Recent content by alpi57

This is a joke, right? So you are telling me that I should watch my back when I am in a cozy cafe in Seville, Spain in case a US Treasury agent snags the Quai d'Orsy out of my hand and slaps me with a $50,000.00 fine. Or don't even mention it here in case the boogieman gets me. Where do you...

I am game. Let me know when we start.

I am pretty sure it was changed on '03. I am talking about the green "sello de garantia.....".

Wilkey, I have noticed that the seals after '03 have become smaller in diameter, both length and width. Have you noticed that too? As for clarity I haven't noticed any change. They all look pretty legible to me. Maybe because they are getting smaller, they are getting harder to read but they...

I looked thru the MRN book and found variations of the band but yours looks ok. As for the guarantee seal I was under the impression that they always appear on the left side of the box but that is not true. I looked into my humidor and found at least 3 boxes with the seal on the right side. They...

Theo, Is Quatro's pizza still around? The memories I have in that town. Jon

Couldn't agree more. Special occasion is everytime I smoke, which is everyday and life is too short to save things for special occasions.

Best place to smoke IMO, is the smoking lounge in the Peninsula Hotel. Great atmosphere, fairly quiet for a conversation, comfy sofas and all sorts of high end liquor and very cigar friendly. Agree with Morton,s. You can add Capitol Grille and the new and acclaimed PrimeHouse in the James Hotel...

Speaking strictly about ISOM,s, I don't think there would be much difference between Brand tobacco and street stuff. The temprature is the deciding factor. The eggs are microscopic and fumigation is done in the barns across the board. You'd be surprised how many of those "fake" cigars come out...

Wilkey, How about a 3-5 year experiment? We can have controls in our own house and have a central location with someone with close to ideal conditions, set forth by all partcipating members, hang on to the test cigars. And we do testing every 6 months. This way we can come to a concensus as...

Thanks for the comments Wilkey. Always informative and enlightening.

What celophane? Never mind. I should have known this was a bad idea.

I have got into the habit of buying two or three boxes of whatever I like. I usually go after cabinets if I intend to age them. One box is for testing and smoking and the others for aging. I am not sure if I can quite agree with your assessment as far as box opening and exposure to oxygen...

In a recent trip down "south" I set out to get opinions from whomever I could find: Rollers,LCDH managers, Factory managers, growers, Habanos marketing manager and few old time smokers. And the burning question for me was how long is long enough to age Habanos? Is there a specific tobacco...

New info has emerged. Talking to some friends that have been down there say that they have been unhappy with the tobacco and even more so with the prices. Even more interesting Taboada rejected some of the tobacco wanting to protect his rep. according to these guys and I guess David is now...