared as much as I, as I do now, frankly. I think it was just, there was some trust in the proprietor to keep it, keep it stable.
And, um, Usually it was, so I didn't really complain. I was just happy to sit down and smoke cigars. I think also, too, you know,
**Gizmo:** we're smoking a Cuban, we're talking about Cuban cigars tonight. Obviously, in this conversation, we're talking about everything, but Cuban cigars are far more sensitive to higher humidity, fluctuations, etc.
as, as how they're gonna perform versus New Worlds. I think I've made it very clear personally that I like my New Worlds even lower than I think anybody in the room probably, but That's true. For Cuban cigars, I, I don't think it's possible to successfully store that in a, in a lounge situation, but new worlds, I think you can probably get away with it.
So boys, we're past the halfway point now on the Juan Lopez Selexio number one. What's everybody thinking? Outstanding experience. So good.
**Chef Ricky:** Yeah. Lovin lovin the Retro Hill.
**Bam Bam:** I found there to be a little change. [00:55:00] Um, it's gotten maybe slight peppery for me on the Retro a bit more but still very smooth and creamy.
Um, definitely the raisin and plum that's dissipated but The citrus is
**Gizmo:** gone for me as well. Yeah, but
**Bam Bam:** it's, it's very savory. Yeah, that's where it's pivoted to. It's, I can't put my finger on it. It's not like this garlicky savoriness, but it's more of a earthiness. Yeah. But in a, in a good way, cause that could go bad really fast.
It's gotten a little saltier. I think that that's probably what it is. But it's still very velvety. Yeah, that
**Rooster:** Cuban twang is coming through now. And it's picked up a little bit and it's like a tad in strength.
**Chef Ricky:** The retro is delicious. I find it to have gotten less sweet as you all have. A little bit drier, but still very pleasant.
The smoke output has also sort of lowered a little bit for me.
**Rooster:** So you, you were a bit concerned when you cut the cigar. [00:56:00] You felt the cigar like, you know, it would be tight. Like the draw wasn't that open. It wasn't right. As you
**Chef Ricky:** lit it, it, it opened up a little bit, but it's still not a, a very open, it's not a, not a very, very open draw, but it's, yeah, it's, it's.
It's been great. I kind of like
**Rooster:** that. I don't like a very, very open, open draw. I like a little bit of resistance.
**Chef Ricky:** I find what it encourages is because the draw is a little bit tight, your cigar doesn't heat up as much. So you get a lot of milder, sweeter notes that linger a lot more. But it could be frustrating sometimes if that combustion isn't
**Gizmo:** happening.
Thankfully, with the draw that we're talking about, I wouldn't argue slightly resistant. Right across the board, maybe Ricky's a little more. The combustion's amazing.
**Pagoda:** I agree.
**Gizmo:** Combustion's amazing. A lot of smoke.
**Pagoda:** No complaint. The bone line is still beautiful.
**Chef Ricky:** Beautiful. And I tell you, I need to upgrade my cutter.
My cutter is definitely a little dull. Like, I feel like some of what, some of the, the draw issue is the [00:57:00] cutter's fault. It got pinched. In that it's got compacted, uh, through the cutting
**Bam Bam:** motion. We're all kind of at the same point. I think Chef's smoking the slowest. Hmm. I don't think it's by choice. It's a merit though.
No, that's definitely a merit.
**Gizmo:** So boys, we have a voice memo. Nice. From one of our listeners. So this is from Lizard Seagull, who writes this a lot, sent us his first voice memo. So let's play that right now.
**Lizard Seagull:** Good morning, lizards. As always, I love the latest, especially with the data drop. Interesting. Do you guys snack as you drink smoke?
I don't like to drink on an empty stomach, so I usually snack on something. What are your thoughts? Thank you.
**Chef Ricky:** Good question. You know, this could be, this couldn't be more perfect.
**Gizmo:** That's why I brought this voice memo in tonight. It's a great question. This could have worked out
**Chef Ricky:** perfect, but yeah I mean we have cookies that my awesome wife provided us with.
Delicious. Love them. Love them. Big dessert guy. Yeah. [00:58:00] And yeah, I mean it, And none of us are eating them right now, but I think if we did, at this very point, with the salt we're getting, the buttery notes in the tequila, the light chocolate, the baking spice, I think it'll be a home run.
**Bam Bam:** Why not try it? I'm not a pastry guy while I smoke.
Oh, I am not either.
**Grinder:** I don't like eating at all when I smoke, actually.
**Bam Bam:** Except for one. I will do a chocolate. Okay, from time to time like you used to do the Bouchard's they make fun of you. I love those things Yeah, they were very good right fruit And that dry fruit platter that we not in fruit
**Gizmo:** powder that we got from Harry and David from after that
**Bam Bam:** Recording we went into the club and we all snacked on that while we were smoking and drinking.
It was fabulous
**Gizmo:** I actually really love cashews
**Bam Bam:** Yeah. Any cigar, any coffee, small, tiny little snack that you can get in, not a big pastry or a sandwich, but a little piece of chocolate, a little almond or something. Perfect.
**Gizmo:** I'm a little different. I'm a little different than grinder. I actually really enjoy and I'll plan it out.
Like if we're going to come here and [00:59:00] order something out, if I'm going to get a piece of meat, like a filet or a ribeye.
**Bam Bam:** That's a difference. Now you're talking dinner.
**Gizmo:** Well, you're snacking or eating while smoking. Like I'll pull my favorite thing is to have a glass of red wine like Oberon. A filet mignon.
Yep. Some broccolini on the side. And a cigar. And a Monte Cristo number two. Look, dude. I'm sorry.
**Rooster:** Is that a snack or that's a meal?
**Pagoda:** What about the hour and a half before the meat, before the smoke? It's kind of really just, well, I'm taking a shower at that point.
Isn't it very contradictory? That's all I'm saying. What is, you know, you mentioned that you like to eat about an hour and a half and it's a pet peeve. This is true. But if we go out
**Bam Bam:** to a dinner and it's a steak dinner, I love smoking during dinner. I do too. And I keep it lit the entire time. That's really the only, but if I'm in a club though, I won't have a meal.
I won't eat anything here. But when I'm out to dinner at a place where I can [01:00:00] smoke and have a delicious steak at a hundred percent.
**Gizmo:** And I think we also have to disconnect too, like you coming to this recording tonight, you're preparing to give your opinion on flavor notes, everything else. So I think.
That I understand your line of thinking. They're like, no eating before, no smoking before you want to have a clean palate for, to offer the listeners. That's
**Bam Bam:** how I feel. Honestly, I don't even like smoking before the recording. I think I've done it once out of a hundred. How many episodes now? 168. Correct.
Maybe once or twice. I try not to do that because for me, I'm sensitive. Like my mouth will go numb after three or four cigars. Sometimes I'd rather not do that for, before recording. But when we're not
**Gizmo:** recording, sitting down for a steak. Oh yeah,
**Bam Bam:** dude.
**Gizmo:** But so, you know, if we want to be very specific to lizard seagulls question here, none of us have ever snacked while recording.
**Bam Bam:** Never,
**Gizmo:** ever. When we're smoking or drinking, none of us have ever had any food between hitting record and hitting stop record. Um, we've never had any snacks. I
**Rooster:** think, I think that might alter. Some of the flavor notes that you get out of the [01:01:00] cigar. Since we're recording a pod, I don't think it's appropriate for us to do that.
But in a casual setting, I think it's okay. Point noted. Yep. You can snack on it. Well done. Snack on a filet mignon. Snack on some bolognese. But, but I can tell you one thing,
**Pagoda:** those cookies were delicious.
**Gizmo:** Yeah, the cookies are
**Pagoda:** great. And it was well worth it to have snacked right before.
**Gizmo:** So I have another one for you boys.
This one's from Lizard John from Boys. He writes us all the time, always a great question. And I think this one is as well. He says, Hi Giz, quick question for the guys. When you and the boys refer to purging a cigar, can you please describe what that entails? Are you recutting one or both ends? Is it just a relight?
Thanks so much. Lizard John from Boise.
**Bam Bam:** That's an easy one. Go ahead. Yeah, very,
**Rooster:** very simple. Very simple. You have a cigar and for whatever reason, sometimes it's good to purge and purge. Purging a cigar basically just [01:02:00] means blowing some smoke through the cigar the other way. The other way.
**Bam Bam:** So at the head of the cigar, you're blowing air through it.
To purge the foot instead of
**Rooster:** drawing on it. You're pushing it out. Correct.
**Bam Bam:** So instead of blowing in, you're blowing out. Yeah.
**Rooster:** I mean, you might be getting some nicotine or something like that's going to clear.
**Bam Bam:** And ideally you do that right after you light, before you take a draw. That's
**Gizmo:** what I do every time.
Same. So what I do when I toast my cigar is I toast the foot until it's You know, red, but I'm not hitting the edge. I'm just toasting the end of the cigar very delicately. The first thing I do is I always push the smoke out. Then I begin to actually light the cigar and begin drawing on it. So I do that every single cigar I smoke going on new world, new world and Cubans, all everything.
It's all the time.
**Bam Bam:** Excellent practice.
**Gizmo:** So. Dig a little deeper. What I find with what Rooster just said here is that sometimes if you're getting a little [01:03:00] tar blast or something's not feeling right, if you purge and it doesn't fix it, that might be the time that you want to do an additional small cut to try to eliminate any of that on the remaining head of the cigar that's building up there.
You might be pulling it too hard. You might have a little too much saliva on the cigar, so just trim it.
**Bam Bam:** Maybe a bit tight, so you open that up a little bit more. Exactly.
**Gizmo:** And then if that doesn't work after lighting, that's when I'll pull out the perfect draw and just do a little bit of work, see what happens and then, you know, progress from there.
**Chef Ricky:** My other favorite time to purge is when you're taking it down to the nub and you're getting really close and the cigar is heating up and you know, the, the, the flavor is getting kind of really aggressive and peppery. It's usually a good reset. So just go with a good three second push, uh, and purge that all out.
And then. You could normally get back to some of those, uh, milder, cleaner flavors, if you will.
**Gizmo:** I also think too, for listeners out there who like to put their cigar down, let it go out and [01:04:00] then relight it. I think that arguably might be the most important time for a cigar smoker to purge. Get all that old smoke out once you start to relight.
Um, you know, so you're not taking that in and affecting that initial. Yeah. Flavor from the real life.
**Chef Ricky:** Especially if you're resting your cigar in an ashtray that's loaded with ash. Cause maybe you're having a three or four cigar session or something like
**Bam Bam:** that. So I try not to ever do that. If I have a flat top glass like this, and if it's long enough for me to put it on a glass and not in an ashtray full of ash, I'll do that.
And that's where the cigar rest come in. Come into play. Cigar rest is a good, exactly. If you have that, then you're set. I also try not to let the cigar go out.
**Gizmo:** I do too. But sometimes it's inevitable. That's true. You get in a conversation, especially if you're call, you get a work call, you're working. The kids need something.
Yep, yep. You know it happens, but you gotta purge before you relay. You know?
**Rooster:** It's, it's amazing how important the cigar rest is It? It is. I think every single cigar smoker should have one that's agree. That's his pet peeve. I think it's a key accessory [01:05:00] to, to own, you know, with a cigar cutter, a lighter and a cigar rest and obviously a plastic bag carrying case.
**Chef Ricky:** I refuse to get one until I can get a large lizard one. So I'm just, yeah. You came late to the party. I know you're still on the, you're on a
**Pagoda:** PIP right now. You're on a PIP. You're under review trial period. Correct. When you're going to get, when you're going to get one for him, you know, more than happy to get one too.
Yeah.
**Gizmo:** You already got one. Don't forget Pagoda lost his on the New Jersey transit. Oh,
**Pagoda:** that's right. I thought it was one annually
**Chef Ricky:** for
**Pagoda:** him.
**Chef Ricky:** If I go to look genuinely surprised when he is like, you already had one. Oh, I forgot about that. Yeah.
**Gizmo:** Oh, that sucks. I love my, uh, lounge lizards. Uh, me too. We were, we were gonna, you know, for the listener out there, we were gonna put them up in the merch store, but the per unit cost was just too, uh, prohibitive.
So we, once we find a, uh, a vendor that can put them together for, so at the quality we like and the price we like, [01:06:00] we will, uh, share them with the world. All right, boys, it's time now to do our lizard of the week, our lizard of the week this week is Lizard Nicholas, and he sends us an email with the subject line.
First purchase advice. Hi Gibbs. First of all, another Lance. He cut, he cuts himself off another Lancero boys. Not nice. He says, sorry. I mean, I want to thank you for all the hard work you put into the pod. I've been listening since the middle of 2024. I think, but time flies when you're having fun and I've almost completed every episode seeing each of you evolve in the hobby across the episodes has helped me organize my own palette and how I review my own cigars.
And that is exactly what you were talking about earlier, as we were all talking about taking notes, thinking very intently about the notes you're getting. Obviously. We do that on the pod. We have microphones in front of our face and we're trying to deliver a consistent program every week. But it's a good thing for every lizard to [01:07:00] do because that's how you develop
**Bam Bam:** a palate.
Especially when you're starting out and you're, you've got maybe five boxes and that's it. Study those cigars. Smoke them often, take notes.
**Rooster:** You know, go back to his point. He started listening mid 2024. He didn't even hear the BAM Accountability Hour, potentially. No, no, no, what I mean is how many What I mean is how many episodes he has listened to within that short period.
Yeah, it's crazy. You're talking about 180 days and maybe he's listened to 150 plus. That's one almost every day. That's incredible. That's
**Gizmo:** a good point there, right?
**Bam Bam:** Love it.
**Gizmo:** Well, we love that. We love hearing from listeners who go back through the catalog. That's pretty amazing. Good point, Brewster. So he continues, I think I'm finally ready to make my first ever order of Cuban cigars.
Don't get me wrong. I'm perfectly happy with all the new worlds readily available here in the U S but listening to the pod has really made me want to try Cubans in new worlds. I tend to err on the fuller side. But I do have a taste for milder sticks as [01:08:00] well. Some of my favorite go tos are the late hour in Churchill, the room 101 forest broadleaf, the Alec Bradley Prensado, the Padron 1926 series, Dunbarton red meat lovers, Liga 9, Hemingway series.
Wow. E. P. Carrillo and the Ashton Classic are some of the, uh, ones he lists here. As many of us in the mid twenties cohort, he's saying of his age, I am on a fairly limited budget with that in mind, I was thinking about going for a box of part of his shorts. The price on I Havana seemed reasonable at 315.
**Bam Bam:** Nice. So what do we think about that?
**Gizmo:** That's
**Bam Bam:** a smart move. It's just, it's a good start.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. I think, I think, you know, if you're looking for a good Cuban experience, I think listening to any of the short smoke specials we did and each of those, we do a Cuban and a new world, I think before you make a decision, which he's obviously saying he's listened to a bunch of them.
Um, I would, I would listen to all of those for any listener out there and find the one that most aligns with your [01:09:00] palate. Look at the ratings, listen to it, uh, and try something. I think, uh, I think a 315 box of. Part of the shorts is a pretty low risk by
**Bam Bam:** agreed.
**Gizmo:** It's a great cigar. And what's nice about that as a small format cigar is it's actually kind of closest maybe to the bigger, the big brother cigars in part of this.
It's very close in flavor profile.
**Bam Bam:** The DNA
**Gizmo:** is consistent. And you can't
**Rooster:** always say that about a small cigar. I think the other one that I would recommend considering his, what he has, what he's currently smoking, like he likes a fuller. Full of, uh, you know, a lot of flavor out of a cigar. So maybe the Bolivar Petit Corona.
Oh, that's a good one. Very good one. And the Ramon, the small club,
**Gizmo:** that's delicious. That's a good one too. And the H up in half Corona. The thing, the reason why I bring that one up, you know, to your point. The ones you mentioned are a little more full rooster, but what I like about the H up in half Corona, especially if you're smoking a lot of new worlds, I think that is a [01:10:00] perfect finisher, like dessert stick and gives you that really great Cuban flavor.
It doesn't interfere with what you got from the new worlds, but. That's another good one too. It's true.
**Bam Bam:** Love it. The part of the short is a step up though. I agree. In body. Yeah. So I think he'll gravitate to that. I think any of the three he just Yeah. And that bowly Petit Corona is great.
**Chef Ricky:** Just stay away from Fonseca's.
That was my first Cuban.
**Gizmo:** So he says here, he, he, he says Also, I have an interesting question for the group. You guys recently did your desert island cigar, so I want to hear the inverse desert island cigar. Rather than picking the perfect desert island stick, you would pick the cigar that you would enjoy the most that the other lizards would not be tempted to steal from you, because they wouldn't want it.
In other words, what sticks do each of you enjoy that the others do not? Thanks in advance for your advice. Lizard Nicholas,
**Bam Bam:** Rocky Patel. Well, the JL one [01:11:00] JL one. When I would
**Gizmo:** steal that from you, you probably would. Bastard. It's a hard question.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah, it is. That is a hard question. That is a very hard
**Gizmo:** question.
Like, what are some outlier cigars that you enjoy that the rest of the group doesn't? We kind of all like I'll be honest, I think Grindr might have some of the easier choices here because I think his palate is a little divergent than some of ours.
**Grinder:** Very. I think probably that Monte Cristo New World white label.
Oh yeah, you can keep that. Yeah, you're safe on that one. Um, it's just so mild. It's so mild. It's very common. It's like, it's the cigar you see in the gas station. But I like it. I know
**Bam Bam:** Rooster would never touch the ALR. He'd rather cook that in a fire. I don't like ALR though. I think, I think I
**Chef Ricky:** could smoke a Placencia Mafuerte Hexagon here and no one would even.
Yeah, nobody would steal that. I don't mind that cigar. Yeah. I'll be honest, it's not that bad. Have you realized that? I don't either. We'll
**Pagoda:** gravitate towards new worlds regardless. This is true.
**Rooster:** The Las [01:12:00] Calaveras. But you don't like that cigar. Nobody's touching it. You
**Gizmo:** don't like that cigar. I have to like it.
Yes. Poor, poor Henryto. What's a cigar you like the rest of the group doesn't really like? That's a tough one. You know what I like? I like the, the uh,
**Rooster:** forget the, is it the M81? Oh, the Metallica? The Metallica cigar. Yeah. I like that. I like that. That was fun.
**Bam Bam:** That was delicious. Yeah. That scored above a seven here on the board.
Tough question. Tough question. What do I like that you bastards don't like?
**Gizmo:** I think one that I like that the group Didn't really enjoy. I'm curious if this is one. And actually Pagoda, this is a Cuban. I really enjoy the Montecristo number one. I like the Montecristo number one. So most of the guys in the room don't love that cigar.
I think that's one I could get away with not
**Rooster:** having stolen from me. I know some of you guys don't like the poor Laranaga, the petite Corona. I think Bam does. I eat that. Yeah. It's like a snack for me. That's a snack. I love that cigar. [01:13:00] Right
**Bam Bam:** before he smoked a big one. Correct. It's like a graham cracker.
Not
**Rooster:** everyone does.
**Bam Bam:** No, that's true. I don't love that. Cigar. That's true. I don't love that cigar. Good point. That's a good one. The other
**Gizmo:** one too that I'm going to throw out there because I got a lot of shit for it and I wish Senator was here to hear this.
**Chef Ricky:** Cohiba? The
**Gizmo:** Partagas P2 is one that I know at least Senator wouldn't steal.
And the rest of the room said that the E2 was a better cigar versus the P2. I like the P2. You had a P2 earlier tonight. If it
**Chef Ricky:** had
**Bam Bam:** age
**Chef Ricky:** on it, he'll take it right from you. That's true. I was going to say a year ago, nobody would have touched your Cohiba. That's true, right? If we
**Gizmo:** had this, if we had this conversation a year ago, nobody would touch my Sigla 5.
I've been getting
**Grinder:** feedback from, uh, listeners about how much they love the Coro kick. Everyone's into Coros are awesome. Coros are good. Sigla the page and realized how wonderful the cigar is. They are wonderful. Can
**Gizmo:** I just say, boys, you're welcome.
**Bam Bam:** Thank
**Grinder:** you.
**Gizmo:** They're so damn expensive, though. That's right.
That's the problem. The price is definitely a problem. We'll
**Grinder:** make sure we steal it if we [01:14:00] see it and get it. This is a hot take. I think, I think Rocky makes some good cigars, and they're high quality, they're, they're, you know, they're relatively aged, and the price point is really good. They make a cigar called the Royale, which is, which is very rich, chocolatey, uh, sweet.
Senator's had it. He would never take one out of my hands. He was gracious when I gave him one, and he said it was fine. I like that cigar a lot. I don't think any of you would probably take it from me. Probably not. I'd like to
**Gizmo:** try
**Grinder:** it. I might. Yeah. And I think the Decade is a really good cigar of his.
**Gizmo:** I used to smoke some of those, I believe, very early on.
The Decade? Talking ten plus years ago.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah.
**Gizmo:** And I never, I never loved that cigar. I think I got it like on Cigar Bid or Cigars International or something. Like one of those early packs you get when you're a young smoker. But that wasn't, uh, that wasn't my thing.
**Grinder:** There's a, there's a cigar I, I kind of smoke a lot.
Um. La Gloria Cubana, uh, Series [01:15:00] R, those are
**Bam Bam:** substantial cigars.
**Grinder:** So they used to make them when, uh, E. P. Carrillo was there, that was his blend. Since then, the blend has really changed. They actually sweetened the tip of the cigar. Oh, that's not good. Really? Yeah. No good. You also
**Rooster:** like the Antonio.
**Grinder:** I like the Antonio.
**Gizmo:** Hoyo de Nicaragua. Yep. Oh yeah,
**Rooster:** that's,
**Grinder:** yeah.
**Rooster:** Like I said,
**Gizmo:** Grindr has about 10 that he can keep. That's,
**Rooster:** great
**Grinder:** point. The arrow's right on you. I do love, I do love the Antonio. Yeah, I mean, I could, I, I, I smoked a a lot of New World cigars for a long time and I was very diverse. I would try a lot of different cigars.
And that, I think that helped my palate a lot. And that's when I did start smoking Cubans with you guys, it was like a whole new world opened up to me and, and I could quickly see the stark differences between the two. the two different, you know, genres, as it were, and, um, yeah, I smoked a lot of different brands.
So that
**Bam Bam:** practice is what every cigar smoker should do. They [01:16:00] should start and go on that long journey and discover what you like and what you don't like.
**Rooster:** Which is kind of So he did it
**Bam Bam:** right.
**Rooster:** Which is kind of what we are doing right now, every other week. Yeah, we're smoking a lot of cigars that we never thought that we would smoke.
We've fallen in love with. We're
**Gizmo:** smoking, I mean, think about it. When we, every year we smoke 50 plus cigars on the podcast. We review, I would argue, even including the Cubans, 35 to 40 of those 50 plus cigars we've never had or haven't had. In recent memory.
**Bam Bam:** Correct.
**Gizmo:** So, I mean, again, encouraging the listener to kind of go along with us or kind of follow that model of trying new stuff and then taking notes on it and developing a palette.
I mean, without this podcast, without us doing this exercise, none of us would be at the point we are now. And it's simply because we put an appointment in the calendar every week.
**Bam Bam:** That's right.
**Gizmo:** And we show up and do it. You have
**Bam Bam:** to smoke. You have to do it. You gotta smoke. Consistently try new things. Take notes.
**Gizmo:** So that was a great question and a great email from [01:17:00] Lizard Nicholas. Again, he's going to win Lizard of the Week. He's going to win some stuff from us. We had a pretty diverse night tonight, boys. Great bunch of emails here and a voice memo from Blizzard Seagull. So we love voice memos. We love emails, comments on YouTube, Instagram, even on FOH, which I love FOH.
I think it's the best place to learn about cigars on the internet as far as a forum goes. So He's going to win some stuff from us. We're going to send him a little pack from our humidors, a little gift pack. And every week we give away lizard of the week. So you can win. I promise you that I have one more email boys.
This one is from lizard. Chris, he says, Hey lizards. I hope you all had a great holiday. And got the opportunity to spend time with his family. I also hope rooster enjoyed his soy ball. You know, we didn't ask you about that. Oh, that's
**Bam Bam:** right What was the soy
**Gizmo:** ball? Uh, was it
**Bam Bam:** was it rotisserie or barbecue a little sauce?
What are the first? Let me
**Pagoda:** clarify that you have to [01:18:00] describe it. What was the diameter? So this is what was the diameter we don't keep
**Rooster:** bringing this up over and over again It is very good. I'm sorry, it's coming up every year.
It's, it's a roast that we buy either from whole foods or from greater trader Joe's it's actually has, has it, well, it's, it's a roast. It's not necessarily for the
**Bam Bam:** list. They're on making us as a circumference shape, spherical shape with my hand.
**Rooster:** Which personally, I'm not a huge fan of is it because it tastes like cardboard.
Is it because it's round? It's not that it's not that. I mean, uh, it's, it's okay, but it's all the other stuff that, you know, Thanksgiving meal, everything, all the sides are basically vegetarian. It's just the main. You know, the meat course is the meat, but I enjoy all the sides. I enjoy the mac and cheese, the, uh, the Leena potatoes or whatever, you know, kind of potato dish, the green be ca, all the ca green vegetables, green bean casserole.
My wife makes a corn casserole. I mean, that's just [01:19:00] great stuff. But I'm, I mean, I'm not a huge fan of Thanksgiving meal per se, because it's , it's kind of bland to me. I like, I like spice.
**Bam Bam:** Nice. So you got some
**Rooster:** Tabasco
**Gizmo:** on the side. It sounds like the soy ball wasn't too good this year. It
**Bam Bam:** never is. Wow. That's a big shock.
**Rooster:** I'm not a huge fan of it. I
**Bam Bam:** would love to see a photograph of this thing. Oh,
**Rooster:** I have
**Gizmo:** plenty.
**Bam Bam:** All right. Oh yes.
**Gizmo:** So, Lizard Chris continues here, he says, I wanted to share a smoking experience I had after getting a brand new case for Christmas. I received a brand new leather case for Christmas and without hesitation loaded up my cigar tools and unzipped the cigar pocket to let it breathe because it smelled heavily of fresh leather.
I loaded some of my best sticks in there The next morning, so I could hit the lounge after work, one of which was my very last Hoyo Epicure number two, that I'd been aging for three plus [01:20:00] years. I met some of my friends at the lounge, cut the cap on the Epi two, and the cold draw I got was predominantly leather.
Not like a normal cigar leather, more like a wallet or your grandfather's couch.
**Bam Bam:** That's not good. Very specific.
**Gizmo:** I then lit it up, took a couple of puffs and lo and behold, more of grandpa's couch. I smoked about a quarter of the way through and got none of the normal nuttiness, dried fruit, grass of what I remembered from an Epicure number two.
I was thoroughly disappointed, but then purchased a Davidoff. Anniversario number three and replacement, which was absolutely sublime. I'm slightly concerned about my other sticks that I stored in there and then removed after that experience. Uh, I'm wondering if any of you guys ever had this happen before with a new weather cigar case.
It's not for storage.
**Rooster:** Number one, you cannot store cigars. It's only for transport.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah. So definitely don't load it up the night before. I don't load my case until the moment I leave. I agree. I go to the [01:21:00] tower, fill it and leave.
**Pagoda:** Yeah. But you got to allow it a few days really to. Yeah. You know, breathe out.
It can't just be one day. You should
**Rooster:** open it up and leave it. Yeah. I remember mine
**Pagoda:** was out for a week, a week and a half, and then Same thing for your Tupper door. Yeah.
**Gizmo:** He left it out on the train. It's still airing out. Correct. It's sitting in Sakaka somewhere.
**Pagoda:** Ah,
**Gizmo:** Pagoda, we
**Pagoda:** love you, man. But the Satellos don't have it.
They have like that, whatever, foamy kind of a separation.
**Gizmo:** The thing I'll say, I mean, if I got a case that was Smelling like fresh leather, what I would do is actually what I do with Tupperware when I get it, if it smells plasticky, is I'll actually leave it out on my front porch in the sun for a little bit, let the sun kind of beat down on it, not for days at a time.
That's a great point. It kills the COVID,
**Pagoda:** you know. Yeah, that too. Maybe fill it up with some kitty litter for a day or two. But the
**Bam Bam:** leather in the sun is a great idea.
**Gizmo:** Yeah, so I literally will put it on a chair on my front porch and just let it sit there for a few hours. [01:22:00] bring it back in if it doesn't do enough.
But the Tupperware, I have a very similar issue. If I go to Home Depot and buy a new piece of Tupperware, it smells very plasticky. So I'll just leave it out in the sun for a little bit. And it takes care of everything. So
**Bam Bam:** that's off gassing. Everything new has some kind of an odor, but uh, that heat, that's a great idea guys, honestly.
The sun, especially for leather goods, it's a great point.
**Gizmo:** Yeah, and you don't leave it out there for a while. Just a couple of hours, see what happens, put it back out, and it'll eventually go away.
**Pagoda:** So if you get it as a Christmas gift in the Northeast, you just gotta wait a few months. The sun
**Gizmo:** still works out there.
Correct. Also, I have another episode suggestion. Since cigar aficionados top 25 list is so bad and unreliable. That's lizard. Chris's words, not ours. I thought it, well, we say the same thing. I thought it would be fantastic for you all to compile a top cigars of the year list. Top 25 would be a little excessive, but perhaps doing a top 10 list with what you all thought was the absolute best cigar of the year on the pot or not.
It would be really great. As we all know, cigars change and [01:23:00] develop over time. So including the box code in year would be a cool way to differentiate from their boring list. On the other hand, when a cigar is performing at its absolute peak or as an absolute gem, I know that it would be difficult to do a pod style review or include on the list.
If someone wouldn't want to share six to seven cigars from a rare, expensive box. Couldn't be me. I do that all the time. Ben really just spit balling here, but I thought the idea has a lot of potential. As always. Thank you gentlemen, for your time. And happy new year, Lizard Chris, very good email. So he sent that email right before our end of the year review.
So we actually did put up on our Instagram, the top five cigars of 2024 and the top five pairings of 2024. So you could check that out. And of course, if you listen to the last episode of the year where we did the Cohiba Esplendidos, which I guess is about four weeks now from tonight with this cigar, uh, we did run through our top cigars and pairings of the year.
And also. Our worst cigars and pairings of the year, but you know, we only review. [01:24:00] 50 plus cigars a year. So to do top 25 would be half of the year of our cigars. So we usually do five to 10, uh, and we try to, uh, to keep it diverse and exciting. And I think we had a very good year with, uh, with our cigars last year.
So hopefully we'll, uh, either match or beat it this year, boys. So thank you to Lizard Chris for the great email. And thanks to all of our listeners for sending great emails. We have so many, we can't get to them all, all the time, but we try. So, uh, thanks everybody for. Sending them in. So boys, we're coming to the end of our evening here with the Juan Lopez Seleccio No.
1 and our pairing, the Mijenta Tequila Blanco. What's everybody thinking?
**Chef Ricky:** It's absolutely delicious. It's clean, it's fruity, there's some mineral present, it's buttery still, it pairs wonderfully with the cigar. Um, I'm loving the Mijenta.
**Grinder:** I love it too. Very, I love the buttery that you, that you referenced, the buttery flavor.
The minerality is amazing. [01:25:00] Um, it's vibrant and refreshing and it really kind of, you know, it lightens up everything. I think the, um, you know, there's, there's that agave flavor, but the salt and the saline of, of, uh, of the, of the, of the spirit is, I don't know, it just kind of, it kind of, you know, how you add salt and seasoning to every kind of dish you make.
This with the cigar is fantastic because those spices they complement each other in the cigar with the with the salinity of the of the of the tequila. Absolutely. I couldn't
**Bam Bam:** agree more especially at the tail end of the cigar the saltiness in the spirit. Really is complimentary at this stage.
**Gizmo:** I think individually, both the cigar and the pairing have progressed in a really great way.
Outstanding. As we finish, and then together, I think to Grindr's point, I mean, it's a home run. Yeah. This pairing is excellent. Ricky, when was the [01:26:00] last time you had Mijenta
**Chef Ricky:** yourself? About a month and a half ago. For some reason, I remember reviewing it on this pod, but I guess we didn't. We did not. But I, I You may have
**Gizmo:** had it in the lounge.
**Chef Ricky:** Yeah, I think we had it in the lounge. Actually, you know, you know what it is. A buddy of mine brought it for my birthday in July. And I remember
**Gizmo:** A month and a half ago, Bam. July. Was that the bottle you finished?
**Chef Ricky:** Well You're pulling a Bam Bam Mind Gap right there. Listen, there's still about two third, uh, one third of that bottle in my bar cabinet.
So that, you know, I don't drink it very fast. So, you know, it's still, you know, I sip as I go and Um, you know, but what, what I do remember, if you look at the Mijenta bottles, because of, you know, the controversy that's happening in Mexico with the CRT, raiding tequila matchmakers offices because of the additive free program, uh, if you look at the Mijenta label, there's actually patches.
covering [01:27:00] all of the additive free statements on the bottle. That's something they had to do to sell because the CRT does not want to highlight. Uh, they don't want them to come up with their own additive free program. The CRT wants to come up with their own, um, but waiting for
**Gizmo:** cigar fishing out of the radar offices.
Yeah, correct. But I think what gives them
**Chef Ricky:** the, like the right or, or, you know, Well, it's in their best interest to do so because the companies that pay the most in certification fees and all of that for lab testing and, and, you know, everything are the big brands. The Don Julios, the Cosamigos, all of the brands that aren't additive free.
The brands we would not waste our time with. Yes. So. You know, look, Dunholy always has a special place in my heart for obvious reasons. If you listen to the pod, you know why. Mine too. I know, it's where we started. A
**Bam Bam:** lot of ice, Pagoda. Yeah, but that's where we started. Yeah, yeah,
**Chef Ricky:** and it's what got me on here.
So, um, but it's, you know, at the end of the day, they're just protecting their interests. And I think if they, if an additive free program becomes official, they want to be the ones that [01:28:00] are able to monetize it. Um, so that's what that's all about. So yeah, if you look on the label there, you'll see some, they're, they're the same color as the label, uh, but under those patches are all the additive restatements.
That's really interesting. Yeah. Didn't know that. Yeah. So I remember getting the bottle for my birthday and saying to myself, what's the hell is going on here? Why is this covered? And then I removed the patch and I saw, and that made me research what was going on and that's what that led to.
**Gizmo:** All right, boys, it's time now to move into the formal liquor rating tonight on the Mijenta Tequila Blanco.
Bam Bam, you're up.
**Bam Bam:** So, you know, I can't speak enough to the tequila journey that I've been on. I mean, I haven't had scotch in a very, very long time. I've taken a deep dive into this spirit, this entire expression, and honestly, I don't see myself coming out of it in a very long time.
**Chef Ricky:** I gotta, I gotta say, Bam.
It's
**Bam Bam:** delicious.
**Chef Ricky:** A couple pods ago, we went to the lounge after we recorded, and Giz still had a taste for tequila. Yeah. And you pulled out some bangers out your [01:29:00] locker.
**Bam Bam:** I did.
**Chef Ricky:** That made me so proud.
**Bam Bam:** Thank you. And honestly, I am all in. And I can't give this anything less than a 10 tonight. The price is extraordinary.
The experience is unmatched. It's different than the previous tequila that we had. But, um, again, this is what we've all said tonight. buttery. It's creamy. There's a saltiness that compliments almost any Cuban cigar. Um, there's a botanical nature to it. It, and the, the, the buttery creaminess is so unusual.
How do you not love what you're drinking? It's a 10 all the way.
**Gizmo:** All right, grinder.
**Grinder:** I, I, I love the tequila. I think, um, you know, as I was drinking it, I was, I felt like I was in Mexico with Senator right now. And he took seconds. Right by the, right by the seaside with all that. You know, it, it, it, it's, it feels like you're in Mexico.
Um, when I look at the pairing, obviously the pairing was phenomenal. It was a knockout. Right. So, um, just looking at the tequila itself, this is a tequila that's [01:30:00] very easy drinking, but full flavor. You don't feel like I'm, I'm drinking this neat. And I'm shocked that I, that it's so smooth by itself. The, the, the flavors of the, the salinity, the minerality, um, but the smoothness it's kind of encapsulated in this, this buttery cream and I couldn't get enough of it.
So I'm actually, I'm not going to give it a 10 BAM. I'm giving it a nine. That's an excellent rating for you. I think we've had some really good Blancos on the pod. Um, previously that I probably would just give it a little. a little edge, but yeah, nine, six, nine's a great score. All right, Chef Ricky.
**Chef Ricky:** Yeah, I'm at a ten.
And I'm there now. We gave the Volons a ten too, but the Volons was a very different spirit. All right. So it's not to say that everything is a ten is going to be the same or that if this was a ten for you, then you'll find me Hinta or Volons to be a ten. You could rate either one, you know, differently and maybe a little [01:31:00] lower or higher.
Uh, but what I like about this that the Volans didn't do, the Volans was almost too smooth. Right? Yeah. And it, you know, it's, it's not to discredit the Volans. It was a merit because it still had flavor, but this one delivers a more, uh, full flavor, but it also punches through with the agave, you know, and I think sometimes.
People that are afraid of tequila, they're afraid of the flavor of agave. Um, so, you know, if they're able to get into a Repo or an Añejo that kind of covers that, that up or mask it in some way, they enjoy a little bit more. But when you enjoy the flavor of agave and the tequila that's properly made, and, you know, they're, they're harvesting ripe blue weber, uh, piñas to distill their spirits, then, you know, you taste it.
And in this, you know, they didn't hide it. Uh, I think the way that it's delivering. Uh, creamy, buttery note, but still has enough floral qualities on the nose. Um, that's, that is all because the agave is allowed to still shine and come [01:32:00] through. Uh, so I think they executed that perfectly. Uh, I agree. I think like Uno was also a great example of that.
They did that really well. That's, that's what I was thinking. Yeah. So, but yeah, I love this. I love that there's a woman behind us and flexing her muscles, doing it and doing it well. Uh, I love the presentation, the packaging, the bottle, the glass top, everything that they're doing. I think it's, it's great.
And it's a wonderful product to attend for me.
**Gizmo:** All right. Pagoda.
**Pagoda:** Yeah, it's a 10 for me. I think, um, I, I'd rated the Volans a bit lower. What I like about this, and I think, um, Chef Ricky had mentioned this in the beginning, and I, I think even uh, Grindr kind of, uh, reinforced that. They were the, they're the brightness to the spirit, which was, I think, lacking in the Volans.
Um, I shouldn't say lacking. But it was different, right? And I prefer the little brightness and a little sharpness. I think it may be slightly higher proof if I'm not, it feels like it. It's not, it's not, this
**Chef Ricky:** is also 40 proof, which is surprising. [01:33:00] That was
**Pagoda:** 38, right? Or no, the other one was 40, 40 as well.
Yeah. Yeah. But this has that little thing where it feels that it's got the little, yeah. Yeah. There's a little sharper. And, you know, you, wherever you may be in the world, I think tequila is really picking on a lot, especially because I think even from a health perspective, people are now preferring tequila as I think it's a journey, fortunately for us, uh, you know, we've been able to, uh, really experience and, uh, thank you chef Ricky for introducing, you know, I didn't even ask for ice.
Have you, did you realize that? Oh, we realized, can I
**Grinder:** just
**Pagoda:** ask what, what, what is the health benefit
**Grinder:** of drinking tequila?
**Pagoda:** So no, no. Did I miss something? So when you, when you, oh, chef's got a whole line for you right now. So yeah, no. So they're, they're lowering caloric content of and lower than vodkas and uh, less sugar.
There's, in fact, no sugar in it, right? I think. And so it has an added, uh, uh, benefit when you're drinking spirits and [01:34:00] comparatively to comparatively to a protein shake. Yes, comparatively to whiskey, meaning if you were to do it, but you know, so I think I want to just continue on this journey and Experience and enjoy it because now I think if I, you know, I was just thinking about this when we were talking about a tequila earlier that I think a lot of my ratings for tequila have been very, very high.
I know you're a
**Gizmo:** tequila guy. It's time to accept it. Yeah, so
**Pagoda:** now I've got to. Kind of there's a reason, there's a true reason for that
**Bam Bam:** progress on the palate. It's so delicious. It's, it's, it's a different experience. And I think we've found
**Gizmo:** some really great tequilas. And I think the way that they're pairing has, has been absolutely brilliant.
And I'm also at a 10. So what I love about this spirit, I think that, you know, I wouldn't call myself an experienced tequila drinker. Um, I've only been drinking a few years. Obviously, Chef Ricky is someone that's very experienced and a lot of our listeners out there are. I think this is a great tequila blanco for an experienced drinker, but I also think this is great for someone [01:35:00] who's never sipped tequila.
And again, we've started the year with Valance two weeks ago, and now this one, and like I said, we're going to take a little break. So if you're not an agave person, You know, we're going to take a break on tequila, but these last two tequila Blanco's have been on the pot. Anyway, on the pot have been wonderful pairings, especially for the Cuban cigars we've paired them with.
And I really think there's a merit to picking up a spirit. That's not terribly viscous, not too hot on, on the, the alcohol. You know, by volume. It's, it's really a wonderful pairing for Cubans who don't
**Bam Bam:** you said earlier was right on the money. It's great for both the experienced tequila guy and girl, and someone just starting to get into tequilas, especially the last two spirits that we consumed.
**Gizmo:** Excellent. The buttery cream, the brininess, the light viscosity, the easy drinking. It's a perfect
**Bam Bam:** pairing. But it's very sophisticated and complex if you take your time with it. It is. And I think Oh, the other pet peeve, don't gulp.
**Chef Ricky:** Yes,
**Bam Bam:** that was it. Don't gulp. [01:36:00] Do not gulp these incredible spirits that we're drinking.
Let it sit in your mouth for a second or two and let it go down slowly. And then
**Chef Ricky:** gulp it in. Nothing more painful than giving somebody a spirit to sip. And then you just. Yeah, no, I won't give him a drink. And they make the fucking sound.
**Bam Bam:** I know guys that do that. I will not give them an. They're not going to have a drink.
I'm not giving them a cigar. Those guys, I'm going to have.
**Grinder:** I'm really encouraged by the tequila journey. I, I liked. Añejo and extra añejo because I was a big scotch drinker and I like the richness and the smoothness of those You know those expressions and that's probably that's probably why you know The uno is the little notch higher for me because it's just rich.
It's just so it's so creamy
**Chef Ricky:** You would have liked the Volans a lot. I think the Volans are really good. Mm hmm It, it, it, again, it, it, that, that, it came, it's a little milder. Yeah. Right? But it's very rich and buttery. Yeah,
**Grinder:** but, but my point is that, but I'm, I'm really enjoying Blancos now [01:37:00] because of the experience I had, uh, with that.
And I was like, wow, this is, this is a Blanco. This is amazing.
**Chef Ricky:** And I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that Pagoda would really enjoy some high proof Blancos. Yeah. I agree. Maybe when we come back to the journey of Tequila. Yeah. We start going to high proof route a little bit. We're going to call Uber that night.
**Gizmo:** So, you know, to everyone's point here, finishing up on this rating, I think there's a trifecta right now for me with Tequila Blancos and how they pair with cigars. It's the Uno Dos y Tres Uno, it's the Valance Blanco, and it's the Mijenta Blanco that we had tonight. That is the trifecta of Excellent tequila blancos that pair well with Cuban cigars.
**Chef Ricky:** And I just want to note for the enthusiasts out there or someone who's just trying to get into this, these are all highland blancos. So, as I've mentioned prior, any agaves that are grown in the highland regions of Mexico, which I believe is 5, 500 feet and above, um, [01:38:00] those agaves get stressed out more, right?
Because the higher you go, there's more of a fluctuation in temperature, really cold nights, really warm days that helps develop the sugars in the agaves and it helps deliver richer flavor profile. Whereas lowlands deliver more minerality, more vegetal notes, um, and more dry. Notes if you will.
**Gizmo:** All right boys that puts the formal liquor rating tonight on the mihenta tequila blanco at a 9.
8 Wow, and we're going to compare that to the other two. I mentioned I think the trifecta here that we all mentioned in in various aspects of our rating tonight The UNODOSI trace, the one, two, three, Blanco scored a 9. 8. The Valance two weeks ago scored a flat 10. 0. And the Mehenta tonight matched the UNODOSI trace Blanco at a 9.
8. So those three are just stellar. So close to 10, if not 10 across the board. So you're
**Chef Ricky:** missing out on some good drinking.
**Gizmo:** [01:39:00] What a great. At least I got to smell the glass. Hey, we'll keep that up. Yeah. All right, boys. It's time now to move into the formal lizard rating tonight on the Juan Lopez, Seleccio number one.
Rusty, you're up.
**Rooster:** I'm trying to find something negative about the cigar and I can't. Are you? There's nothing negative. Absolutely nothing negative. I mean, the, the flavor of the burn, the aroma at the burn line, the floral notes, the buttery, the, the toasted tobacco notes, the citrus. I mean, the cigar is just phenomenal.
I don't know what it is. If it's really good tonight, if it's, I think they're always good. Don't forget it's double the price. Even, even still at 20 or right around 20. 21
**Bam Bam:** bucks.
**Rooster:** It's, it's a, it's a good price for a Habano's cigar. It's a great [01:40:00] price. And I think it's, it's a great cigar. So for that reason, I'm at a 10.
There you go. Wow. There you go. What?
**Pagoda:** Is this your first 10 in like 500 episodes? No.
**Bam Bam:** Great score.
**Gizmo:** So for me, the cigar's a 9. It doesn't quite. touch perfect for my palate. It didn't give me that euphoria that a 10 gives me. God, was this a good cigar? I am blown away by the performance of the cigar tonight.
The flavor, the draw everything. However, as I got down to the end, Early when we lit it, I was thinking about when's my next one. When's my next, when am I going to reach back into this box? And you know what? I don't know now, not because it was bad, but because it didn't ring my pallets bell in the way that it did roosters.
And I knew that I will buy the rest of your box.
**Bam Bam:** I'll split it with you. I'll buy the rest of your box. I. I
**Gizmo:** still preferred, [01:41:00] you know, if we want to compare to other Corona Gorders, price aside, I do put this either third or fourth compared to the Punch Punch, the Cohiba Sigil 4 and the Magnum 46. But comparing the exact size, something very similar in the Habano's catalog, regular production, I would probably put this number four out of those four.
Not that it was bad. They're all very, very good, but this cigar tonight was excellent
**Chef Ricky:** for your palate. How, how do those compare in price to this? Uh,
**Gizmo:** the Magnum 46 and the punch punch are right in line. And the Cohiba Siglo 4 of course is probably triple the price of this. So not, not counting in price on my comments, you know, my commentary there, but.
I thought the cigar was great. It wasn't perfect for me, but I'm very happy with how it performed tonight. I bet it's a nine.
**Rooster:** I bet when you rated the punch punch, and I don't remember the, the box code or the year it was from, I think you [01:42:00] gave the punch punch a lower rating. I
**Gizmo:** don't think
**Rooster:** I think I
**Gizmo:** know. I think I did because I think that maybe an eight, that was an early, that was one we're going to do similar to this one because I think it got an unfair rating early on.
And it was a long, long time ago, probably in the, you know, low double digits of, of podcast episodes. So we're going to revisit that and a different run of those cigars. Uh, I think it's probably going to be very close to this. If not beat it for me. I really love the punch punch. I love this cigar. I just.
It didn't ring my bell to it. The level of the nine's a great score. I'm justifying myself because, you know, Bruce has given me the odds,
**Bam Bam:** you know, well, he does that to everybody. So it's a nine for me,
**Gizmo:** but go
**Pagoda:** to, I think it's a nine for me. I, uh, so, so for me, what it was is in the, I really enjoyed the beginning of the cigar.
And I think I'd got a little bit of the, The orange rind, the marmalade is what we call it slightly, it's like a really specific kind of, don't forget the jasmine night. [01:43:00] I didn't experience a jasmine, but, but I, I'm glad to know that it's called. But, you know, having said that, I really enjoyed it. I think, uh, The first half was fantastic, uh, it left a very pleasant flavor profile on the top of my palate, you know, things I really seek in a Cuban cigar.
The burn line was great, uh, the smoke output was fantastic. The one thing I didn't enjoy was it a little too resistant for me, and I think towards the back end Uh, the flavor profile changed in a way where I could not really understand what was really happening, but it moved away from this, the bit of the pleasantness and, uh, I don't know whether It picked up in strength, I think.
**Bam Bam:** Yeah, which is pretty natural. Yeah.
**Pagoda:** But, you know, in certain cigars, you, you know, the flavor profile just continues and it just keeps enhancing it. But I, I must say that, you know, once I was having, uh, the tequila along with that, you know, it was, it was a very pleasant experience. It's, and I think nine's a fantastic score.
[01:44:00] So, And by the way, when
**Rooster:** Pagoda says in Hindi, the jasmine is Ratki Rani. That means the queen of the night
**Gizmo:** night. Bam. Can you write that down? Please put that on the ledger. I took a lizard memo. Excellent. Excellent. It's going to be my
**Chef Ricky:** next tattoo.
**Gizmo:** All right. Chef Ricky, you're up. Oh man. I think Bam
**Pagoda:** will
**Gizmo:** have
**Pagoda:** a lot of tattoos.
**Gizmo:** Oh yeah.
**Chef Ricky:** I feel like as of late, I feel like the only number I know is 10. Um, but that's where I'm at with this stick. Um, this is, it was It was an incredible experience for me. I'm very happy with the price point. It's something that's approachable, something I could see myself buying something I'd love to slot in frequently.
Uh, if I get my hands on some and, you know, I, I enjoyed it through and through from, you know, I was a little skeptical in the beginning because of the draw I was experiencing, but, you know, Rooster said, just let it first see what happens. And it worked out perfectly. I didn't need to use a perfect draw. [01:45:00] I just had one relight after I did the whole reading of, uh, the history of me, Henta, uh, but other than that, it's been, it's been a rock solid throughout.
Um, and one of my favorite, you know, with this cigar in particular, I picked up on it, um, when you get to the nub and you have that, you know, I retro hail. So you have that experience where you're, you're drawing on your cigar, you're retro hailing, but at the same time you're taking in the burn line. And that was, I could.
Just phenomenal experience. Yeah. You develop all of that, the entire experience
**Bam Bam:** simultaneously through the retro hale draw and the aroma.
**Chef Ricky:** Yep. And one of my favorite, uh, parts of the cigar was in the midpoint where we started getting some raspberry. Mm-hmm . That was really pleasant. Yeah. I did enjoy that. I hint a lot.
Yeah. So yeah, for me it's a 10. I love the stick. I love that it's approachable. Um, and
**Grinder:** All right, Grindr, I'm a nine. The cigar was really. It did ring a lot of my bells to begin with. The size, this is a size, this is probably my [01:46:00] favorite size. Corona Gorda is probably my favorite batola. I like pretty much all standard production batolas, uh, from Cuba, uh, across all the different marcas and that, and even outside of that in New World.
That's a big plus. The burn line was outrageous. It was perfect construction. Um, the flavor profiles were really optimal. Um, I couldn't I couldn't find, you know, any, any flaw in those spices that I was getting. The citrus was really surprising. Like we said, it really paired pretty nicely with that tequila.
I don't want to beat a dead horse because all you guys are saying the same thing. I did sense a turn. Uh, towards the end, which happens a lot with this Vitola, uh, across all the different, you know, whoever's making it, it does get a little stringent at the end and it gets a little, uh, prickly. And this one was a little more prickly than, than I liked because I, you know, it started off so strong.
So for that reason, and the final one is, you know, it was just a [01:47:00] little too tight. It was on the limit of, do I need a perfect draw or not? And because it wasn't over that threshold, I didn't do it. And it was just a little, I found myself, uh, you know, probably smoking it too quickly because I felt like I had to inhale a little more, not inhale, but, uh, pull, pull a little harder.
And that was, that was, that could be a little troublesome. And I was way ahead of you guys. And as a result, at the end there, I had a pause and then I had to relight and it just got, it kind of amplified that stringency. So overall fantastic stick and it's a solid nine for me.
**Bam Bam:** All
**Grinder:** right, excellent. Bam,
**Bam Bam:** you know, I think this jail one compared to the first one that we had ages ago night and day.
It's night and day. It's leaps and bounds. The experience that we had. Um, this is one of my favorite cigars. I don't have it often, but I have enough of my collection. When, when I go to it, I asked myself, why don't I smoke these more often? Um, [01:48:00] I happen to love the final third of the cigar. I kind of had the opposite experience that you had.
Um, I thought that evolution from that, that plum and raisin and a little bit of citrus, and then it went to a more earthy type of experience. And as I went down deeper into this thing, it just, for me, got richer and richer. It didn't. have any prickly nature to it. Not for me. Um, so that's, um, because of those reasons, I'm going to 10.
I think it was just an outstanding experience. Not to mention the fact that it almost paired beautifully, almost perfectly with what we drank tonight.
**Gizmo:** All right, boys, that puts the formal lizard rating tonight on the Juan Lopez Seleccio number one at a 9. 5.
**Bam Bam:** Now let's, let's go.
**Gizmo:** So let's compare that to The rating from episode 15, when we smoked a 2019 box of the cigar, the composite lizard score was a 7.
7, almost a 20 [01:49:00] point difference. And what I remember, which is not much of that episode, I listened to a little bit of it today. It was not even close. It
**Bam Bam:** goes back to everything you've been talking about regarding runs and the recent run of cigar production coming out of Cuba. How ready they are to smoke soon after they make them.
I think we've got that experience here.
**Grinder:** So this isn't gizflation? This is not gizflation, no. Not grade gizflation?
**Gizmo:** This is not grade gizflation. I think, I will say this. I will say 150 some odd episodes ago, I do question the humidity that we smoked those cigars. Of course. I do question our understanding of Cuban cigars at the time, because we were new to the journey.
And I think now And the environment, right? And the environment. That's right. In the environment, I think now, and this is why I think there's a benefit to revisiting some of these cigars, I think now we have a much greater perspective on things, I think to [01:50:00] Bam's point, the run of cigars that Cuba is on right now, or has been, 22, 23, 24, even a few years before that, they're smoking brilliantly.
They're smoking great. So this is a good example of a cigar at a 9. 5 tonight. That is an absolute must buy for any lizard out there. If you can get a box somewhere, if you get a fiver or a 10 pack, whatever it may be, I think this is a cigar you need to try. And I think that again, going back to our earlier comments about the flavor notes, I think this is a cigar when you smoke this at the right condition.
The notes that you get on it were so pronounced, even though I gave it a nine and I didn't give it a perfect score, the notes that we got, especially early on, were so distinct that I think for someone trying to train their palate on Cuban cigars, this is a great candidate for that pick. Great candidate for that.
Take your notes. I think this is a very, very good one. So, I do want to compare. Our ratings, [01:51:00] versus the original one. I pulled the individual scores,
**Bam Bam:** I guarantee Rooster, and I had the highest scores eight. Eight.
**Gizmo:** So on the sevens I probably gave it a nine on the sevens. We had uba, no doubt we had a full house that night.
Uba, pagoda and Grindr all had sevens. Wow. Rooster. Senator and gizmo all had eights. I was the most
**Bam Bam:** enthusiastic stand
**Gizmo:** alone. Nine. Of
**Pagoda:** course
**Gizmo:** you weren't that far off. I saved. I saved
**Bam Bam:** the rating that night for that damn thing. So the
**Gizmo:** other one I want to compare to, we did the Juan Lopez Alexi on number two, the reboost that we talked about much, much later on episode 92, not as long ago, that scored a 7.
**Pagoda:** 2.
**Gizmo:** So we did say that we. I think in the room here in our experience have preferred the Corona Gorda number one versus the Robusto number two. I actually had a number two more recently, probably in the last six months, and it wasn't great. And you agree with that, right? I
**Rooster:** do. I mean, I like the number one more than the [01:52:00] number two, but the number two is, I think seven is a, is a bit low.
It's a decent cigar. Yeah. And I just want to say like the, the The production out of Cuba now, I mean, this is a 2022 box, right? So I think even 23 and 24s are going to smoke phenomenal. They're very
**Bam Bam:** good.
**Rooster:** Just the way the weather has been in Cuba, the hurricanes and tornadoes and all of that, that all means it's going to be a richer soil, it's going to be a richer experience, and the cigars are going to be phenomenal.
So go out and buy even if you get a fresh box.
**Gizmo:** Yeah. And of course,
**Rooster:** any
**Gizmo:** listeners out there who maybe experienced what we talked about on episode 15 or not, or even now what you're experiencing as we smoke tonight together, send us an email, tell us what you're thinking. Tell us what you experienced. Cause I'm curious if, if what we had tonight in the room is divergent from what our listeners are experiencing.
Correct. All right, boys, a great night tonight. Let's review one more time. The Henta tequila Blanco scored a 9. 8 and the Juan Lopez selects [01:53:00] the number one from Cuba. Scored a 9. 5, another home run pairing boys.
**Bam Bam:** Fantastic night.
**Gizmo:** Home run.
**Bam Bam:** We're getting too good at this. Oh yeah.
**Gizmo:** I want to thank all of our listeners again for writing us.
We really appreciate hearing from you all. Please keep it up. We'll We want more emails, more voice memos, more comments in 2025. Do not hesitate to sit down at your keyboard or pull up your phone and send us something. We want to hear from you. Congratulations to lizard Nicholas. Again, our lizard of the week.
He's going to win some stuff from us. Thanks to our sponsor fabric of five. They are great partners to us. You got to try some of their cigars. If you haven't check out their site, fabric of zero zero five. com. And, uh, boys, we'll see everybody next week. Hope you enjoyed this episode. Thanks for joining us.
You can find our merch store and ratings archive at our brand new website. LoungeLizardsPod. com That's LoungeLizardsPOD. com Don't forget to leave us a rating and subscribe on your favorite podcast [01:54:00] platform. If you have any comments, questions, if you want to reach out, say hello, tell us what you're smoking, email us.
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