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I've seen mention of "Caribbean Style" cigars - what does that mean?

deluxestogie

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I may or may not have been that "cat."

American cigar varietals (the "reds" and the "Dutch" and the broadleaf/seedleaf, for example) have a distinctly different flavor and aroma profile when compared to the historic Cuban varietals. It is these (perhaps smuggled) Cuban seed varietals that have spread into commercial plantations throughout the Caribbean islands, as well as into Central America and much of South America.

To be more categorical about "Caribbean Style" cigars, their similarities overwhelm their differences. And as a group, they differ significantly from traditional European dry-style cigars or, for example, traditional Brazilian Mata Fina cigars, or traditional Indonesian cigars.

Having smoked many boxes of Havana cigars over the past half-century, I find that I can usually identify a genuine Cuban, though not always. Some are excellent; some crummy. Some Honduran cigars (e.g. Flor de A. Allones) are pretty hard to distinguish from Cuban ones.

More importantly for home-growers, if you grow the very finest crops of Little Dutch, Dutch (Ohio), PA Red, Long Red, PA Seedleaf, Glessnor, and many other well-recognized American cigar varietals, you can end up with superb cigars. But they won't taste or smell like the Habano-based cigars.

A recent American tragedy is the story of Judges Cave cigars, from F.D. Grave & Sons (makers of Muniemaker cigars). Judges Cave used to be pure CT seedleaf and broadleaf. They were true American-style cigars. They tasted and smelled like American-style cigars. Unfortunately, in order to chase a perception that all cigar smokers want Caribbean-style cigars, F.D. Grave moved their production to the Dominican Republic, and eventually replaced all the American tobacco with (much cheaper to grow) Dominican tobacco. Now, Judges Cave is just a cheap Dominican knock-off.

Moral of the story: If you want to blend a traditional American-style cigar (we're not talking about candy flavored machine poop), you'll have to grow your own American cigar varietals. They're not available in the international leaf trade.
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If you are happy with blending Caribbean-style cigars (as most home rollers are), then you can successfully meet your needs with purchased whole leaf.
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Bob
 

webmost

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A recent American tragedy is the story of Judges Cave cigars, from F.D. Grave & Sons (makers of Muniemaker cigars). Judges Cave used to be pure CT seedleaf and broadleaf. They were true American-style cigars. They tasted and smelled like American-style cigars. Unfortunately, in order to chase a perception that all cigar smokers want Caribbean-style cigars, F.D. Grave moved their production to the Dominican Republic, and eventually replaced all the American tobacco with (much cheaper to grow) Dominican tobacco.

FX Smith's Sons in Pennsylvania used to roll those Judges Caves. They also rolled Muniemakers for FD Graves for the last 35 years. Last year Graves retired, taking the marque with her. Craig Smith tried to buy the brand name from the owner, Barbara, but she preferred to hold onto it for sentimental reasons. However, FX Smiths Sons continues to roll the same exact Muniemaker sizes, shapes, and blends, selling them now under their Tuscorora line. For example, what used to be the Muniemaker Breva is available as the Tuscorora Breva, the Muniemaker Straight is the Tuscorora Straight, M Palma is T Palma, and M Long is T Long. Same manufacturer; different name is all. I'm told they would have set them up as a different line, except they feared that the new FDA regs would prohibit it, so they set them under the existing Tuscorora line.

As for Judges Cave, that blend has long been available as Smith Perfecto. Nothing new there. Same exact blend of American tobaccos, from the same manufacturer as long ago.

I don't know how many fellows on cigar forums truly appreciate American cigar tobacco. I suspect few. It has a unique toasty flavor to it which is well worth a try. You want to experiment, shoot me a PM, I'll give you some.

Don't know whether Cuba imports any appreciable amount of foreign leaves, but it seems like most cigars from the DR or from CR or from Nic or wherever, when they do say what's in it, you'll read that they include leaves from various other countries. Many wrap with American CT shade. Many wrap with CT shade grown in Ecuador... and so forth. Still, when I smoke a Dominican I expect to find a drier, more cedary product than when I smoke a Cuban. Don't you?
 

Charly

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I think I have never tried American cigars, but if I understand DeluxeStogie, I should be able to make my own if I grow the right seeds (I will grow Little Dutch and PA Red this year), so I should be able to taste it :)
I hope I will have sucess with my grow this year !! So many things to try !!!

I smoked cigars from Cuba (my favorites), Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Italy, and maybe others ? And what I like the most is that every country offers something different, there are very enjoyable tobacco from everywhere (and there is also crap everywhere).
 

deluxestogie

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F.D. Grave used to offer a Perfecto frontmark that was machine made, but with long filler. It was their last CT cigar still made with long filler. Do you know if FX Smiths Sons made the F.D. Grave CT Perfecto, and if so, do they still offer it under some other guise?

Bob

EDIT: The cigar magazines abjured American style cigars. The Aficionado crowd only rated Caribbean-style cigars with encouraging rating numbers. So it's not surprising that American style cigar sales plummeted in the late 1990s. They also managed to do the same with Te Amo (Mexican) cigars, which had booming sales until the month when Cigar Aficionado panned them. When the handful of "expert" tasters for a slick magazine with expensive advertising proceeded to rate all cigars according to their own parochial tastes, a practice which drove the disastrous "cigar boom," many unique, regional cigar types from across the globe dropped of the cliff. Although some of those on the losing end of the pseudo-objective rating process deserved oblivion, the loss of many others is a real pity.
 

webmost

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I think I have never tried American cigars, but if I understand DeluxeStogie, I should be able to make my own if I grow the right seeds (I will grow Little Dutch and PA Red this year), so I should be able to taste it :)
I hope I will have sucess with my grow this year !! So many things to try !!!

I smoked cigars from Cuba (my favorites), Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Italy, and maybe others ? And what I like the most is that every country offers something different, there are very enjoyable tobacco from everywhere (and there is also crap everywhere).

CT broadleaf & PA broadleaf are mostly what you would expect to find in an American cigar.
 

webmost

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F.D. Grave used to offer a Perfecto frontmark that was machine made, but with long filler. It was their last CT cigar still made with long filler. Do you know if FX Smiths Sons made the F.D. Grave CT Perfecto, and if so, do they still offer it under some other guise?

No I don't, Bob. I'll ask. They called it the Connecticut Perfecto then?
What do you mean by "frontmark"?
Never heard of a machine made long filler. Tought to understand how a machine would handle that.

Shoot me your addy and let me send you some FX fectos. There's few enough of us still enamored by American cigars.

EDIT: The cigar magazines abjured American style cigars. The Aficionado crowd only rated Caribbean-style cigars with encouraging rating numbers. So it's not surprising that American style cigar sales plummeted in the late 1990s. They also managed to do the same with Te Amo (Mexican) cigars, which had booming sales until the month when Cigar Aficionado panned them. When the handful of "expert" tasters for a slick magazine with expensive advertising proceeded to rate all cigars according to their own parochial tastes, a practice which drove the disastrous "cigar boom," many unique, regional cigar types from across the globe dropped of the cliff. Although some of those on the losing end of the pseudo-objective rating process deserved oblivion, the loss of many others is a real pity.

1) Snooty McSnootpants cannot be convinced that more money does not equal more better.
2) Snooty loves the freebies.

I'm convinced S McS would rate dog poos 94 if La Mierda de Perro Reserva Limitado, dressed in three gold embossed bands and a purple ribbon, priced at $18 a stick, was sent to them free by the distributor.

zero faith in ratings
 

MarcL

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frontmark

Fanciful name on the front of many U.S. cigar boxes which indicates the size and shape of the cigar sold under that marca. There are more than two thousand frontmarks, some quite strange. Only a few frontmarks (blunts, panatelas, perfecto) approach standardization. Most frontmarks individual meanings in each company. Many are unique to one manufacturer. If some writer or smoker pontificates about the exact ring gauge, length and shape of a frontmark (“A Regalia is 4.5” long, tapered on one end and...”), take his comments with a grain of salt, adding quietly to yourself “for that particular brand this year.” If, God forbid, you have a sadistic streak you might ask the speaker to describe a Bayonette, a Kindergarden, a Broncho, a Caballero, a Torpedora, a Crusader, a Brownie or an Opera Bouquet. A name is just a name despite all the romance applied by ad agencies.

http://cigarhistory.info/Site/Glossary-Definitions.html
 

deluxestogie

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No I don't, Bob. I'll ask. They called it the Connecticut Perfecto then? Never heard of a machine made long filler. Tought to understand how a machine would handle that.

Shoot me your addy and let me send you some FX fectos.
I appreciate the offer, but I've already taken you up on an identical offer several years ago. Thanks again for the tasty FX perfectos.

About the long filler machine made cigars: Yup! they used to do that using a hand-fed, automated buncher. When Hoyo de Monterrey was first released outside of Cuba, they were made in Tampa, and some were machine-made. One of my all time favorite cigars was the Hoyo #55--a machine made line (EMS, Maduro, Double-Maduro) of long-filler cigars made with mostly the new, Honduran Habano leaf, supplemented with pre-embargo Cuban leaf (from the late 1960s into the early 1970s). The #55 was about 5" x 48 (as I recall), with a pointed head. They cost 35 cents per stick.

The downside of machine-made long-filler cigars was that the wrapper needed to be a heavier leaf than is typical for hand-made wrappers. So the #55 always had a bit of a rustic feel. The CT Perfecto 100s were tapered at both ends, and box-pressed smooth; the wrappers were available in maduro and oscuro.

The top 2 shelves of my linen closet is a veritable memory lane of empty cigar boxes. I just happened to save one of the CT Perfecto 100s boxes, just before they disappeared from planet Earth.

Garden20170218_2444_Perfecto100s_InnerLid_600.jpg

The inner lid.

Garden20170218_2445_Perfecto100s_backOfBox_400.jpg

Bottom markings of CT Perfecto 100s.

Bob
 

webmost

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No I don't, Bob. I'll ask. They called it the Connecticut Perfecto then?

Smith tells me Finck used to roll that cigar for them in Texas.

God grant us longevity enough to see American cigars make a comeback. I like 'em.
 

deluxestogie

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Finck's Cigars is an interesting site: http://www.finckcigarcompany.com/

It looks like they still make some machine-mades there in Texas (no CT perfectos to be had), although just about everything else is contracted from the same old Nicaraguan and Dominican cigar factories that pump out all the silly brands on the "premium" cigar market.

I wonder what all those gazillion old cigar rolling machines are doing these days. There must be (or once have been) tens of thousands of them left over from closed factories in the US. I can picture a spare bedroom with a machine buncher, a machine roller and a lot of well-filled shelves of cigars.

Bob
 

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I wonder what all those gazillion old cigar rolling machines are doing these days. There must be (or once have been) tens of thousands of them left over from closed factories in the US. I can picture a spare bedroom with a machine buncher, a machine roller and a lot of well-filled shelves of cigars.

Bob

Ha! That's a funny story right there. Phil Iforgethislastnamerightnow, same fellow who makes Indian Motorcycle Cigars and Debonaire Cigars, hired Craig Smith, great-great grandson of FX Smith, to dismantle these derelict machines and ship them to the DR for storage (just what you want to do with a fine tuned old steel machine is store it in the tropics, right?). His ambition is to mount them on trailers and trundle them round event to event in states where it's legal and have mobile pot cigar rolling machines. See? Told you it's funny. Finck, National, Marsh Wheeling... tons of them are warehoused in the DR right now. I don't know that there were ever tens of thousands... but that's where they went.

You can't make this stuff up.
 

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Do you know if FX Smiths Sons made the F.D. Grave CT Perfecto, and if so, do they still offer it under some other guise?

I'm informed this morning that the Smithdale Perfecto is blent to be close to the Muniemaker Perfecto. Comes in natural, shade, and maduro. I'm a big fan of the maduros; but the shade is no slouch either.
 

deluxestogie

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The Smithdale Perfecto maduro looks interesting.

http://www.fxsmithssons.com/index.p...id=196&zenid=9692d445d877286a47d6de119b907d1c selling at about $1.12 per stick.

SmithdaleMaduro.png

Smithdale Perfecto maduro

The CT Perfecto 100s were 5-1/4" x 50. The Smithdale is 4-7/8 x 49. So the single greatest difference is that the Smithdale is (presumably) not long filler. I may have to snag a box, and give them a serious consideration. Judging from the photo, the Smithdale "maduro" is as black as the CT Perfecto 100s oscuro.

Curiously, their Smith Perfecto natural is 5" x 47, and goes for about $0.88 per stick: http://www.fxsmithssons.com/index.p...id=201&zenid=dea4b18fb9574cb729d3edccef2721ed

It's worth pointing out that for walking, hiking, mowing the lawn, or any other outdoor activity, a short-filler cigar usually burns more evenly than a long-filler cigar. (If you've ever seen cigars labeled as "Cazadores," they are traditionally short-filler cigars: cazador = hunter. Do game animals associate the smell of burning tobacco with imminent doom?)

Bob
 

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Thanks to this thread I just ordered three different samplers of four cigars each at F.X. Smiths Sons. I was hooked by that black looking wrapper. I’ll post my findings later.
 

deluxestogie

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Aw, man. I just spent a small portion of my life browsing through that website again. I almost bought a box of 50 Tuscarawa maduros, but I just couldn't pull the trigger.

Bob
 

MarcL

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I like the way the site looks Bert. Simple.

It would be nice to be able to work those machines. Have you?
 
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