Come 2018, you (and Larry Bird) won’t be able to enjoy a cigar at any cigar lounge in Boston or likely anywhere else in Massachusetts. Governor Deval Patrick vetoed a second attempt by legislators to preserve cigar bars in communities of more than 150,000 residents.

The debate followed the typical government methodology for infringing on the rights of citizens. Unless our government has become completely paternalistic, then no one can seriously argue that citizens should not be free to gather and enjoy their cigars. So in these cases, the government looks for an innocent third party that allegedly will be harmed by the activity. In order to eliminate cigarettes in restaurants, they pointed to the poor patrons who will be subjected to the second-hand smoke of others. That argument was fallacious because the free market takes care of that problem. Don’t want to be subjected to secondhand smoke? There will be a thriving selection of smoke free restaurants who want to cater to you. But, okay, an argument can be made that you are possibly depriving nonsmoking citizens of the ability to go to their favorite pizza hangout if you allow the owner to decide whether it is a smoking establishment.

However, even that weak argument fails in the case of a cigar bar. The only people that go there are people that want to be surrounded by smokers. So how do we demonize a cigar lounge? Who is the innocent victim?

The employees. You see, the employees of a cigar lounge had no choice but to work anywhere other than that cigar lounge. Thus, you are forcing the employees to sacrifice their health in order to work, or so the argument goes.

I don’t need to explain to you that this is a ridiculous argument on many levels. The most obvious is that this is not the only job the employees could have, and if it is, you are dooming them to a life of unemployment if you do away with the cigar lounge. Similarly, let’s assume that working in a cigar lounge is a really undesirable job because of the smoke, and that only 1 out of 10,000 workers would even consider working there. Well, you’ve just created a job that will enable people that might be having difficulty finding work to find a job because there is far less competition, just like, I would imagine, coal miners, crab fishers, and public defenders.

Here are some sample quotes from the government boneheads, taken from an article on Boston.com.

“Anybody working in a bar of any kind shouldn’t have to breathe in secondhand smoke in order to make a living,’’ said Michael Siegel, a tobacco control specialist at Boston University School of Public Health.

Patrons can choose to smoke, but employees, who may have only taken a cigar bar job because they had no other options, should not be subjected to secondhand smoke, said Marc Hymovitz, director of government relations at the New England division of the American Cancer Society. Cigar smoke is as or more dangerous than cigarette smoke, he said.

“It comes down to we shouldn’t make people choose between their health and a job,’’ said Hymovitz, adding that state governments should not be able to preemptively set local health standards. “This was not the Worcester City Council saying, hey, we want to allow cigar bars. This was the state saying you have to allow cigar bars, whether you want to or not.’’

Drew Estates tasting night here at the Eight Eighty Eight lounge in Fullerton.  Nice sampling of three cigars for $20 which includes a raffle for some pretty stylin’ prizes. They even let me swap out the Acid cigar for an Antaño.

The Joya de Nicaragua Antaño consists of  75% Ligero leaf and is a Nicaragua puro.  The cigar is nice and complex, with an intial strong taste of spice and notes of chocolate and coffee.  Very full bodied.

A great stick, warranting a 91 on The Morris Scale.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Our roving Cigar Group met at TAPS Fish House and Brewery in Brea this week to take advantage of their cigar-friendly patio while watching the Lakers tank another game.  (Note to TAPS:  Put a second screen out on the patio.)  I’ve been to TAPS on a couple of occasions, but had not yet sampled their beers.  Here are some quick impressions from the sampler I ordered.

Creme Ale – Good, but I won’t be ordering a pint any time soon.

Oscura – Best beer of the bunch.  Supposedly uses a recipe by Austrian brewers who immigrated to Mexico during the 19th century, giving it a Mexican flare.  It is a dark brown lager, with a very nice toasty flavor.

Biere de Garde – Meaning, “beer to keep or to store,” or so they say.  By that, maybe they mean you’ll keep it in the fridge because you won’t want to drink it.  Not a good beer for my tastes.

Belgian White – A tasty unfiltered wheat beer, with strong citrus and a slight banana taste.  Quite good.

Hefeweizen – A good Hefeweizen, but not as good as what Oggi’s offers, and not in the league of In Heat Wheat from Flying Dog Brewery, one of my favorites.

Schwarzbier – A German-style dark lager.  Better than the Dale Bros. California Black Beer I recently reviewed, but still too thin and watery for me.  Someone must like it though, because TAPS says it received an award this year.

Irish Red – My second favorite of the bunch, but again not as good as the red offered by Oggi’s.

California Gold XPA – Not crazy with hops like an IPA, but if you are a hop head you should still be pleased.  I’m not, and I wasn’t.

The Winery has a great cigar-friendly patio with Monday night football on the big screen.  With my Glenmorangie Scotch I enjoyed an Alec Bradley Harvest Selection 1997 and a CAO America.

Typing on my iPhone so I’ll keep it short.  Both very good cigars, but not great.  A little mild for my taste. Although I have to say, the CAO is growing on me the more I smoke it.

Here are other more detailed reviews of the Alec Bradley and CAO America.  And check out the 2007 YouTube video introducing the CAO America.  I had no idea it was as American as baseball and apple pie.

I’m at the 8Eightyeight Lounge in Fullerton.  Frankie the manager talked me to a Gurkha Evil, but he’s going to owe me one for this travesty.  Harsh just turned into slightly less harsh, and it won’t stay lit worth a damn.  It’s evil all right, but not in a good way.  A 6.0 on The Morris Scale.

Go here for an extensive review of the Gurkha Evil (this reviewer liked it a whole lot more than I did).

Thinking of going to one of the Big Smoke events sponsored by Cigar Aficionado? A few days ago I attended The Big Smoke in Las Vegas, and here are my impressions. I attended only the night portion of the event, not the day seminars or whatever it is they do, so keep that in mind. That portion could be much better organized than what I experienced, but let me walk you through the experience of the evening function.

I arrived about 15 minutes after the hall opened, which I later discovered was a good idea.  Most waited in line with a thousand others as their tickets were taken, but there is no advantage to going through that process.  So, first tip, arrive late.

When you enter, you are given the usual trade show bag for all the cigars and other goodies you will be receiving, along with a ticket book.  You then go to each of the 25 or so booths in the hall and present your ticket for a cigar.  Other booths are for booze, cigar accessories and the like, and usually offer a sample.  (If you click on the picture below, and zoom in on the map, you can see all the vendors that were present.)  Inexplicably, the number of the coupon was not posted on most of the booths, so as each person approached with his book, he’d have to ask which coupon he needed, and then dig for it.  Thankfully most of the booths quickly spotted the problem and put up impromptu signs displaying the coupon number.  Some of the smarter attendees split up the coupons among their group, with one person taking all the number one to five coupons to those booths, another taking six to ten, etc.

This treasure hunt is unnecessary and should be eliminated.  In theory, the point is to force you to go to each booth to collect your cigar, where you can then meet the company representative and hear their spiel or ask them questions.  In practice, that doesn’t happen.  Instead, lines form at every booth and taking the time to talk about the cigar would be rude to all the people behind you.  I had my cigar angel with me, so she received cigars and marriage proposals with none of the line nonsense, but most were not so lucky.

Making matters worse, people like Rocky Patel very nicely make themselves available for pictures, but no differentiation was made between the photo line and the cigar line.  I did a quick poll of the people waiting in the hour-long Rocky Patel line, and with no slight to the star power of Rocky, most just wanted their cigar.  If you knew how to work the system, you could get your cigar and be on your way, but the people in line didn’t know that.  Strangely, while everyone else was waiting an hour in line to be photographed with Tom Ozgener, the President of CAO, my cigar angel somehow had me up front, shaking his hand and smiling for the camera in two minutes flat.  I guess what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.  Tip two: Bring your own cigar angel.  Everyone bends over backwards to help an angel.

Here’s the way it should work (take note Cigar Aficionado).  You enter the hall and are handed a bag already filled with all the sample cigars.  You then take a leisurely stroll around the hall, talking to any cigar representatives you choose.  You could meet the representatives and discuss the cigars, without delaying anyone.  I’m sure the counter-argument from the cigar vendors will be that with the coupon system, people are getting only the cigars they want, so none are “wasted”, but if you are so unsure of your product that you don’t want to include it in a bag that is being handed to die-hard cigar fans, you have issues.

The event is three hours long, and I estimate it would take an hour to an hour and a half to hit all the booths and collect your cigars with no assistance.  After that amount of time, with their cigars in hand, people starting drifting from the hall and it became less crowded.  I didn’t stay to the bitter end, but I imagine if you did so, you would then have a better ability to visit the booths in a more leisurely manner.  Tip three:  After arriving late, stay late.  The YouTube video above was apparently shot late in the show, because there is no line at the Oliva booth.

I made the mistake of eating not long before the event, thinking that the food would be limited to small samples at the end of long lines.  That was not true.  Food, good but not great, was provided buffet style, and there were a number of food stations with free samples from local restaurants (most or all of them at the Venetian/Pallazo).  Tip four: Be hungry.  There was also no shortage of free drinks, with a number of distilleries offering samples. 

Bottom line?  Am I glad I went to The Big Smoke?  Yes, for the experience.  Would I do it again?  No, not unless I read that they have changed the system in the way I’ve suggested.  But to me, the experience was more than what went on at the Big Smoke.  Rather, Las Vegas becomes a cigar town and you see your cigar-smoking brethren everywhere.  The two cigar lounges I visited – Casa Fuente at the Forum Shops at Caesars and Rhumbar at the Mirage next door – were packed with other cigar afficionados.  (I’ll review these places later.)  I didn’t want to risk taking a lighter on the flight to Vegas, so once there I stepped into a Davidoff shop at the Pallazo and found Tim Ozgener holding an impromptu cigar seminar.  I bought a shirt at Tommy Bahama’s and received a free commemorative Big Smoke ashtray.  I had a great weekend in Vegas, and may well return when the Big Smoke is in town just for the cigar friendly transformation, but I’ll skip the event and spend the $240 on cigars of my own choosing.

The Rogue Brewery in Oregon and the fine beers it produces reminds us once again to give thanks to Jimmy Carter.  Although viewed by many as the worst President in modern history, he is the one that signed the bill in 1979 that repealed federal restrictions on home brewing of small amounts of beer. His signature paved the way for the States to follow suit and permit home beer making.  Many beer historians (that was my minor in college) credit this point in history for all the many craft beers we enjoy today.

Rogue Ales started in exactly that way, with some guys who enjoyed brewing beer.  The brewery began as a brewpub in Ashland, Oregon, and now produces an impressive variety of beers, including the American Amber Ale.  The beers they produce are free from preservatives, additives and chemicals, and are not pasteurized.

As you can see from the photo, the beer is amber as you would expect, but lays off a nice head with lots of Belgian lace.  The nose is strong with citrus, caramel and roasted malt.  The mouthfeel is very creamy, and the initial taste is strong with grapefruit, orange and malt.  The bitterness is stronger than I expected, but after the initial surprise I really enjoyed the almost dark chocolate quality of it.

The bitterness would make this a nice change up during a night of drinking.  There was nothing boring about this brew; very complex and eminently drinkable.  If the brews from this company are all this good, I will happily join the Rogue Nation.  A 9.1 on The Morris Scale.

Nub Habano 466 (4.0″ x 66)

I guess I was a little unclear on the Nub concept.  I selected the Nub from the humidor tonight because my lungs are still recovering from Saturday’s tasting at the 8Eightyeight cigar lounge.  I thought short would translate to a quick smoke, but this little bastard lasted over an hour.  But I didn’t mind in the end because this was a pleasant smoke.

This stick is a Nicaraguan puro made by Oliva.  The taste was not very complex, but it offered a nice blend of nuts and pepper with a hint of leather.  Perhaps because of the massive ring size, the end had flared a bit during the time in my humidor, and that made the initial burn a little dicey.  But a half inch into the smoke the problem worked itself out.

The concept that Oliva promotes with this short and fat configuration is that you get to the “sweet spot” of the cigar from the first draw.  Cigars get more interesting toward the end as the essences accumulate, and this cigar basically begins at the end because it is so short.  As we say in the legal business, that is pure sophistry.  The essences, as I am calling them, need time to accumulate.  By Oliva’s reasoning, you could get to the “sweet spot” of a Churchill by cutting off the first four inches.  Also, a cigar gets hotter toward the end of its life with less tobacco to cool the smoke, and that is not generally considered a benefit.  With a Nub, you are drawing hotter smoke for a larger percentage of the time.

I thus reject the Nub concept, and won’t likely buy anymore, but still enjoyed this as a decent smoke.  I’ll give it a 7.999.  I just can’t quite put it in the 8 range.

Now, to call this a Jagermeister tasting was a bit of a stretch.  When they host a, say, whiskey tasting, there are three or four different types of whiskey to sample.  But, to my knowledge, there are not multiple types or vintages of Jager, so the Jagermeister tasting consisted of one full-size shot of the liqueur, ice cold from the Jagermeister tap.  However, they did bring two Jagermeister girls, and I brought one of my own, so that makes it an official event.  As far as reviewing the Jager; it’s cold and it tastes like black licorice.  Try some before you die.

On the many big screens they showed the Ultimate Fighting Championship from Philadelphia.  Anderson Silva whooped Forrest Griffin, and in the main event BJ Penn dominated Kenny Florian.  I’d never take the time to watch a UFC fight on my own, but watching it in a bar makes it much more entertaining.

Out of all the night’s festivities, my Jager girl was most impressed by a cupcake given to her by Frank, the 888 General Manager, from Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills.  It was pretty amazing.  Frank is a great guy, even if he was trying to ply my girl with cupcakes.

For my cigar selections, I enjoyed, but was not wowed by a Gurkha of unknown description.  However, I was quite impressed with a La Perla Habana Maduro.  This cigar is a stronger cigar than the Classic line and is expertly handmade from a blend of Dominican, Nicaraguan and Mexican fillers, a Nicaraguan Habano binder and wrapped in a Brazilian wrapper.  Very nice spicy taste and aroma.  A solid 9.3 on The Morris Scale.

As to the cigars, I enjoyed an Oliva Serie V and a CAO Criollo from 8Eightyeight’s humidor. I’ve rated both here and neither failed to please (although the CAO had uncharacteristic burn problems).