The Green Monkey
Brap-brap
Last night, one of my local B&Ms hosted a seminar on cigar blending presented by Jose Blanco of La Aurora.
I decided to check it out even though I had no real idea what to expect. There were about 15 other people there covering the whole spectrum of familiarity with cigars--a couple total novices, a couple old-timers, and everyone else somewhere in between. Some learned more than others, but nobody left without having learned something new, whether about the art and practice of blending or about some other facet of the cigar industry.
Everyone was given a small packet containing four small (~4x42ish) sticks with bands numbered 1-4 along with a glass of club soda to cleans our palates before and between all four. Each stick was composed entirely of one type of leaf (I believe Jose called them todos puros or something to that effect--I'm not a Spanish speaker...) so that we got to smoke all four leaves one at a time instead of blended together as they are in the production cigars. With each stick, we went around the group and described what the foot smelled like before we lit it, then cut and lit them and smoked about 1/2"-3/4" before going around and describing the taste(s) we were picking up. Sadly, nobody mentioned aged Madagascaran vanilla bean. We also tried to guess what the country of origin was for each leaf. We went through all four this same way, making sure to cleanse our palates as best as we could between each cigar.
This didn't come as any surprise to me, but nevertheless it was interesting to hear how smells, tastes, and impressions varied drastically from person to person. Even something as seemingly constant like overall strength really ran the gamut.
After sampling all four of the constituent leaves one by one, we were given the production cigar that features all four leaves in its blend to see how they all marry together to create the finished product. It was really neat to experience everything acting in concert but at the same time having the characteristics of the four different leaves so fresh in my mind that they each really jumped out--sometimes separately and sometimes simultaneously. I'm not going to mention what cigar it was in order to avoid biasing any future attendees.
Jose didn't have his itinerary handy, but he's heading up to NY/NJ and to the Chicago area soon. If one of your local B&Ms happens to be hosting him, do yourself a favor and go check it out.
I decided to check it out even though I had no real idea what to expect. There were about 15 other people there covering the whole spectrum of familiarity with cigars--a couple total novices, a couple old-timers, and everyone else somewhere in between. Some learned more than others, but nobody left without having learned something new, whether about the art and practice of blending or about some other facet of the cigar industry.
Everyone was given a small packet containing four small (~4x42ish) sticks with bands numbered 1-4 along with a glass of club soda to cleans our palates before and between all four. Each stick was composed entirely of one type of leaf (I believe Jose called them todos puros or something to that effect--I'm not a Spanish speaker...) so that we got to smoke all four leaves one at a time instead of blended together as they are in the production cigars. With each stick, we went around the group and described what the foot smelled like before we lit it, then cut and lit them and smoked about 1/2"-3/4" before going around and describing the taste(s) we were picking up. Sadly, nobody mentioned aged Madagascaran vanilla bean. We also tried to guess what the country of origin was for each leaf. We went through all four this same way, making sure to cleanse our palates as best as we could between each cigar.
This didn't come as any surprise to me, but nevertheless it was interesting to hear how smells, tastes, and impressions varied drastically from person to person. Even something as seemingly constant like overall strength really ran the gamut.
After sampling all four of the constituent leaves one by one, we were given the production cigar that features all four leaves in its blend to see how they all marry together to create the finished product. It was really neat to experience everything acting in concert but at the same time having the characteristics of the four different leaves so fresh in my mind that they each really jumped out--sometimes separately and sometimes simultaneously. I'm not going to mention what cigar it was in order to avoid biasing any future attendees.
Jose didn't have his itinerary handy, but he's heading up to NY/NJ and to the Chicago area soon. If one of your local B&Ms happens to be hosting him, do yourself a favor and go check it out.
