CAO Rock+Rolled Tour

Friday, July 23, 2010

Nashville, Tennessee

It was easily one of the hottest days of the year in East Tennessee as I set off from my TN River Valley home on the drive to Nashville for the "home stop" of the CAO Rock+Rolled 2010 Tour. Unfortunately, it was also one of the hottest days in Middle Tennessee, so the only relief was to stay in your car with the air conditioner running full blast or hang out in the nicely cooled confines of UPtown's Smoke Shop, my favorite cigar shop in the Music City.

Local company rep, Jeff Tinnell, played host for the event with Jon Huber, CAO's Director of Lifestyle Marketing, the guest of honor. As Jon explained it, the R+R Tour started last year as a "fun lifestyle event" that was a new way to get people into the shops and trying out CAO cigars. The 2009 tour featured a special event-only R+R stick with a Brazilian Matafina wrapper and it has been carried over to this year's tour as well. New on the tour this year is a very special, extremely exclusive one-off stick that is an all new blend featuring a Connecticut Broadleaf maduro wrapper. When I say "extremely exclusive" you should believe it: Huber told me that there were a total of 60 of these cigars in the world. Not 60 boxes...60 cigars. Make that 40...the first box of 20 disappeared at tonight's event! If you are a Twitter following of @caocigars, you may have seen a tweet go out shortly before the event began that the first 5 people to come up to Jon and say "FTD" would get one of these sticks. I was either the first or second to do so and I got to light it up right then and there. Jon would not reveal the rest of the makeup of the cigar, saying, "Just smoke it and enjoy it."

At present there are very few R+R events listed on the company's website, but keep checking as events will continue to be posted as they are booked (sorry, California, but R+R does not appear to be in the card for you).

There were event-only specials running: buy a box of cigars and get a special R+R cup filled with 5 CAO cigars (2 of them being R+R 2009 blend), a Djeep R+R lighter and one of two baseball caps. Buy two boxes and you get two filled cups, two lighters, a cap and one of a selection of t-shirts. Buy more...well, more of the stuff...you get the picture! I bought a box of La Traviata Animados (my favorite CAO stick--these things never get old!) and got a "swag bag" of stuff.

I also asked Jon how I could get another 2010 R+R cigar and he said, "If you like it, just ask." Ask I did and I received...soon I will have a back-to-back review of the 2009 vs. 2010 R+R blends.

If R+R comes to your neck of the woods, do yourself and favor and get out to see Jon Huber and tell him the Tiki Bar sent you. Light up a nice CAO stick and get some Rest & Relaxation time while you're Rocking & Rolling!