I rode 21 miles 877kcal and had a Windy's spicy Asiago club extra bacon and fries?
Now smoking an Aldino vintage selection Rothschild. I bought a fiver of these and love them for the flavor and cold weather smoke time. So much so I grabbed a box of 50 when they went on sale from a popular online retailer, less than $5 a stick.
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Such intelligent buying! Find something you like and buy big, at an affordable price. Awesome!
Early 00 El Rey del Mundo Lonsdale. Back then, Habanos SA put out lots of great, classic vitolas that were fairly priced and an utter treat for the gourmand. In 2006, they overhauled their QA/QC process and things were looking up.
Then, they started axing all of these wonderful smokes that had been produced for decades, and started putting out the endless parade of limited edition and regional releases that are way over priced; the vitolas started getting fatter, which amounts to nothing more than stuffing nearly-flavorless volado priming to beef up the size (and price). Now, once-classic brands like Sancho Panza and La Gloria Cubana and, case in point, El Rey del Mundo, are all but retired marcas. They deleted the ERdM Tainos, only to resurrect it as a regional edition for 3x the price. Same with the Ramon Allones 898. It's insulting, but must be turning a profit, else why would they do it?
I'm done buying Havanas until and unless they start producing more skinnies.
"Cubanesque" is a farce - there are no cigars that can match what Cuba produces. To me, it is the best black (cigar) tobacco in the world, bar none.
You, sir, are an educated consumer who knows what he likes and why. The vast majority of cigar smokers are anything but that. They will pay more for a fat cigar simply because its robust size is indicative of "more." They have not worked to develop a palate that can discriminate flavors. In short they don't know what they want, and they can easily be led by the nose.
And oh! hasn't modern business, imbued with the culture of greed, become adept at soaking the customer for all they can. Recently I paid $53.00 for an oil change. I kept my mouth shut out of deference to getting along, which has taken me decades to accomplish. But I should have ripped the clerk's face off.
But my point is that greed as the primary driver of business seems to have infected everything, including habanos. The Cuban tobacco farmers and makers and those who have been brought up in this culture, know exactly what to do at every phase production. Left to their own devices they are capable of routinely producing a superior product. They mostly did this until the boom when many corners were cut.
It was not uncommon for farmers who had brought their crop the barn, on seeing a storm on the horizon, would bed down for the night with it.
Cubans were justifiably proud of making a superior product. Do you take such excellence for granted? I don't think so. If you are going to change the process you fold into the mix new processes that will make it better. What a tragedy for this industry. It takes a long time to define the processes that produce quality-decades. But then the lowlifes at the top step in and destroy quality for the sake of a few dollars.
In the world of work one doesn't have much reason to continuously do your best. Such a worker ought be compensated, but not anymore. I was compensated by the magnificent sum of .10/hour. Since the fatcats at the top stopped, for cause, sharing the wealth, one's reason for using excellence as a standard, comes into play. If mgt. won't compensate one at least the worker will know that e did his best.
In today's world one's satisfaction at work comes more and more inwardly, and to a lesser extent, despising the fatcats who make the culture driven by money.
