Safari Journal, Part 4 - The Videos

I had a great time on the Cigar Safari Trip this year and I want to thank our hosts at Drew Estate for the opportunity again. 

I had some opportunity to capture some video along with all the photos I took. I wish I had 4 extra hands to take better notes and shoot video every minute, but in the end, I think the video I did shoot was some of the more interesting conversation I could have captured. 

In the first video clip, Steve Saka talks about some of the many issues that Drew Estate deals with on a regular basis, including their propensity to make things more complicated for themselves, goma, Liebermans, draw testing machines, and much more. The room we were in was described as "probably the quietest place in the building" but the lights gave everything a greenish cast, there..."The Green Room."



This next video shows a little of the process Drew Estate uses for bunching cigars. Instead of using a bunching machine (typically called a Lieberman machine), they do the entire process by hand. Steve Saka narrates as one of their top bunchers demonstrates their method, then Willy Herrera demonstrates a more traditional method that his rollers used when he worked in Miami.

Cigar Safari, Part 3: The Photos

On Monday and Tuesday of this week I added a few of the pictures I took on the 2013 Drew Estate Cigar Safari Blogger Trip to the articles I wrote, but that only scratched the surface of all the photos I took. Here is a collection of some of the best:

If you'd rather see them as something other than a slide show, CLICK HERE.

Part 4 of the Safari Journal will post Friday, May 17, and will include some video I shot during the tour of the Drew Estate Cigar Factory.

Drew Estate Event at Burns Tobacconist

Next Tuesday, May 21, 2013, Jonathan Drew will be making his first trip to Chattanooga to visit Burns Tobacconist. The event starts at  6:00 p.m. and also features the one and only Willy Herrera.

If you are anywhere near the Chattanooga area, I would encourage you to make it to this event. Admission is Free and there will be great deals on Drew Estate Cigars as well as hand-rolled cigars by Willy.

The address is 110 Jordan Drive, Chattanooga, TN 37421.

Cigar Review: Eddie Ortega Wild Bunch Honest Abe

Toro, 6.5” x 52 ring gauge / approx. $8.50 MSRP

Today I will be finishing up this second series of Wild Bunch releases with the Honest Abe.  He is one of the two Wild Bunch "characters" I've actually recognized.  Abe Dababneh is the owner of Smoke Inn Cigars in Florida.  I met him last year at IPCPR while passing though a booth.  You might have even heard my horrible (completely MY fault) interview on his radio show a couple months ago.  Anyway back to the cigar.  Today's cigar is comprised of Nicaraguan fillers and binder with an Ecuadorian Habano wrapper.  This was the first one of these I smoked.

The wrapper on this sample was a nice medium milk chocolate brown in color.  Looking more closely at the wrapper you can see a lot of tooth as well as some fairly prominent veins.  Those veins didn't detract from it's appearance though.  It also had a slightly oily sheen to it as well.  Putting my nose to the wrapper brought about an intense leather aroma with leather and nuts coming from the foot.  After clipping it and taking a cold draw on it I got notes of leather, wood with a light sweetness.

The first thing I tasted after lighting it up was a creaminess coating my tongue.  After a few puffs some leather, maple, wood, green herbal notes and spice started to come through.  Fairly shortly the spice faded out.  I did start getting some saltiness on the sides of my tongue.  The cigar was firmly in the medium bodied range.  The draw started off great and it produced a large volume of smoke, however the burn was fairly wavy.  This could have been due to the gusty wind that was blowing while I smoked this.

As I moved into the second third I noticed that a tunnel started to develop.  I didn't need to let it go out to burn through it, but it took almost the entire third to completely go away.  The spice decided to come back and fade away at seemingly random intervals throughout the third.  Throughout this third I tasted flavors of leather, wood, coffee with a sweet finish.  It never really got out of the medium range to me.

In the final third the flavors were more of the same that I got in the previous third.  The spice would continue to come back for a couple puffs and then fade away.  The construction issues did work themselves out and the burn straightened out.

Overall while it was an enjoyable cigar it really didn't wow me like the Dandy McCoy or Big Bad Mike did.  It was a solid medium bodied cigar.  I do think that most of the readers out there should give it a try seeing as it wasn't too strong and the price is very reasonable.  I would like to thank Eddie again for sending me these samples to try!


Body: 7/10
Strength: 6/10
Complexity: 6/10

AFP Scale
Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 1.5/2
Flavor: 4/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 8.5/10

Safari Journal, Part 2

FRIDAY

We started off Friday with a visit to one of the many buildings around Estelí that Drew Estate has leased for the purpose of aging pilónes of tobacco. This large warehouse has narrow aisles, but enough room for many bulks of leaf of several different varieties. Steve Saka gave us a history lesson on what different people have thought was going on in the fermentation process through the years, but the bottom line is: nobody really knows exactly what happens to tobacco in the process or why. What we know is this: when leaves are stacked in a certain way, to a certain height, and achieving a certain mass, it generates heat in the center of that mass, causing the leaves to shed nicotine and some other elements, and allowing flavor changes to commence. The bulk is rotated, top to bottom, inside to out, etc. several times over the course of 6 or 8 or 18 months (depending on varietal), and while there are some important scientific theories in this process, the end point for the leaf is an art...the right person will know when the right time has come.

We then headed to the Drew Estate Construction Zone, a large area where the company is expanding their operations across the street from the current factory. In order to stop needing to lease building all over town, they are building one very large warehouse that will house all of their pre-production tobacco...for now. Despite the size and the amount of money going into it, they expect to have the building at maximum capacity within two years of completion.

They are also working on building a large open-air cafeteria for their many workers as well as a medical clinic where they hope to employ a doctor full-time.

It is important to know that Drew Estate does take care of their workers, not because some government regulation says they have to, but because happy workers are more loyal and efficient...it’s just good business! The Nicaraguan government does mandate that any employee working a year for one company must get a “13th Month” of pay as a bonus. Each additional year they work, they are guaranteed a decreasing bonus check. Most employers end up firing everyone after 11 months so they never have to pay the 13th month. Drew not only pays the 13th Month after the first year, but continues for each additional year an employee stays with them. You think they have loyal employees? I would be!

After a large lunch of steak AND chicken, we finally got to tour the actual Drew Estate Cigar Factory itself. We started off with “The Gallery,” a large rolling floor where dozens...maybe over 100...bunchers and rollers work hard, producing the bulk of Drew’s lines. We spent time in the room where tobacco is stored in bales, probably the quietest room in the building.

We were taught two methods of stripping the veins from tobacco leaves by hand, then one of the company’s top bunchers showed us how they do all their bunching by hand...no Lieberman machines (a bunching machine that many factories do use). Willy Herrera then showed us his more traditional method of bunching and he and Saka talked about the advantages of each method. Then we had to sit down and pass wrapper on some cigars ourselves.

Now, I’ve applied wrapper to cigars several times in the past, and I’ll admit...I’ve never been good at it. This time it seemed to click, though. My first cigar looked pretty bad. But my second looked better...by the end of 6 I was actually doing very well, with the exception of the final cap, which I just wasn’t doing right. 

We looked in on Quality Control where they randomly test cigars to make sure everything is good before it leaves the factory. Each bundle of cigars is barcoded as it makes its way through the factory so the QC people can identify who touched the cigars on their way. Liga Privadas are rolled in a special room with a special group of rollers. We visited briefly.

At the end of the tour, we got to spend close to 2 hours in “the blending room.” That’s what I call it anyway. We had choices to make...namely, filler, binder and wrapper...plus vitola and finishing for head and foot. That’s a lot of control to give a bunch of bloggers but the Drew Crew is crazy enough to do that. My choice was Connecticut Broadleaf for the wrapper with a Mexican San Andres Negro binder, Nicaragua Jalapa Criollo 98 Seco, Nicaraguan Ometepe Viso, Brazilian Mata Fina, Nicaraguan Estelí Ligero, and a half leaf of Kentucky Fire Cured, something new and totally different. I was the first one from our group to jump up, grab a leaf of the Kentucky and ask Willy to roll something I could smoke and taste it. The first thing that jumps out and grabs you is hickory...lots and lots of hickory...but there are some other interesting elements present as well. I have already tasted one and my blend turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself (and I do). It was only 2 days removed from the rolling bench, so who knows what it will taste like in another couple months. I will force myself to wait, though, and then I will do a review on my own cigar...because I can!

Our last stop for the day was Subculture Studios, the graphics shop that Drew Estate set up. They are responsible for all the artwork you will see in the pictures I’ve posted...the Dirty Rat graphics, Flying Pig designs, the mural, the bands, the boxes, t-shirts, graffiti...pretty much everything. Walking in reminded me of my days working in a print shop as the smell of screen print ink washed over us.

We had one more dinner and one more time to socialize with Jonathan Drew, Steve Saka and everyone else. Jose Blanco handed out samples of the upcoming CyB Lancero release, coming to TAA stores within the next month or so. We received a bundle of 10 of our own blend of sticks and a sample of the Kentucky Fire Cured MUWAT that will find its way into stores later this year. The KFC is definitely very interesting and Jon Drew is all fired up about it. The blend we got to try was not the “final blend” but it is close...no reviews allowed yet, but I’ll just say, this might just turn out to be the most interesting thing you smoke this year.

COMING HOME

Another 3 hours bus ride on Saturday morning and we were back at the Managua airport. During the ride, Jose Blanco asked questions and debated the answers with us. It was practically a Master Class on Wheels. Big ring vs. small ring. How much flavor does the wrapper impart? Should manufacturers disclose what countries their tobaccos come from? And it wasn’t just “Yes” or “No” answers, but essay questions and lively debate about the issues.

I’ve been through Miami International twice before when entering the country and found Passport Control, Baggage Pickup, and Customs to be an almost interminable nightmare. This time, it went much smoother. Passport Control was probably the lengthiest part. By the time we finished that our luggage was waiting next to the carousel and the line for Customs was very short. I have to give MIA props for stepping up their game in getting people funneled through the airport in a much more efficient manner. Well done.

You should go. That’s the one big takeaway I have about this trip. I’ve been on a couple other factory tour trips and they are not ones that the average consumer can actually repeat. This one is open to you and it really doesn’t cost much. Drew Estate will probably mix in a little more Nicaraguan culture and history into your trip, but the basics are the same--if you want to learn a lot about cigars in a little amount of time, this is the way to do it. Go to the countries where the leaf is grown, cured, fermented, aged, and rolled. Talk to company owners and folks that have been in the business for decades. Ask questions. Some of this you can do without leaving the comfort of your own home using Twitter, Facebook and reading this blog and others, but if you are physically and financially capable, there is no substitute for having boots on the ground.

OTHER PERSPECTIVES
I’ve noted that I did not go on this trip alone, and that this was not the only trip. If you want more information, visit these fine cigar-related websites and read, listen and watch:

Stogie Fresh
RobbyRasReviews
halfwheel
Stogie Guys
Smoking Hot Cigar Chick
Toasted Foot
Stogie Review
Casas Fumando
Cigar-Coop

Part 3 of the Safari Journal will post Thursday, May 16, and will include a collection of the photos I was able to capture on the trip.

Brick House Event This Thursday at Big Star Cigar

If you are in or around Nashville this Thursday, Scott would like to invite you to come down to Big Star Cigar in Mt. Juliet for their Brick House / Perla del Mar Event.

When: Thursday, May 16, 2013
Time: 6 to 8 p.m.
Where: 3384 N Mt Juliet Road #1100, Mt Juliet, TN

Safari Journal, Part 1

Two weeks ago, I got to take my first trip to Nicaragua, courtesy of Drew Estate and their Cigar Safari tour program. Originally I was going to write as I experienced everything in-country and have several articles practically ready to post for the week after I returned. That didn't happen...it got too busy to write down everything while I was there and when I came back, work was busy and I got sick. So it took a little longer to get to than I anticipated, but I am finally happy to bring you words, pictures and video from the trip, hopefully capturing at least a little of the sights, sounds, smells and feelings of being there.

I’ll start off with this: I had a great time in Nicaragua, and for that I owe a big thanks to all those at Drew Estate and Joya de Nicaragua who made it possible: Johnny Brooke, Jonathan Drew, Steve Saka, Willy Herrera, Nick Melillo, Jose Blanco, Juan Martinez, Pedro, our driver, our chefs, our wait staff...and so many others whose names I either never got or can’t recall. I’ll add at this time that you, too, can experience something like this. Cigar Safari is a program started by Drew Estate and they run over a dozen trips a year, many of which are wide open to the paying public. The trip price is about $600, with you providing airfare to and from Managua. If you are interested in learning about how cigars are made, as well as much more about the country where some of the world’s finest tobacco is grown, you should go. Check out their website for more details.

PRE-NICA
The trip started off pretty typically for me...work got extremely busy in the hours before I was to leave for the airport. I cleared my email just in time and got in the car before anyone else could ask me for “one more thing.” An hour to Chattanooga, two hours on a shuttle bus to Atlanta airport, two hours in the air to Miami, and I met up with Patrick Lagried from halfwheel.com and Barry Stein of Miami Cigar & Company (who acted as our host for the evening). We hit Cafe Versailles for my first authentic Cuban food (Ropa Vieja was fantastic and so was the Cuban coffee), then headed to one of Barry’s favorite hangouts, the Neighborhood Humidor store. That’s where Barry showed his skill at making Cafe Cubana; rumor has it that he will be working as a barista during the Chattanooga Tweet-Up. I know we don’t usually traffic in rumors here on the Tiki Bar, but this rumor is too good not to tell. We stayed at Sofitel, across the highway from the airport, and despite some booking snafus, it was a great hotel...for all of the 6 or so hours I got to spend there, anyway.

IN-COUNTRY
Wednesday morning, Patrick and I met up with David "Doc" Diaz (Stogie Fresh) in the lobby of Sofitel and took the shuttle over to the airport, where shortly we met up with Rob "RobbyRas" Rasmussen (RobbyRas Reviews), Patrick Semmens (Stogie Guys), and William Soled (Toasted Foot). One relatively short, but fairly bumpy plane ride later, we touched down in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua.

On de-planing, we were separated by just a thin sheet of glass from a few of the Trip 1 crew who were waiting on our plane so they could go home. It would have been nice to hang out for a few minutes with Tony Casas (Casas Fumando) and Will Cooper (Cigar-Coop), but the powers that be would not allow that, so we continued on. It was amusing to see that Passport Control was sponsored by Flor de Caña Rum. We were met outside by Drew Estate's Public and Media Relations officer, Johnny Brooke, and within minutes the rest of our party arrived on the flight from Houston: Teresa Merchant and Tim Black from Smoking Hot Cigar Chick. Several people (including our own Keith Hollar) were scheduled to be on this trip, but had to drop out due to unforeseen circumstances. 

The Doc (Stogie Fresh) and Will from Toasted Food

We piled into the Cigar Safari shuttle bus, popped open some beers, lit some cigars, and headed straight to lunch at El Tiscara. If I'm not mistaken we all opted for a 12 oz steak for lunch...only they really gave us each 2 of those, so about 24 ounces of fantastic beef, after a nice salad, plaintain chips, tostones, black bean dip, and fried cheese cubes, but before the tres leches for dessert. And the steak was accompanied by rice and french fries. And we were all very, very full and sleepy on the way back to the bus.

But there would be no sleep on the wild ride to Estéli, a two-and-a-half hour journey with plenty more beer and cigars, as well as a couple pitstops on the way. Dropping into the valley for the first time, the temperature felt immediately more pleasant and the air easier to breathe. Our tour guide, ??, told us that cigars are the main product of this region, with several thousand people working in the factories and fields, as well as almost everyone else benefitting from the presence of the tobacco workers who have to buy goods and services from someone. And then we arrived at our final destination...for today anyway.

The wall was recently completed

We were assigned rooms and given some time to make ourselves at home, then we all wandered to the lounge area, overlooking a creek and some tobacco fields. We were provided a dizzying array of cigars from just about every line made by Drew Estate and their partner company, Joya de Nicaragua. Soon we were joined by Willy Herrera, Steve Saka, and Jose Blanco, and pre-dinner conversation delved into weighty topics like the politics of personal freedoms (such as, but not limited to, cigar smoking) and "Why are baby back ribs called 'baby back?'" The topics got better as bottles of Flor de Caña were opened and bottles of Blantons and Bulleit Bourbon appeared.

Dinner featured a choice of pork, beef, chicken and chorizo. I opted for beef and chorizo, both of which were excellent. And after dinner we had a tasting of several varieties of Flor de Caña, and I would say the 7 and 12 year were probably the best of the bunch. It was a long day and turned into a late night with less sleep than would be optimal...but that was just the start of a pattern.

THURSDAY

We woke up Thursday to a breakfast of egg tacos. Over the course of several meals, I found that I really like the local tortillas, a somewhat doughy, flour soft shell. After that we headed out to one of the Oliva family's facilities. Our first stop there was a curing barn, a personal first for me. We were showing how the harvested leaves are matched by size, then threaded together and hung over poles, which were then transferred to another room in the barn where thousands of poles hung from (almost) floor to ceiling. The leaves are allowed to lose their chlorophyll and turn yellow through controlled heat and dry air...semi-controlled anyway since these barns are rustic and quite old. When additional heat is called for, a section of the barn has charcoal fires lit in pits around the floor, sending the temperature well above 100.

In the fields, Steve Saka showed us how the priming of the tobacco happened, with workers walking up and down the rows taking off certain leaves of each plant, then depositing them in crates at the end of the rows. We talked about hoyas (low spots in the field), desflorado (a practice of removing the flower at a certain point in the growth of the plant), and capadura (the cutting of the stalk near the base, which is then cross-cut so it can produce a second growth). It was all very interesting and made me want to try growing tobacco on my own property in Tennessee again...I just wish I had the time.

We next headed to a facility where the cured tobacco is stored, rehydrated and sorted. The tobacco is hooked onto huge “wheels of fortune” in a room where misters fill the air with...well, mist...and we walked through the upstairs rooms where dozens of ladies were sorting leaves by size and color. 

Willy Herrera

After lunch, we were privileged to get a tour of the Joya de Nicaragua factory, the country’s oldest cigar factory and the first country to specialize in Nicaraguan cigars. Founded in the late 1960s after Cuban refugees discovered that the Estelí area could grow outstanding tobacco, Joya practically died while being run by the socialist government in the 1980s and was revived again in the ‘90s as a more freedom was gained by the people. JdN was one of the first companies to step into the “full-bodied, full-strength” cigar market with the Antaño 1970 more than 10 years ago, and they have really come to the fore-front of media attention in more recent year with their partnership with Drew Estate, the Antaño Dark Corojo, and the recent release of the CyB

Run for many years by Dr. Alejandro Martinez-Cuenca, he has recently turned over the rains of the company to his son, Juan Martinez, who is the new President. Along with Vice President, Jose Blanco, and a young and energetic team, they are working on rebranding Joya de Nicaragua to a more simple “Joya” and they are trying to focus their marketing efforts on “Nicaragua” as a country, a people, and a lifestyle.

Juan Martinez and Jose Blanco

Jose Blanco ran a testing seminar, and as usual he threw some curveballs at us. “Smoke a little of this short puro (made of a single type of tobacco) and tell me what the country of origin is, how many years it has been aging, and what priming it is.” I wish I could say I did better, but I think I may have gotten 1 or 2 right of all the 12 available answers. What did I learn? That I have a LOT more to learn!

Also of note during our blending session was that rainy season started. It was practically like flipping a switch. We were sitting there and heard distant booms. In Central American countries, you desperately hope distant booming is thunder, and in this case...it was! The skies opened up and rain pounded on the metal roof of the open-sided pavilion where we sat, obliterating any conversation. It did not last, but we were told that this was the first real rain in quite some time and that within a few days this kind of thing would be the norm.

Steve Saka would later tell me that a few years ago, the area got a stretch of 40+ days of rain during the rainy season. Because of the incredibly high humidity, the Drew Estate factory had to shut down for over 3 weeks. You heard right...if it’s too humid, you simply can’t make cigars. Important point: there is a magic spot for humidity and temperature for cigar growing, cigar production, cigar storage (in your humidor), and cigar smoking. While the magic spot may be wider for smoking them, temperature and humidity differences can definitely affect your smoking experience.

J.D.

That evening we had a whole roasted pig for dinner and Jonathan Drew (one of the founders of Drew Estate) got into town.

Part 2 of the Safari Journal will post on Tuesday, May 14.