Your first cigar experience - mine was a little bit funny...

[quantumboy]

It was 1994, and my wife and I were walking along the sidewalk near Cherry Creek Mall in Denver, with my cousin and his wife. We passed by a lovely cigar shop, and I wanted to go in. my wife said "You're crazy" and ironically my cousin also said the same thing. His wife and I are the ones who wanted to try a cigar, so we went in and trusted the guy to point us in the right direction. Later we ended up on my porch smoking cigars. Lo and behold, my cousin got hooked and became my best cigar buddy. He also introduced me to whiskey, starting me off out of the gate with Lagavulin, which by most standards in not for noobs. However, I was hooked, being a big fan of huge in-your-face flavors. Cigars and scotch are now staples. Right now, the fam is in bed and I'm on the front porch with a pipeful of EMP and some Knob Creek Rye. Life is good.

 

[telescopes]

Life is good.

Yes it is.

 

[ashdigger]

My first cigar was on July 2, 2013. You remember things. I started out the day in a tiny town in UT working a fire scene. I stepped on a large mirror I didn’t see and a piece of glass went sideways through my fire boot and into my foot.

I pulled out my leatherman and pulled out the glass. I then finished the scene and my sock was full of blood. I was worried about getting stuck in a small town so I put a couple stitches in and drove 7 hours to home.

I figured, since my dad was a cigar guy, I’d have my first cigar and some scotch while soaking my foot in epsom salt.

So I watched some YouTube videos. Selected a short cigar and sat back and enjoyed the calm after a ludicrous day.

Still favor a pipe, but a cigar every now and then still sneaks into rotation.

 

[Waning Embers]

1990, my sophomore year in high school. My calculus teacher gave me an Arturo Fuente for replacing a torque converter on his truck. Not an unpleasant experience but not something I've often repeated. I've probably smoked less than 30 cigars since then.

 

[JOHN72]

At the beginning of the nineties, I think I was 21 years old, and I already had my driver's licenses for all categories. Bad decision to get out of the army, to enter civilian life and work hard with heavy trucks. That's when I started with my first Havana cigars. The tobacconists were overflowing with Partagas, H. Upmann, and many other cigars from Cuba. The fantastic humidor rooms, with that Cuban quality cigar smell. I fell in love with these two brands, I never got to make a large cellar, as I was unaware of the future of tobacco. It is true that pipe tobacco is very varied and satisfying, but in those years, I did not yet realize what a treasure there was in the neighborhood tobacconists, with a great variety of pipe tobaccos. I was a little late to the pipe world, but I was able to stock up on decent tobacco. Only my father still smoked a pipe, a few times I tried, I remember his amphora and condor tobaccos. Partagas and H Upmann were my daily flagship cigars, while I was working in Europe with the truck.

 

[Sig]

In 2001 I smoked my first premium cigar. I was just out of boot camp, and EVERYONE on base was REALLY into cigars.
In 2002 while home on leave, I ordered one of those horrible Thompson Cigar samplers. The one with 100 cigars and a 50 cigar humidor for like $80.
The cigars were beyond hideous, but I smoked every one of them.
This lead me to Cigar Geeks forum, which lead me to several years of mass consumption and economic peril.
This is when I learned that people in the tobacco community are really stand up folks.
Not just cigar smokers, but a few cigar retailers sent us tons of good cigars. We never asked for anything, they insisted. JR Cigars was a huge supporter of the Troops, through many massive cigar bombs.
Anyways, when I got out in 2009, I built a small collection of humidors, and went full steam into cigars.
Shortly after I was introduced to pipes from a member on Cigar Geeks.
Sinse then I've been smoking cigars, but my real love is for the pipe. (tobacco, not meth)
I still have a couple humidors full of cigars from back then. And I also buy one or two regularly at the local tax free cigar shop.
Ive kept humidors going for 23 years. I quit all tobacco smoking for 7 years, but kept the beads wet.

 

[Joe H]

In the mid-1970s my friends and I were teenagers but not yet 18. Nobody cared about IDs at the Alaskan gas stations where we stocked up on beer and cigars on the way out to hunting or camping trips. My first cigars were White Owls and Swisher Sweets and Wolf Brother’s rum-soaked Crooks. They all tasted great to me and worked fine to keep mosquitos away. I never had any ill effects from any of them.

I don’t recall how I came to start smoking my main cigar back in those days: the Dunhill Montecruz “Sun Grown Naturals" line. They were a huge improvement in every way. I smoked them by the box (luckily the tobacco shops in Anchorage didn’t care about IDs either). I think they stopped production in the late 80s or so. By then I was in the Army and old enough to get anything legally. I still have some of those old boxes around. The pictures are just snips from the internet (I like posts with pictures); thanks for instigating some fond memories from 50 years ago! The building boom during the pipeline construction days up here was a wild time.

I no longer smoke cigars, just pipes, but if anyone knows of a clone or similar cigar to the Montecruz, I'd definitely be interested.

 

[pinem]

In the mid-1970s my friends and I were teenagers but not yet 18. Nobody cared about IDs at the Alaskan gas stations where we stocked up on beer and cigars on the way out to hunting or camping trips. My first cigars were White Owls and Swisher Sweets and Wolf Brother’s rum-soaked Crooks. They all tasted great to me and worked fine to keep mosquitos away. I never had any ill effects from any of them.
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I don’t recall how I came to start smoking my main cigar back in those days: the Dunhill Montecruz “Sun Grown Naturals" line. They were a huge improvement in every way. I smoked them by the box (luckily the tobacco shops in Anchorage didn’t care about IDs either). I think they stopped production in the late 80s or so. By then I was in the Army and old enough to get anything legally. I still have some of those old boxes around. The pictures are just snips from the internet (I like posts with pictures); thanks for instigating some fond memories from 50 years ago! The building boom during the pipeline construction days up here was a wild time.
View attachment 397964
I no longer smoke cigars, just pipes, but if anyone knows of a clone or similar cigar to the Montecruz, I'd definitely be interested.

First cigar was a swisher sweet, smoked in a deserted parking lot with my friends (we ranged from 16 to 18 yo at the time). I also smoked my first cig that night. The thing I remember most, was how well corn nuts masked the smoke on ones breath.

 

[The Benedictine]

Had my first cigar when my cousin had his first boy.

 

[LeafErikson]

I have quite literally never smoked a cigar.

The only times I have they were gutted and then green stuff was put in before being lit up. Usually a White Owl, Dutch Master, or a Swisher.

 

[warren99]

Other than Swishers and the like, which I sampled in my teens, my first ”real” cigar was a Cuban Romeo y Julieta Prince of Wales, that a client bestowed upon me In the early ‘90’s at the start of the cigar boom. It got me hooked on stogies, especially Habanos, for a while. I even subscribed to Cigar Aficionado back then. While I still smoke an occasional cigar, pipes are my clear preference.

 

[AreBee]

I moved out of my parents home in 1993 shortly after I finished college and my apartment was a couple minutes down the street from one of my coworkers. He came to see the place as I was moving in and brought a couple Griffin's Robustos with him. We sat between the unpacked boxes and lit up. I wasn't into the brown liquors yet, so I twisted up some Bacardi and Cokes for us and we just hung out. I sometimes wish I discovered pipes back then, but I also wonder if I would have had the patience to be a pipe smoker at 24.