While I am a cigar sommelier on the side, my main gig is as an IT Professional, primarily (lately) as a technical trainer. Of course, since 2020 all but one of my classes have been taught remotely from the comfort of my living room/office. I feel that I am inviting my students into my home, and that has both upsides and downsides. One of the upsides is that it forces me to keep my apartment neat and tidy, which has not always been my strong suit. It also allows me to introduce my students to Her Royal Floofness, Princess Sophie. Many of my students are always happy to meet her on camera, and s ..read more

Last October I spent the afternoon at Stixx Cigar Lounge in Woodland Hills, California (The Valley for those unfamiliarwith the area) smoking cigars and chatting with the owner, Johnny Mansour. He introduced me to his Stixx line of cigars and sent me home with a few more to try. I have been to Stixx several times but this was my first visit since Johnny bought it. Not much had changed – it was still a clean, well ventilated place to watch the game or for a business meeting. If I was still living in the area I would definitely be a member. Each of his vitolas is named for a breed of bulldog (w ..read more

Four years ago I was happy to share that I had earned my certification as a cigar sommelier by the International Association of Cigar Sommeliers (IACS). I was and remain quite proud of that. Becoming an expert in a field that I am passionate has always been an exciting endeavour for me, and to be able to sit in a class and learn from industry experts in such a field is never a waste of my time. In the first week of May I received a phone call from a friend at Habanos S.A. who informed me that they had started offering the Habanosommelier instruction and certification classes online. While the ..read more

Let’s be honest. Cigar smokers enjoy their toys. Most of us have torches, cutters, punches, drills, ashtrays, and stands for every occasion, from the small, portable pocket-sized ones that we take with us to the larger and heavier ones that we leave at home. I cannot count how many of these I have but they fill a drawer and there is overflow to boot. I may not have everything that I want, but I certainly have everything that I need. So when my wife told me a few weeks ago that she bought me a present, it never would have occurred to me that not only was it a cigar accessory, but it was one tha ..read more

My wife and I are huge fans of Davidoff cigars. While there are several regular production line vitolas of theirs that we enjoy on a regular basis, we have also come to appreciate some of their limited edition releases of which they release a number every year. Over the past two years we have made sure to pre-order at least one box and sometimes a few of each one before they even hit the shelves. We have not yet been disappointed. We smoke (and share) most of them, but we make a point to save two of each one; the plan is to let them sit for ten years, and then revisit them on special occasions ..read more

In my travels over the past month, I visited several cigar lounges in both Dallas, Texas and Southern California. I was just thinking of all of the cigar lounges I visited during that time, and how different each one of them is. Addison, CI, Autoscape, GHR, Stixx, Old Oaks The first thing that I should call attention to is that some cigar lounges are more like cigar stores and/or bars where you can smoke. For example, the Cigars International Superstore in The Colony is a store (as the name suggests). It is a bar that serves any alcoholic beverage you might want (although their selection of si ..read more

Last month, shortly before Leslie and I went to Cuba, Habanos S.A. announced that they would be raising the prices of all their cigars, but they would really be raising the prices of the two top ‘exclusive’ brands, the Cohiba and the Trinidad. I am grateful that the price hikes did not take effect until after our trip, and while buying cigars was not the primary reason we went, we were able to buy some very good cigars, including Bolivars, H Upmanns, Montecristos, Vegas Robainas, and yes, a box of Trinidads, and a few Cohibas. While there is tremendous uncertainty around the announcement, ther ..read more

A friend commented the other day that I have not blogged in a long time. Nothing can be further from the truth, as I have blogged nearly every day this calendar year. That I have not been blogging about cigars is a different story. I have indeed been ignoring this blog space, for which I am sorry. Over the past year, I have greatly broadened my regular smoking habits. While previously I was mostly a smoker of Cuban cigars, I have vastly expanded my non-Cuban repertoire. Whether this is entirely due to the tremendous price increases of the Habanos cigars (in some cases jumping as high as 233 ..read more

I never thought I would be one of those guys with a big cabinet in my apartment to store and show off my cigars… what a long, strange trip it’s been. I was so excited! I had a small box of 25 cigars. It was the most cigars I had ever owned at one time, and knowing the requirements to keep them properly humidified, I went out to buy my first humidor. I might have spent $50 at the magazine and cigar store at the corner of St. Catherines and St. Mark Streets in Montreal. It was a small desktop model, as simple as one could get… what one would expect for a kid of my age at the time (mid-20s) livin ..read more

“When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it’s only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.” This quote, while attributed to Albert Einstein, seems to not have come directly from him. Rather, it was a reporter who interviewed him who noted it in a story about relativity in the New York Times in March, 1929. Whoever it came from, it is a very good way to explain how everything is indeed relative. I could not help but think of it as I drove home from Pearson International Airport this afternoon. If you have ever been in a l ..read more