Roger was talking a lot of about box presses earlier today, too. Yeah, no, I tried that box press you gave us, and first of all, that was only bad one in the bunch. But then Roger was like, you know, I really don't like box press cigars. Which box press did I give you guys? What a spot on impersonation. You know, I really don't like box press. I was not talking a lot of shit. What he said was that it was like the foot was super hard, and then it had a bunch of squishy spots. And I feel like that can be the case with some box press is that they obviously need to not roll it super tight so they can press it. This guy hates box press. It was fine. I didn't smoke it yet. It wasn't up to Brophy's. The others were better. Of course, I annoyingly liked the Pappy Cigar. Roger was very keen to talk s*** on that one too at midnight last night. I took copious notes as well. So if you see me looking at my phone, I'm not like Hollywood over here talking to his buddies. I'm actually looking at something related to that. I have copious notes as well. My notes are mental. Just like you are. Hey, welcome back, you're listening to another episode of Barrel to Bottle, The Binny's Podcast. I'm Pat from the Spirits Department here at Binny's. I'm Roger from Beer. Roger, we got a special guest in the house, returning guest, Jack, welcome back. Yeah, thanks for having me back. I thought I was banned after the last one. Roger was unhappy with the amount of free cigars you gave him, so we threatened to not let you back in, but I fought him and you're here. So we're welcoming back Jack, cigar buyer Jack. Welcome, Jack. Thank you. It's our now once every 13-month cigar episode. Roger wanted to focus on cigars for golf, despite the fact that I've never seen Roger golf, but he's a man who has a pool, so we trust his taste in cigars. Big fan of cigars. I've been campaigning to have more cigar podcasts because it's a very popular medium amongst the cigar community. Yeah, it's nice out. Big cigar community guy here now. Well, every time I see one of our cigar consultants, they mention the podcast, so there's some love. Okay. Shout out. It's nice out. I'm not one of the people that smokes inside, so every time it gets warm out finally and when the minute it heats up, I start thinking about smoking cigars and I'm also big fan of the old corn cob pipe which I know gives you- Settle down, ladies. Best value in pipe community. Anyway, there's lots of people like that. They don't smoke in their home, so they get excited when it's summertime. They can go out and have a cigar. Now, are you exclusively a non-GMO corn cob pipe guy? The majority of them are made at one facility, Missouri Meerschaum down in Missouri. The only time I've gotten a corn cob pipe, it was when I was seven and we were on vacation in Missouri somewhere. Then it just sat on a shelf in my bedroom for years because I was like, oh, Tom Sawyer, blah, blah, blah. Then I just sat there because he was another kid who, a famous miner that smoked tobacco, like Roger. Yeah. If you want pipes, you can stop by any other location other than a Binny's Beverage Depot as we have not gotten into pipes. I keep trying to twist Jack's arm here and say that the time is. The thing with pipes is that why a lot of people don't get into it is that pipes can be really expensive because half of the interest is it's like a collector thing. Is the tobacco storage any different? Like could we keep pipe tobacco in our humidor? And we would have to change settings or anything? No, nothing like that. Most of it comes in tins that you could just wouldn't even need to be in the humidor. Like Big League Chew. Exactly like Big League Chew. By the way, you see the Big League Chew new era hats they did at the beginning of the year for? No. Oh, yeah. They had themed like White Sox hats that were like purple and green to go after like the Big League Chew market. They were phenomenal. Nice. Big fan of a one off hat. Love it. Really? Wow. Big League Chew, of course. Producer Jim, notable hat guy is all over this. Big League Chew famously encouraging kids to try old timey chewing tobacco since 1990. It's been around long before that, buddy. All right. Back on topic, though. We're talking about cigars today. Roger had reached out, mentioned maybe cigars for the golf course. You gave us a variety. So let's walk through them one by one. What else you've been smoking though? What's coming up? Notable cigar news. We might as well include that too. Yeah, might as well. The trade shows in a couple of weeks. So as far as what's new coming out, tons. We haven't even seen everything yet because they haven't posted everything, but you can follow a half wheel or something like that to see all the different booths and what's going to be. And this is a huge trade show, right? Huge trade show. As a buyer, do you have to look at the program and book in advance and map out your route and plan your days? Otherwise, I feel like you'd walk in there and just, everybody's trying to throw everything at you once, everybody wants your buying dollars, buying power, and so you got to really have a plan of attack, right? Yeah. When we go to the show, we have to have it completely mapped out. I have to put in bathroom breaks because if people notice that my badge says, Binny's Beverage Depot, I get pulled everywhere. Producer Jim schedules our bathroom breaks too. We feel in pain. You have to understand. These days most people go- This is in Vegas every year because it's the only place you can smoke inside still? There's other places where you can smoke inside. Besides Northern Indiana. Yeah. Well, the reason I put it in Vegas is simple. It's because there's so much hotel. It's not even Calumet this year? Oh, I would kill for an Indianapolis. Let's do Indiana. I don't want to go out to Vegas in the middle of July. I mean, of all the times to go to Vegas, that's a pretty- It's a sticky situation. We'll put it like that. Well, it's a dry heat. Sure. Well, at least not in Phoenix. It can always get hotter. Well, now all you did was say, yeah, there's new stuff coming. You're going to have to follow up in a few weeks. So we'll follow up in a few weeks, I suppose. See, that's how you get another podcast on the books. You guys are colluding to make me sit down more cigar podcast. I got to start tipping my consultants for bringing up the podcast every time you talk to them. Gets me out of the warehouse. Where are we putting you up? Like off the strip in some CD motel? So funny story. One of the old ones, the Flamingo or something. No, the first year we went, I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the hotel. But when I got back, my boss apologized for putting us up before reading the reviews. And I remember that when we had to move to the old convention center because Microsoft took it over and kicked us out of the sand. That was the first time I got bed bugs. I was going to say. No. But I do remember hearing a story about one retailer going to the show floor. When they came back, their entire stucco ceiling had collapsed over the bed. So had they been sleeping, yeah, you would have been crushed by 1940s era stucco. Oh man. Well, you've got it okay. You don't want to see some of the places of whiskey hotline estate in Scotland. All right, first cigar. So Roger mentioned the golf thing. Let's get the golf branded cigar away first. You gave us a cigar that just had a band that said links with a golf club that looks like somebody spent a grand total of 90 seconds in Photoshop designing that band. You are gonna eat those words as soon as you see the packaging, because you're gonna love the packaging. We are sitting like 20 feet from a graphics design department that I think could do better. Yes, I'm sure they could. It might have been somebody else in the cigar department who designed this band. Correct. For the record, I think we could do better. Yeah, for the record, they come in four packs. Four packs. Oh, F-O-R-E. Oh, it's a play on words. Or is that technically a pun? That's pretty punny right there. That's pretty punny right there. Yeah, that's a d*** special d*** was really interested in trying to get a four pack out for the golfers. Oh, that makes sense. I mean, listen, they are... So, he went into Microsoft Paint. Well, whatever. Whoa, whoa, whoa. That was hand drawn. I've seen the hand drawing, okay? I typically don't think of Christmas trees on golf courses. You golf in a lame golf course, isn't it? Where are you golfing? Of course there's evergreens out there. Yeah, you want majestic conifers on your golf course. I'm thinking they were trying to do double duty so that when it's not golf season, you can just sort of put a sticker over it and all of a sudden it's, boom, Christmas time. We bedazzle, okay? So we put little gemstones on it. Yeah, little rhinestones on the band of each cigar. Okay, back to this though. So we have these cigars called Lynx. We are selling them in a four pack. Yeah. So the Lynx by Binny's is kind of a rotating series. Last year we started off with a different blend and we kind of tweak it or plan to tweak it year to year. Really? Yeah. So it seems like a lot of effort for a throwaway golf course cigar. You would think so, but I want to give you quality on the course. No, it's great. I mean, I'm glad Pat's decided it's a throwaway. No, that's just how I assume most golf course cigars. You drop them on the tee box and then you're just like, I don't care what kind of fertilizer was here. You pick it up and you put it back in your mouth. Yeah, that is revolting. Well, that's why we sell the golf course. Clip the clip onto the card. Perfect. This was just going to say, we have these clips, right Jack? Explain these so you don't have to be a heathen and throw it on the ground. So you think about it, it's got two clips on it. One of it will hold on to the actual bar and the golf cart and then the other one will hold on to your cigar. I mean, yeah, you've seen like the girls' pair clips. It's the same thing. We have them in every store. In every color now too. I think they have orange, green, black, yellow. I just still drop my cigars on the course and pick them up and keep smoking them. That's why you're tossing your cigars away. So this is a higher quality golf course cigar. It's a four pack. I think personally, getting through four sticks in a round is a pretty aggressive pace, but if I'm drinking a lot, I suppose I'd keep up with that pace. I think the idea is that it's for your force and their chief. You hand them out to your buddies? Yeah. One cigar per round of golf? No, you buy the four pack and hand them out to your buddies. That's the whole idea behind it. Robby's like, I got to buy four pack of these things? Yeah. What are we selling a four pack of these four? So individually, if you want to try it before going in on a four pack, it's $7.20, so then the four pack itself is $25.95. Okay, not bad. Roger, what do you get a free bag of teas with them? I wish. Oh, we should do a tea giveaway, bro. Let's do a tea giveaway. Jeez. It's a branding opportunity. They obviously never talk to the marketing department over there. Marketing department doesn't talk to us. Why do you think I'm here for this third time in two years? Hey, that's a high pace, okay? That's an enviable pace for many other people, okay? Settle down. Okay, so Roger, what did you think of this cigar? So I went into it A, I was hoping when we brought up golf cigars that Jack would make you smoke like a gigantic cigar. That was really part of my goal. I hate gigantic cigars. I know you do. So on our next episode, he's now going to bring the most ridiculous cigar. When I was walking around the humidor, I saw this gas can full of cigars. What was the ring gauge on them? It was the CAO torque. You're looking at, I think, a 70 ring gauge. By eight inches. Yeah. Who wants that? Oh, just wait. I got any better one. I got four hours to kill. I might as well light up this cigar. Oh, it's more four hours. Well, that's what I, when I think of golf cigars, there's a lot of guys that buy the biggest thing they can find, which before all the ring gauge nonsense was usually like a double corona. Yeah. So it'd be like a 50 ring, like a Churchill kind of ring gauge, but longer. I think it's cool with this pack. You can approach cigars on the course a lot of different ways. Some guys just want a little teeny, like a short story from Fuente or something. Then they want just like something little, so that they don't feel like, okay, I got to smoke a cigar because everybody is, but I want like a little Rothschild or something small. But this was kind of like what, a corona maybe? Well, actually, no, this was a Toro. Okay. I think after seeing all those 80 ring gauges, this one looked tiny to you, which I totally understand. But I was pretty impressed with this. I think I'm usually not that big of a fan of lighter wrap cigars. Is this of shade grown wrap? Yeah, this is a Connecticut wrap. Yeah. So, those can end up tasting like papery and kind of boring or lackluster. But I actually really like the flavor coming off of this. I thought it had some nice character. I enjoyed it. I smoked the entire thing while we were out walking the dog one night. I thought it was a nice cigar. What we were aiming at doing is not only just giving you those four cigars for a good price, so you can hand out to your buddies when you're on the course, but you're going to have guys who don't smoke very often, and you don't want to overpower them. The last thing you want to do is give them something with way too much nicotine, so let's make it as approachable as possible, and then you can pair with whatever crushing white claws on hole four or whatever you're planning on doing when you're out there. So yeah, I mean, we kind of have some sweet cream notes, some nuts, some wood, things like that, but nothing that's too overpowering. I mean, the go-to for a lot of people is always like, if somebody would come in on the human or they'd ask, I'm going golfing, most of the guys don't smoke. So some of the go-to cigars would be things like Macanudo, Romeo, Ashton, and I think this, when I'm in my notes here, I have Macanudo ask, dare I say Ashton-esque? Which Ashton is pretty expensive smokes. You should have your pinky finger up while you're saying that. Well, I mean, it is made by Fuente, so. Yes. These I think batted above their price range, which I think is Binny's is always looking to get you something that's high quality but at a great value. It is a mild cigar, which I really liked about it. It's very mild, but that's honestly perfect for the golf course. You're out in the heat, you're probably consuming some beverage alcohol. I think a mild cigar is the right cigar for the occasion, I guess. It's not challenging, but I wrote here much like with golf, it's the kind of thing you can grip and rip. At the airflow, relights, cigar clips, tossing it on the ground if you're a scumbag. You're really proud of the grip and rip thing, aren't you? I might have put it on the packaging, but yeah, it's just one of those things. Least my dinnies three, grip and rip. You don't need to think about it too much. It's not the kind of thing you have to sit there and sip it, is kind of what I was getting at, since it's milder cigar. A lot of guys, they won't even put their cigar down or clip it or whatever. They're just like, you're smoking it while they're golfing. So you're going to be breathing into it harder because you're exerting yourself. So I say this is golf approved. Golf approved. Put a stamp on it. There you go. What's the next one we got? Do you want to get into People's Champ? Sure. It's a sports theme, right? Yeah, I like that one a lot. Is this still a cigar for golf, or do we just have one golf cigar? The whole time I was smoking all five of them, I was thinking like, oh, how would I like this on the golf course? Yeah, I think they all apply, right? If you can, it just depends on how much money you want to spend. Okay. I think a good tip though, when you're talking about golf, is that a lot of guys, as Roger was saying, want the biggest, longest thing, but think about it differently. If you have a travel humidor or something in your golf bag, smoke two cigars instead of smoking one. Yeah. I like that. All right. Jack, next cigar you want to talk about is one of the punches you gave us. Do you give us one punch or two punch? So I gave you guys one punch. Okay. That is actually an interesting project that Punch did to celebrate their 180 years of being Punch. What? They've been around that long and called Punch? A version of them has been around that long. We'll put it like that. It's the old Cuban naming and Cuban version versus non-Cuban. Sounds like one of those bourbon guys. Well, it's named after my great great grandpappy's cousin's nephew who used to keep the yeast and the crick behind the house. And that's why we call it nephew's crick. No, what Punch wanted to do for their 180 years was they want to go out to what they call the Brotherhood. It's a collective of people who are really into Punch cigars. You can kind of sign up online and interact with everybody else, follow Mr. Punch on his adventures, because they put Mr. Punch in a whole bunch of different crazy. The clown? The weird kind of clown, Jester. Yeah. That's cool. The Brotherhood of people that like the weird, creepy marionette guy. These guys drink a lot of Faygo too, right? It does kind of pair well with it. What they did is they reached out to all these people who are in the quote unquote brotherhood and they said, why don't you guys design a cigar? That's what they did. All right, so they asked these juggalos what kind of cigars they wanted? Yeah, so they reached out to the Brotherhood and decided to let them kind of blend their own thing with different voting. They said that they got 4560 votes with 3125 unique cigar blends together. Wow. And out of all of that, the voting concluded with the People's Champ. And the reason they call it that is because it's truly a reflection of all the people in the Brotherhood. Interesting. It has nothing to do with Dwayne The Rock Johnson's WWE title. Not even a little. It's a shame. It really is. Talk about marketing. So they asked them on components as well as like the shape it would be or? Components. Each one of the blendings, binder, wrapper, filler, then the size that they wanted, got all that together and then they voted on different bands, things like that to actually put the package together. Wow. And so we have these available in a five pack and a 10 pack. Okay. Great retail on them and we aren't the only people in the Midwest who bought this. Wow. Nice. It's exclusive. Dude, Midwest is full of juggle ups. Come on. Love the fago, right? I was a big fan of this. This was an awesome cigar and I'm not normally a fan of punch cigars because they tend to be a little too much for my dainty figure. But they live up to their name. This was a great cigar. I smoked all of it actually just last night, I think. Really enjoyed this one. Tell us more about the tobacco in there. So what you got is you have a Talanga Valley Habano wrapper, so it's just coming from a certain distinct area. I can't remember where the Talanga Valley is. Talanga. But then over- It's wrapped over a Mexican San Andreas binder with fillers of Dominican, Brazilian and Nicaraguan tobacco. Okay. Worldly cigar. It's all over the place on that one. It was good. It was just spicy and peppery enough, but it had a nice typical sweet tobacco. I don't know how else to describe it than sweet tobacco kind of balanced to it. But it was really nice. It was a heavier body, it seemed, but it didn't totally kill me. Yeah. So they put the nicotine strength in a medium on this, but the full flavor. So what you really get is you get- I mean, in my notes I've got slight sweetness that starts and grows, introducing notes of nuts and leather, and a finish of white pepper that kind of balances that out. Yeah, the pepper thing I got for sure. This was a nice cigar. I really enjoyed this. I think this would be a good one to pair with a whiskey too, honestly, because it's just peppery enough, but I don't think it would totally overpower something, certainly something like an older bourbon. This Calumet 16-year-old happened to come into the office with me here. This would be a good one for that, honestly. Yeah, I thought that this would be great with whiskey, Scotch. I think there's a lot of pairing opportunities with that. I would say if people have had punch in the past, and they've just had the traditional line, this offered more complexity and less spice. It wasn't as intense and peppery as a normal punch would be, in my opinion. Then it had a little more rounded character to it. Reminded me of the old Punch Rare Corojo. Okay. Or even the Punch Grand Crew is milder than this, but I feel like that, too, was kind of... When people hear punch, I think they tend to think of, okay, it's going to be a big spicy cigar. But this one had a ton of flavor, but it wasn't over the top as far as the peppery character intensity. No, I agree. I think the sweetness that you're finding from the beginning of this guy really balances out well. It's true to its name with that pepper and that punch that they put into it, but you're right. It's not as spicy as you would find in their Knuckle Buster, Knuckle Buster Maduro. Yeah, totally. The high-quality cigar. Now, this is in stores now. Yes. You said five packs and 10 packs. It's in five packs and 10 packs, and just like the links, you can get it in a single. You can try one out before saying, I want a full five pack or full 10 pack. It is limited, so when they're gone, they're gone. I don't think there's going to be another run of this. You're talking a single cigar is $6.80. Wow. Cheaper than the Binny's links? Cheaper than the Binny's links. Wow. I would say it's more flavorful than the Binny's links, but different occasion, different cigar. Totally different occasion. Yeah. If you're not a cigar smoker, this might be a bit too much. This is the kind of cigar, too, I think you don't want to hot box it. You don't want to be really taking a bunch of puffs. If you take your time with it, it would be better. You could potentially get a little tongue bite, I think, if you smoked it too fast. I'm going to throw out some of the tasting notes I got on this. It had a subtle licorice-y cinnamon note that I really liked, and it had this really toasty, nutty, deep flavor that made me think of pumpernickel bread, which in turn made me think this would be a cool pairing with a Doppelbach. I thought you were going to say a pastrami sandwich. Well, that too. There you go. That could be your 19th hole. How could I get a Doppelbach and some pastrami? Look, I literally have good 19th hole smoke on here. Earthy, dark cherry, old wood. This is an awesome, awesome cigar. Grab this before it's gone. We didn't mention the shape. It's a cool shape. How would you describe the? I mean, it's a regular Robusto. Oh, really? I thought I had a little Figurado. No, not on this guy. This was just a regular Robusto 5x50. Whoops. You sat on yours. It was dark out. I guess I was thinking of, what was the one called that was like champion or whatever? Oh, yeah. No, the champion size. That has the goofy. That's the Figurado that almost. Okay. That's how I misconstrued it. Nipple Tip. Pretty much. I'll call back to one of the last episodes. So what did you say five pack of these is? I'm probably going to buy one of these. Five pack of these is $30.55. Nice. All right. Cool. Good pricing. The fact that we're the only people in the Midwest with it. Anytime I get that opportunity, I want to jump on it. For sure. All right, cool. What else is... What's next for Spalding? What do we got for him? Are we going to Flavortown? I think we should go to Flavortown. Let's do it. Two rights and a left, boom. You're in Flavortown. Yeah, so next is the Knuckle Sandwich, the cigar that's a collaboration between Espinosa Cigars and Guy Fieri. Jim, you should have seen the label. The band had a skull and crossbones, and the skull was wearing one of those floppy chef's hats like in Ratatouille. We've done some collaborations with Espinosa too before, right? We have. Okay, and these are solid cigars. Espinosa is doing some of the best stuff right now, I think. I mean, their price point is spot on. They got really high quality tobacco. A lot of their stuff is Nicaraguan. Then apparently, Eric Espinosa, the owner is really good friends with Guy Fieri, so they got together and decided that they wanted to come out with something. They drive their Camaros together and eat biscuits and gravy in rural towns. I have no idea. Guy Fieri is a national treasure. People hate on this guy. They're jealous of him. Well, they're jealous that they can't pull off frosted tips like that. They're jealous they can't drive around in a fancy car and eat food all over the country. This was really a fantastic cigar. I really enjoyed this cigar too. I smoked the whole thing. I was going to say, normally, you guys are used to it in the liquor world where you get a celebrity who's just like, this is my product. And they just throw their name on it and get what they want. But we see the same thing in the cigar world. There'll be a celebrity endorse this. Jeremy Piven has his own cigar. Okay. But honestly, when talking to Eric and some of the guys at Espinosa, Guy was really behind the blending process, actually tasting, and you can kind of get that with the chef's palate, with that spiciness and some of the other nuances you pick up in I really like this. What would you call the, or like, what is the wrapper? But as far as like color wise, it's like a, I don't know, like a Colorado. So it's like a chocolatey brown color. I would almost call it milk chocolate. If you're trying to put an actual kind of color palette to it, think of like a Hershey bar that's just a light. Yeah, it looks like a Corojo wrapper or something. We're looking at Ecuadorian Habano. Habano. So I think that that can be a nice medium. Some people are afraid of Maduro smokes. They, it's a lot like beer. They see a dark colored cigar. They think it's going to be strong, like right off the bat, which is obviously a real, kind of one of those pitfalls for noobs in the cigar world. And then you look at a pale one and a lot of the Connecticut shade wrapped cigars are milder. This, I think, was a nice like medium, you know, like right in the middle. Like it wasn't too mild. This was perfect for me. You know, like I mentioned earlier, I tend to stay away from punch and more peppery brands. Usually I like mild cigars, but I tend to get a little bit bored with them. This was right in my wheelhouse. I really enjoyed this cigar. Well, I'm glad he took you to Flavortown. Oh yeah. Which by the way, the bottom of the box says Made in Flavortown, just so that you're aware. Yes. Guy said that he has not lent out the name of his corporation Knuckle Sandwich to anybody, but felt so passionately about the cigars, he had to call it the Knuckle Sandwich. Oh, he's coming after punch, get it? Yeah. Especially when they just released the Knuckle Buster a year ago. This was a good cigar. It had a nice nuttiness, some notes of cocoa powder, there's some cedar. It had a little nuttiness, cream. This is like what people would think. They would want with a Connecticut milder cigar, but it gives you a lot more flavor. A lot of Connecticut Shade wraps are like the white sandwich bread of the cigar world. You deserve better. Well, I don't know. It's also part of the blend too there, calling a Connecticut Shade Wonder Bread. You've annoyed our only cigar guest. Look what you did. He's never going to come back. Oh no, I will definitely be back. I mean, it definitely matters depending on the blend. I'm just saying, too many people think right off the bat. I made the exact same mistake when I was getting into cigars. It was one of our cigar consultants that said, you're in all these beers and you keep saying you like mild cigars. He's like, you don't, and the type of cigars you describe are not typically mild. I think it's just a pitfall that too many people are like, oh yeah, I want something that's not too, because there are cigars that are ludicrously strong. So it's just like spirits and everything else. People will try to go over the top, but there are some good Connecticut Shade Wrap cigars. All right, I'll take that. But no, it's like we've talked about in the past, is most of your flavor comes from your wrapper, right? So if you're going for that, I want a very mild cigar, it gets lost. When you think that, I'm going to grab a Habano and this is a little bit darker, so it's going to be heavier, no, it's just going to be more flavor. So I think you've got a point with the Wonder Bread Connecticut shade, but it definitely does matter what the binder is and then what's underneath it. Yeah, because I mean, I feel like- You can make a Wonder Bread sandwich taste good, right? I feel like when you put the Connecticut wrapper, you're limited as to how much complexity you can deliver in the blend, where it would just completely overwhelm the wrapper, you know? Yeah, you just completely lose that outside flavor. Have you tried with a cigar towards the end? Wonder Bread? Peeling the wrapper off and smoke. I mean, it is unbelievable how little a cigar can taste like anything. No, you've mentioned that before, so I haven't done it because it sounds like a good way to ruin a good cigar. Because I smoke for science. I just said. Well, sometimes too, you'll have a cigar where it starts to crack, which happened with one of these for me. Then you're like, well, it's already screwed up, so you just peel it off and try for science. Like cracked halfway down or something? Sometimes I get the cap peels off a bit, but that's it. Well, that's just maybe you're cutting it a little bit too low or something like that. But when it cracks, I mean, that's you mangling the end of your cutter. The outside wrapper is the thinnest leaf in the entire cigar. So it can become subject to, especially when they're dried out a little bit to just pop. All right. Guy Fury, Flavortown. How much is it going to cost us for a ticket? To get a ticket to Flavortown? Yeah. Let's see. You're looking at $11.25 for the Robusto. We also have a Toro. Oh, he's proud of that one. It is really good though. If you're looking for an entire box, an entire 20 count box, it's $202.50. Is it just one size? No, we've got a Robusto and a Toro. Then we also have it with a Maduro wrapper. So I gave you guys the Habano, but there is a Maduro out there as well. Interesting. I may be mistaken, but I think that they're going to be releasing a new limited edition coming out during the trade show. They need to make one in, remember those Sopranos boxes that look like a car trunk? Yeah. They should have like a 57 Chevy box. Maybe that'll be what they use for their chef's special. Chef's special. Yeah, they should have one of those. Good smoke. Yeah, very good smoke. Big fan of that one. All right, cool, what's next? Why don't we just jump in and start talking about Pappy, since you love answering questions about Pappy. Yeah, nobody loves telling people, we have no Pappy more than me. Yeah, so you made us smoke this Pappy cigar. Tell us about this cigar. I'm the complete opposite. I love telling people that we have Pappy in stock, and then I give them your cell phone number, when I'm really just talking about the barrel-aged cigars. I wanted to get this from Pappy Co.'s website, because I thought that this was very interesting. According to the website, a portion of the fire-cured tobacco is aged in Pappy barrels for 12 to 18 months. Well, Pappy barrels, wow. Fire-cured tobacco, start there. What is fire-cured tobacco? Fire-cured tobacco is a different style of curing the tobacco where they actually hang the leaves up in a natural, one of the dry-curing barns that they would use. Then they set fire to the bottom of it using some cedar, some hickory and other blends of wood. It's actually one of the most dangerous ways to cure tobacco because you're literally setting the barn on fire. When we've gone down to like the Kentucky barn smoker in the past and seen how they actually do this, it's very controlled. But they smoke all these wood chips underneath to cure it while taking out all the chlorophyll. The chlorophyll is out, it's been aged, and then they season it with the wood. They smoke the leaves before you smoke the leaves. Did you notice when you took it out of the cellophane that you got a really distant campfire smell? It was crazy. I took it out of the cellophane, it smelled just like a campfire, and I thought there is no way I'm going to like this. I completely agree. The first time I smoked the cigar, I pulled it out and I was like, you guys went way too heavy handed on the Kentucky fire cured tobacco because that tobacco was so distinct. Yeah, it's not a subtle flavor. No, you have to use like a quarter of a leaf in a blend. Any more than that, it just completely takes over the whole blend. I will say, the cigar was annoyingly good. I really, really enjoyed the cigar. After smelling it, before I lit it, I was like, no way I'm going to like this. Whatever, I cut it and it was really good. It was a little strong on that fire, that campfire flavor at first, but then it really mellowed out quickly. Still though, for the KFC component, finger looking good, they make a brand just called Kentucky Fire Cured, and it's way smokier, right? Way smokier because they're putting so much of that Kentucky Fire Cured in there. When you get a shipment of that or open a box with the Kentucky Fire Cured in it, it's just, boom, did I just take my camping gear out from last year after I had an air out? Or like barbecue. It's almost like kind of a fruity. It's weird. So I was hesitant. Kentucky Fire Cured's using a lot of pipe tobacco blends too, but this seems to be kind of like inching its way into the cigar industry now. Is it mainly through Drew Estate? Is anyone else doing it? There's a couple other companies that have done it in the past, but Drew Estate was really, I think, the driving force and still has it on the market. I know I remember, I think it was Gran Habano did an American that was also really well balanced but didn't catch on as much as obviously the Drew stuff did. It's funny, Drew is the one making these Pappy Barrel-aged cigars for them. Yeah, this was nice. Interesting thing on the wrapper, it was darker at the tip, the mouth end, what do you call it? What do you call the mouth tip of a cigar? The head? The head, sure, the head. The head. The rest of it was lighter. What's up with that? Yeah, so what it is is actually a dual wrapper. So the top portion of the head, say an inch or so of the head. I think mouth tip sounds better. Mouth tip sounds better? Okay. Let's get to half wheel and get this changed. It's no longer a head. It's now the mouth tip of the cigar. Let's make this industry standard. But it's a dual wrapper. So the majority of the cigar is actually wrapped in a Mexican San Andreas wrapper. And then at the head of the cigar, they actually use more of the Kentucky Fire Cairn over it. Interesting. Really? Yeah. The Maduro, the part that looks like a Maduro is Kentucky Fire Cairn? Kentucky Fire Cairn. Huh. So here's my- Do you think it would have tasted more overtly smoky? Yeah. It's been explained to me in the past that a lot of ways, people tend to look at cigars as in thirds. So I think one of the signs of a great cigar is if you can make it to the last third and it's still enjoyable. There's not so much tar that's built up. A lot of times a cigar can taste pretty harsh once you're getting past the halfway point. And the truly exceptional cigars I would say tend to be ones where you can smoke down to the band. That's something that sometimes people will describe. So I did not really care for this cigar for the first two-thirds, but I kept forcing myself to make it to the Maduro because I tend to like Maduro cigars a lot. And it was great at the end. So it pissed me off that I would like them to have inverted it or just done that Maduro for the whole wrapper, I don't know. I think that Kentucky Fire Cured on the head of the cigar or the mouth tip is the... Come on, use the proper term. My apologies. I think that's the part of the Kentucky Fire Cured that's actually aged in the barrels. So I think it takes off some of that sharpness that you get from the inside of the blend. And so that would make sense that you enjoyed that a little bit more because it's a little more toned down. So do you know how many guys are just going to toss this thing before they even get to the best part? Like that's what kills me. The end is the best part with the best, probably the most expensive rapper part. And they're just going to toss it. Stupid. Their loss. Like I mentioned, I thought this was kind of annoyingly good because you never want to just like crown anything that just has pappy slapped on it. But this is really good and it would actually pair really well with Bourbon, I think. Like really well. And I'm not a big cigar and pairing spirits guy. I always make fun of that. And, oh, yeah, just going to blow out your pal with a cigar or whatever. But this is that this was really enjoyable with some bourbon. Yeah, they actually have a whole new thing they're sharing with retailers where they're actually suggesting pairings for the month. So the reason I picked the pappy for you guys to smoke was, hey, I knew it would annoy Pat to enjoy something with pappy on it. But more so is the fact that there was a selection of different spirits, non-alcoholic things at the bottom that we could try to pair with. So which I did, I tried it with a whole bunch of things. I also asked Pat to think of a whisky to pair it with, and he did not execute his assignment properly. So he gets an F-manos on that. Let me regale you with the things I tried pairing it with. So one of the things that they recommended on the sheet that I thought was interesting was to do it NA pairing, and they suggested Dr. Pepper, which I know lots of cigar fans do that. You were talking about the old trick, like drinking some of the Coles. It dulls the nicotine, yeah. So I had a, not just any Dr. Pepper, the glass bottle real cane sugar Dr. Pepper. Where do you even get that? It's not easy to find. The same grocery store he finds exotic fruit set. Nicole, if you're listening to this, please bring in glass bottle Dr. Pepper. You'd think as a beverage depot, we'd have access to these things. The jewel is there. Yeah, I think I literally did get it at Jewel. The cigar had a tangy sarsaparilla black cherry note, which is definitely like Dr. Pepper flavors. I thought that that actually worked really well. It's obviously got a lot of sweetness to it, so the soda. It went really well with the cigar. Give that a try. They suggested pairing it with wheat whiskey, probably just because it's a Pappy Van Winkle cigar. I tried it with, I don't have Pappy Van Winkle, but I tried it with Weller 12. Obviously, those are the type of, that's the whiskey that Julian Van Winkle is selecting to create Pappy Van Winkle now. I thought that the cigar was a little bold to be pairing with the wheat whiskey. Yeah, I could see that. I also tried it then with one of the handpicks that the whiskey hotline did with Jepson's bourbon, Cast Strength one, and I like that much better. It was on ice and I thought that a bourbon with a little more heft, a little bit of spice stood up to the cigar better. Nice. And then I also tried it with Central Waters Bourbon Barrelage Stout, which was excellent as well. Kind of the vanilla-y sweetness of the bourbon barrel aging on the stout worked really well. They suggested a smoked porter, which I felt was a little odd. A, it's not that easy to find smoked porters. If you are like me and always make sure to buy Alaskan smoked porter and stash it, I'm sure that would be, you know, it's kind of a lazy pairing to like smoke on smoke, but kind of like- Yeah, it's absolutely a lazy pairing. It's like, you know, but try this with a smoky scotch, you know, like, okay. I had a friend that I was doing a little show with a while back, who decided to do Kentucky Fire Cured with LaFrogas, his pairing, and you want to talk about lazy, that's smoke on smoke right there. Do you have barbecue with it too? Yeah, right. I'm just picturing Roger just like, hedonistically lounging next to his backyard pool while pairing the cigar with like, six different alcohols. Wait, he didn't send you pictures? He sent me pictures. Again, my gripe with this would be, cover the whole thing in that dark wrapper or invert it and put the dark part at the bottom. I'm sure, as we said before, people are scared of dark wrappers. They think they're going to be a strong cigar, so don't judge a cigar by the color of the wrapper. No, not at all. I actually followed up with not any fancy Dr. Pepper, but I had some of my wife's diet Dr. Pepper. When I did that pairing- Best diet soda. Really is. Easily. Really is. When I did that pairing, the first thing that came to mind was Golden Grahams. For some reason, I just got- Great breakfast cereal. Where does that rank in your pantheon of breakfast cereals, Roger? I'm actually not a fan. I'm more of a Cinnamon Toast Crunch guy. Well, CT is obviously number one. But Golden Grahams, I think, is solidly top five. Really? No, I don't like that one at all, really. Wow. I know I'm an oddity. Most people like it. No, no, it's okay. We're just learning a lot about you today. You know what? I like really boring. I'm just going to come as shocked to you. I like boring old man's cereals like cornflakes with the bananas and frosted mini wheats. I don't like the regular gross giant. Frosted mini wheats. The non mini wheats. You know what would be great for breakfast today? Turn pet rabbit food into a breakfast cereal, and then put some crappy frosting on it. There's your frosted mini wheats. That's a good cereal. They're used to make them where they put a raisin. There's like a little prize in the middle of the mini wheat. What? Hard to come by. So, if you just put some raisins into your frosted mini wheats, now that. I feel like we've just walked in the old man corner. Talking about flavor town. It's what Roger used to eat for breakfast during the Depression. Of course, we had to sew our own shoes back then. The small poros were much more interesting back then. I wore an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. It's not like I said great nuts or something, like lay off. All right. So, Pappy Cigar verdict, annoyingly good. Roger only thought the last third of it was good. Fine, whatever. I thought it was a pretty damn good cigar. I'm actually a really big fan. What are we selling these for? There's got to be a Pappy upcharge on this. You know what? I don't know if it's just the Pappy upcharge or just all the quality tobacco as I put into it in general. Fire cured tobacco seems more labor intensive and it's going to make a more expensive tobacco for sure. What you're looking at is we smoked the Toro size, that's $16.25. The Robusto is $15.25 and the Churchill is $17.25 and they come in boxes of 10. Okay, 16 bucks. It's one of the more expensive cigars I've ever smoked, I think. I mean, there's quite a few cigars in that price range. Oh, yeah. No, we have tons of cigars. It's more expensive than that. Yeah. When we're talking about the Pappy upcharge, I think the older version, which was called the Pappy Tradition, which is now only sold through Pappy Co. and had no barrel aging. Is it really called Pappy Co. or are you just calling it that? Yeah. No, that's what the website says. Yeah, like Pappy and Co. or something. And it's all this branded foods. Yeah, that's right, folks. Pappy Co. But the tradition that had absolutely no barrel aging, nothing to do other than the band that had Pappy was up in the $20 range. Oh, wow. So I think that with this version, you're actually getting a nice price slide compared to what the tradition was. All right. I mean, if you're paying for some... Time is money in the cigar world. Like with really good exceptional cigars, you want stuff that's been aged for a while. And you said that they put some of the tobacco in this in barrels for over a year. According to their website. So I mean, that's cool. That's some legitimate quality. That's worth the cost, yeah. Right. It's not just the gigantic, embossed, you know, over-the-top label that they banned that they put on this thing. And I would not suggest that, you know, bringing this out to hole number one, if you're going golfing, this is a... I'm sitting at home and enjoying the rest of the evening after a nice meal. This is not a golfing cigar. This is not a cutting the grass cigar, unless you just have that type of money to be smoking $17 cigars while you cut the grass. I mean, just to beat this dead horse again, that giant band, you got to take that thing off to even smoke the best part of the cigar. And then a lot of people don't even like doing that because then you can rip the wrapper. The first thing I do is rip the band off a cigar and then I light it. That's a risky move because sometimes the glue they use too much, it can stick to the wrapper leaf and then you end up tearing the wrapper when you take the band off. I suppose I do light them with the band on, but I almost always pull them off and smoke them. I would suggest smoke the cigar first because then as you heat it up then it won't be like pulling it off dry or if it's stuck on it might come off easier. I mean, whichever way you want to do it, I just what I'm hearing right now is Pat's more of a man of the people, he doesn't smoke bands, he doesn't have to have Cohiba on his Connecticut. True. I'm just telling it so you don't rip your cigar leaf off. So Pappy Cigar, annoyingly good. Actually, all things considered, somewhat reasonably priced. What else you got new coming up? The only other new thing that I brought in for you today is this honking lighter, this massive lighter. I wanted to show you guys. This is a lighter from Altidis, so it's branded with the banker on it, made by I believe Lotus Vertigo for them, but we just started selling these in stores. There's three different colors and styles. It's like the size of a Toro cigar, and it weighs like a pound. Yeah. It's a sack of quarters, and you're not gonna lose this. Oh, self-defense doubles as something to improve your punch. Could be. Three flame heads. This thing's got some power behind it. So the construction's really nice. I've been using this lighter for about three, four weeks now. Like I said, it comes branded with the banker up in green and gold. We also have a Monte Cristo white, so it's a white body with the gold, and then the Romeo and Julietta Real Reserva Nicaragua, which is a blue and gold. The price point on this guy is $28.95. That's not bad. It's not bad at all. It fits perfectly with your travel humidor, so that's why I really like this. Not only are you getting the quality, it's a mixture of a tabletop and something that you can just throw in the travel humidor and bring along. Yeah, nice. Or in a cigar holder if you have one of those, that slide right in like a smoke. I like that it has a window in the back, so you can see the fuel level. That's nice. Yeah. More lighters need that. Yeah, that should be standard at this point. There's a couple that's still really haven't come around to it and I don't understand why. How satisfying is it to click that button though? Yeah, it's a great lighter. It can click when it's unopened though. Yeah, there should be a... It should prevent that. It can... Always have complaints. I'm just saying it might be a nice safety feature. This is a nice lighter. I like it. And this is, you said $28.95? $28.95. That's a good price. Is this at all the Binny's Humidors? This is not at all the Binny's Humidors, but if you're interested in something like it, go visit. Tell your local... Tell your consultant that you're interested in them. Yeah, cool. What else is new in the cigar world? You were mentioning to me that we were going to have some travel humidors coming up, right? Yeah. We just got in the Firebird Colored Travel Humidor. Speaking of top accessories for golf. Yeah, right. They're listed as 10-count humidors, but let's be honest, depending on ring gauge, if you're going to fit 10 cigars in there, yes. Maybe if you were sitting on your front porch with iced tea and a Panatella cigar, it could fit 10 of those, but it's not going to fit these. I prefer a 60 ring gauge. If you're throwing a 60 ring gauge in there, you're probably going to fit six tops. But what they did is they came out with colors. Traditionally, travel humidors are all black and brown. I met with these guys probably a year, year and a half ago, and I'm like, just make me color travel humidors. Let's get options out here. People are buying these accessories, want to show them off, right? Just look what we talked about, the lighter where it's really bright and it's fancy. Bob Ross that stuff. Yeah. Try a little color. Why not? Okay, so we've got different color travel humidors now. It's a 10-pack if you smoke panetellas, according to Roger. Are these around at most of the stores? These should be at just about every store. You've got a variety of colors. There's a black camo, there's a blue, green, red. It's really well priced at $23.95. It's just like the lighter. It has a very satisfying clasp. So when you lock it in, it's holding that humidor in there for you. How do you charge a travel humidor versus regular? You put that glycol solution in, or what is that stuff? Glycerin? What is that? Propylene glycol. Propylene glycol. It's in everything. But normally, I would say- Just get a packet, right? Yeah, you can use the propylene glycol, but it's falling out of style. Just get a Boveda pack. Those Boveda packs are the best. There's no way around it. Those should be just standard. Part of the reason I brought that up, I think that is a must for if you're going to the golf course. The last thing you want to do is just throw. I've seen people just basically throw their cigars in their golf bag and then just get crushed. You're going to spend all the money. You really hate the way I smoke cigars on the golf course. Yeah. So another- Can't put it down on the grass. Can't put it in my golf bag. No please and Roger today. If you're going to invest in a nice smoke, you go and you buy one of these pappy cigars, the last thing you want to do is have it cracked in half because you threw it in your golf bag. So get one of these travel humidor. Yeah. Get the travel humidor or just buy a bunch of fresh packs because fresh packs are the thing right now. There's wide varieties of these fresh packs that usually come in four counts. You think that part of the popularity of those is, are they getting in the stores that don't have humidor? Is that part of the draw? No, I think it's just the availability, just grab and go. Some of them are a variety packs and some of them are all the same, but a lot of people who don't want to take the time to watch a desktop humidor and monitor it, it's just easier to grab a fresh pack. Yeah. That's a big part of it. I was just thinking about finally getting my humidor back up and running, and it's just like, it's an asshole. You got the Boveda packs in mine, that's fine. Yeah. I guess. I put like three of them in there at a time, it lasts several months, and then I put some more in there. Oh yeah, we went over this last time, you really juiced it up. Yeah, but I just love the fact. I like a fresh soft cigar, Roger. I love the fact that the three of us sitting here, Pat's the only one with an active desktop humidor at home because mine are dried out. Yeah. Where else am I going to put all these cigars? You always give us cigars and I'm not going to- You're supposed to smoke them. I do, but I can't smoke that many. In this time. There's eight cigars here. By the next time I see him, he's going to give me another eight. You just motored through five in like six days. I know. It was the heaviest smoking period I've had in 20 years. Though I do love when I get a weekend text message, hey Jack, I got this Nica Rustica. What should I pair it with? What are you drinking, Pat? I don't understand. This or this? Coffee. Yeah, go with the Nica Rustica. Somebody else asked me that and I was like, I don't know. I'll ask my cigar guy. Yep. Those are good. Yeah. Yep. Those are the undercrowned 10s. That's still I've been telling people to hit those up. You're some of those in my human arm. You still got a good supply of those too, right? I've got a real good supply of undercrowned 10s. We are not going to run out this year. Nice. Do you want to try this Calumet on the podcast? Sure. So, when you buy yourself a Pappy cigar, and you want a nice, extended-age bourbon, they are few and far between. We're seeing age statements disappear these days. Pat, you recommended this to me. I'm really excited to try it. I can't even recall the last time I saw a 16-year-old bourbon available. Yeah, you don't see them much. So, we're trying here the Calumet Farm 16-year-old. This just landed in the stores, maybe a month ago. So, they had 12 and 14 and then 15. And the previous ones, like the 14, I never found impressive. I thought it was pretty flabby and weak. But then they upped the proof. Flabby and weak. Yeah, that's exactly what it was, man. When they came out the 15, they upped the proof to 105, and it really gave it a lot more structure. And I thought it was a fantastic bourbon. Now, the 16-year-old is up to 106 proof, and still, this is vibrant and fresh and full of fruit, but it still has very mature oak and tobacco notes to it and leather. This is pretty much everything I'm looking for in an old bourbon. There's not a lot of bourbons that taste good at 16 years old, in my opinion at least, and in many other people's. This is Barton Dislitz, so it's from the 1792 distillery. 16-year-old, 1792. It's on the shelf, I want to say, for 135 or 140 bucks. This is a steal. Which is nothing for a... Less than 10 bucks for a year of age. There's three-year-old bourbons out there that are $80 now. So you're telling us that at 149.99, which is what I'm seeing as the price is just killer and after it's sipping that. Yeah, it might even be on sale for less. But it's a killer bourbon. Sometimes in the older bourbons, they can really wear the oak on their sleeve and they can be kind of over-oked. And this, I think, is a really nice, like it's pronounced, but it doesn't have that. It's got fruit and caramel to balance out that dry woodiness. Yeah, because everyone always thinks they like older bourbon, but a lot of old bourbons get really dry. And when people describe like what they want in a bourbon, what they're excited about, they're usually, they like like a lot of those plush vanilla caramel sweeter flavors. They don't understand that they actually want younger bourbon. Yeah. This is great though. And good cigar bourbon, too. It's got enough, again, enough sweetness and enough spice that I think it's balanced for a cigar and enough proof that it's still fat and it won't get just totally drowned out. Yeah, that's not going to get drowned out by a cigar. I would agree that the pappy would go really well with that, with those. I mean, with that pappy, you're getting that sweetness, you're getting some of that cream, that's going to fill in that gap for that fruitiness and that woodiness that you're tasting in the spirit. Yeah, they're probably contractually obligated to say paired with a weeded bourbon, but what wheat in a bourbon does really is just gets out of the way of the corn. This is a pretty famously high corn content bourbon. So that's where that big fruity character and all that oil comes from in this. This has got just really long finish that's remarkable. It's great bourbon, man. What a hidden gem. Yeah. Attractive bottle, too. We still have the 15 year and I think probably some 14 year around. And it's 15 year was like 130 bucks, 125 bucks, something like that. These things are around and in like every single store. And come in, go ahead, ask for Blanton's every week, but this is here and it's better. And what's funny, too, is I mean, it's, you know, Barton's owned by Sazerac who owns Buffalo Trace. And, you know, everybody's obsessed with the Buffalo Trace portfolio right now. And meanwhile, Barton's just plugging along with these absolutely killer. I just got one of the 1792 full proof. That's one of my all time favorite Bourbons, regardless of price, anything. It's unbelievable. It's one of our hand picks too. So I'm sure you guys picked the best. Can I tell you about the benchmark full proof I got down in Kentucky? They make all these different line extensions for benchmark. Now benchmark listeners is like $11 or something on our shelves. You can get all these different line extensions on benchmark, like top floor benchmark, full proof and there might be a port barrel or something. And they had a full proof at a liquor barn in Louisville with a limit of one per person. I was like, well, I have to buy allocated benchmark because this whole concept is so stupid. How much was it? It was like $22. And I finally cracked it open the other night. It totally sucks. But yeah, this is man, grab this before it's gone. There's my contribution to the Cigar Podcast that isn't razzing Roger. Yeah, it is delicious. All right, cool. Well, thanks, Jack. It's always good to catch up. Try some smokes. I think those are some great options for the course. Buy a clip, don't be a scumbag, and put fertilizer cigars back in your mouth. I feel attacked. Buy a travel humidor so you don't reach in your golf bag and have a U-shaped cigar. We're going to have to have you back before the weather gets too cold. Let's get a post-trade show roundup going. Yeah, I think that's a great idea because post-trade show will know exactly if we're going to bring in some new companies, new line extensions, all the fun stuff happens at the trade show. So I'd love to catch up with you guys afterwards. Cool. More excited to taste through some. You are also going to make him smoke that comically huge cigar. Oh yeah. So for the next ones, we've been meaning to tell you, Pat, I just got the shipping notification for the Asylum 13 April Fools joke. They come individually coffined and yes, we will have these in select locations, but it's a nine by 90. I don't even get that in your mouth. Nine inch by 90 rengage. So we'll skip that one. What a dumb cigar. That is ridiculous if that even exists. But the CAO one, let's try those. Get the CAO Torken. I want to see what that cigar tastes like because it's also very affordable. So it could be an adventure. Totally made with cheap crap then. That's what I want to find out. All right, we'll see. All right. There's your end of episode stinger listeners. We appreciate you spending this time with us today. If you like this content, do us a favor, leave us a review on the podcast platform of your choice. Tell your friends and neighbors about the show. Tell your mom we said hi. Until next week, I'm Pat. I'm Roger. I'm Jack. Keep tasting. Maybe you should say keep smoking. Yeah. Keep smoking. I'm Jack. Keep smoking.