Hello all. I’ve just returned from my honeymoon in Hawaii. It’s an amazing place, especially if you rent a Jeep, take the top down, and have a few car gars. Even better if you have some great company (the new wife was with me, and is still fully supportive of my habit). I brought along 20 cigars for a 10 day trip, figuring I could always supplement in Hawaii if I needed to. I remember thinking as I packed, “Of course a place like Hawaii, which caters to tourists looking to cut loose and have some fun, would have loads of cigar shops.” Boy was I wrong. After driving around Oahu, Kauai, Maui and Hilo (the Big Island) — a grand total 600+ miles logged — I found only two cigar stores. The first was near Pearl City, just outside of Pearl Harbor: Island Liquor & Cigar, 98-199 Kamehameha Hwy. #A09, Aiea, HI 96701. The prices were good (for retail), and I picked up an additional five gars, including an 1991 ESV Perdomo, a Fuente Don Carlos Robusto and some Sancho Panza bad boys (monsters gars for drinking nights). Unfortunately, I found this gem of a store at the beginning of my trip; I wish I’d known then that I would not find another real cigar store anywhere other than Oahu in the state.

Indeed, I found nothing on Hilo or Maui and only one “cigar shop” on Kauai: Kauai Cigar Co. For those of you who might be excited to know there’s at least one cigar store on Kauai, I should tell you that Kauai Cigar Co. sells a whopping two cigars: a “light” and a “dark” variety of a cigar called the “Island Prince” (roughly a toro in size with an ultra smooth wrapper). Having cornered the cigar market on an island with 50,000+ residents, I guess I wasn’t surprised when the clerk told me these gars were a criminally expensive $12 each. I bought one “light” cigar, despite the fact that I was totally desperate at that point (day 8). I’d say it was “not horrible” for a cigar that’s supposedly comprised of 100% Hawaiian-grown tobacco. (Remember, they don’t even sell cigars on Hawaii, so it’s not like the place is known for having really good smokes.) But it was far from great, either. I would rate it a solid 7.0 if not for the price, which makes it about a 5.0 on our Leafytimes.com scale.

Then, out of pure desperation, I did the unthinkable. I bought some Swisher Sweets to have in the Jeep while I drove around on Kauai. Terrible things, really. Honestly, they’re better to chew on than to smoke. After returning the Jeep, I bought another Hawaii “special”: a “Royal Hawaiian Kona Coffee Flavor” cigar for $4.49 at an ABC Store (regular price $5.49). At the time, I was somewhat impressed by the fact that this cigar, which looked like a crudely-wrapped lancero, was “Tubed in Maui for Freshness.” Moreover, the packaging assured me that the “natural leaf” tobacco was “imported” (from?) and made “In the Aloha Spirit of the Hawaiian Islands” (huh?). Lastly, the company has a website, www.royalhawaiiancigars.com, so they’re somewhat accountable, right? Wrong. Just goes to show you that shit, even when well preserved and rolled with spirit, is still shit. I can honestly say that I would rather have had another swisher sweet. To be fair, the ABC Store did have some traditional fare for sale. But I just can’t stomach $14.00 for a Macanudo crystal or $16.00 for a Cohiba red dot rothschild. Ugh.

So, in sum, what did I learn from my trip to Hawaii? First, rent a Jeep, take the top off, and drive around all day smoking nice, fat stogies. Truly God’s country. Second, make sure you bring plenty of cigars because you won’t find any for sale anywhere other than Oahu, and even then you’ll need a little luck unless you have a GPS system or know the island really well. Finally, when it comes time to retire from my life as an attorney, I’m going to move to Hawaii, open up a cigar store and smoke/reap the profits. It’s an open market there, and I plan to conquer the five main islands with Dicksbain someday.

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Nicotine and me will be together till the end…I’ve known that since I was 20.  Sure, I’ve moved from Cigarettes to cigars years ago.  And instead of smoking one cigarette every 30 minutes, I smoke a cigar every other evening.  Still, it’s the nicotine that I love so much.  Well, it turns out it may not be so bad for you:

From Wired:

Nicotine acts on the acetylcholine receptors in the brain, stimulating and regulating the release of a slew of brain chemicals, including seratonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. Not surprisingly, the first scientific work that identified these chemicals and how they affect the body came out of nicotine research — much of it performed by tobacco companies.

Full Story

Also, this study shows smoking wards off Parkinson’s disease.

Chalk one up (finally!) for nicotine…

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Lately, CAO has decided to start sticking Maduro wrappers on classic cigars such as the CAO GOLD and now the CAO Black. Not knowing CAO cigars, one might think the Black is a maduro already, however the original featured a Connecticut wrapper and was a medium bodied smoke. Launched in 1995, the Black is almost as old as CAO themselves. I’m pretty sure the Gold is the only cigar series that pre-dates it.

I was not impressed with the CAO Gold Maduro nearly as much as my brother. With the CAO Black VR, I expected something along the lines of the Gurkha Black Puro Toro, which was simply overpowering, had odd flavors, and was not very complex. I was pleasantly surprised with the Black Maduro.

The overall appearance was typical CAO; near flawless. The cigar had a nice, thick oily wrapper. Not too “veiny”, no holes, and the cigar was well humidified and slightly spongy. The pre-light flavors were nutty with aromas of almonds. Burn was great and the draw was solidy throughout.

If you can’t tell from most of my reviews, the #1 factor I look for in cigars is complexity. Nothing is worse to me than a “one note samba stick”. A cigar has to take you on journey. Sure that sounds a little over the top, but to me the $10+ you spend is a plane ticket to another land. If I just wanted a nicotine buzz, I’d smoke cigarettes or swisher sweets.

The CAO Black VR actually adds a very nice layer of complexity to an already good cigar. Unlike the CAO Gold where the maduro wrapper really detracted from the subtle flavors of the gold, the Black VR really enhanced the cigar. The cigar winds up as a medium-full bodied cigar that is not dominated by the maduro wrapper. You can still taste all the creamy spice of the original, with some more body to it. Volumes of smoke were produced by these toros. At the 1/2 way mark, this cigar really calmed down and became a joy to smoke. Where most cigars begin to fail, this cigar kept going till the nub. It never got too hot and the flavors never became “odd” towards the end.

Is this a perfect cigar? No. Is it “the next padron 1964″? No. But it’s yet another great CAO cigar that’s better than most sticks out there and would be a welcome cigar in most humidors. If you were disappointed with the CAO Gold Maduro, don’t turn your head on this one. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised as I was.

LT Rating: 7.5 / 10

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