Old School Cigars - The JAXX

Every so often a rep comes in, someone who's an established friend of the shop, and they tow in their wake someone else who isn't. These people ride the coattails of their more established friend and try to sink a deal on one of their less popular cigars. I'm sure you catch my drift.

Presenting: The JAXX

Here's a cigar with no reputation behind it (it's OLD SKOOL), and no redeeming presence to speak of. But I picked it up today in my shop on a whim and decided "It's time to smoke something different".

As I mentioned, this cigar rode in without a pedigree or a strong presence, and just sort of meandered onto our shelf months ago. The boxes are still mostly full because no one knows anything about this cigar, and until today, that included myself.

The JAXX is a Nicaraguan Habano Oscuro-wrapped production of the Pepin family, from what I hear. Not surprising, as Pepin has his hands in a lot of pies these days in the cigar industry. Good news: he's got the Midas-Touch. Most of what he lays his hands on turns to gold. I've often said the only good cigars that Ashton sells are either productions of Fuente or Pepin, and I'm not alone.

So what else is in it? The filler is a mix of Nicaraguan Seco (Seco is often taken from just under the Ligero, making it the second-strongest leaf on the tobacco plant), and Jalapa Ligero. There's also some Brazilian Viso in the filler, entering a little spice to the mix.

So how's it taste? Not bad, actually. I don't normally smoke the darker leaf because I'm not a fan of those bigger coffee/cocoa/leather flavor notes. And even though this cigar is loaded with those types of flavors, something about the subtlety of how they're blended makes them enjoyable to me. No one flavor hits you over the head, but everything is present in volume. It's even got some leafy earthiness on the roll.

How strong is it? Not very, at least not yet. I'm probably a third into the smokable portion of this cigar, and the body has yet to hit me. I'm rolling frequently to get all the flavors mapped, and the burn in my nose has yet to really hit me. I'd say it's about a medium so far. This is surprising, with all that top-tier leaf they've put in it.

For about nine bucks, I'd recommend picking on up and giving it a shot. It's certainly not a bad cigar, but where it really shines is in the departure. The closest cigar to this that comes to mind is the CAO Brazilia, a cigar that I found too powerful for it's blend. Other than that, it's somewhat different from a lot of other blends on the market, especially those that are similar in shade. I expected it to be more powerful and more aggressive in flavor, but it's not. This would be a great cigar to enjoy after a weekend lunch with a cup of coffee or similar drink.

The size I'm smoking is about a Toro, I'll edit in the exact dimensions if I find them. But it's nothing special. It's sister-cigar, the STIXX comes in a variety of large ring gauges, but this one is more moderate in it's vitolas.

So that's it. Try the JAXX.

-Ephram Rafael Nadaner
Current Smoke: Old School Cigars, the JAXX

So You Want to be a Tobacconist?

Minutes ago, I had a young duo of gentlemen walk in. One of them approached me and immediately opened up with this: "I've been shot down everywhere I've been today, and I'm probably going to be shot down here, but are you hiring?"

Hold your thoughts for a moment, because I'm going to revisit Johnny Job-Seeker in a moment. I want to take you back in time five years to when I first met my boss, the owner of the shop I now manage. I had just become "a man", and was attending the University of Central Florida. It donned on me one day that I should do something with my new found age of majority, like buy a lottery ticket, or visit a strip joint. Neither of those sounded like fiscally sound decisions, so I settled for a cigar, instead.

My roommate and I performed a Google search for the nearest cigar shops. I'd previously had my dealings with Swisher Sweets and GAME foil-packs and the like, but I was looking to up my ante to a premium hand-rolled job and really start enjoying what a real cigar was.

I tore off the metaphorical sheaf of paper from the Bat-Cave computer and fixed my eyes on the list. The closest shop was in a nearby mall.

To the Bat-Mobile!

We headed out to the Marketplace and stepped in the Tinderbox franchise where I met my good friend (the one who owns my shop). He stuck me on an Acid Kuba Kuba, analyzing my punk-ass garments to be an indicator that I had no taste.

He was half right.

After a few more visits, a few more Acids, I hungered for something else. So I dove into Mild-Medium naturals: Macanudos and Romeo Reserva Reals, etc.

A few of those and he decided to share with me a project he had been working on. Something which closely emulated the Cuban flavor of Tobacco. I was hooked.

Later that month, I was looking for a job, so I threw on some more respectable clothes and went cruising around, submitting my applications. Denied everywhere for the most part, I stopped by that Tinderbox again to regroup with a cigar. On a whim, I asked him,

"Hey CJ, is there any chance you might hire me?"

"I'm closing this shop, but when I open up in my new location, yeah, absolutely."

I was stunned.

We solidified details, and a few months later, I signed on with him at my current location, and started quickly learning the trade. These days, I can identify from flavor the country of origin, age, and priming of the plant. I've come a long way.

But I didn't have that attitude that Johnny Job-Seeker did. I knew it was a longshot, but I went in with no predisposition. Even though I asked knowing it was unlikely, I accepted that there was no reason not to hire me. I developed a relationship before asking for something as personal as hiring me to keep shop.

So that's it. I get a lot of people like this kid who just walked in. They come in, without buying anything, showing no interest in my area of industry at all and casually ask for a job while wearing ripped jeans and a backwards baseball cap. What do I look like, a Hollister? I've built my image around myself, and they strolled in, prefabricated, and asked if I would hire them because they have a lot of experience smoking hookah.

I can't fathom carrying on so carelessly.

I'm done stroking my ego for the moment, so here's the thing. If you want my job, here's how it goes:

1. Build industry knowledge. Johnny couldn't name one brand of premium handmade long-filler cigar. Not one. Romeo and Juliet, Ashton, Fuente... not one. I would expect a hire-ready candidate to have knowledge not just that the brands exist, but about their products.
2. Build your image. Most of my clients are above 35. They have the exact impression of people my age that you would expect. We're punks, unless we can prove otherwise. If you're younger than thirty, you better carry yourself like an adult when you walk in and ask if you can leave your resume on my counter. That brings me to:
3. Build a resume. This isn't McDonald's, Home Depot or Old Navy. I do not have a job application that you can fill out and get a call back next week. If you don't have a resume, you're not yet an adult (see my previous point). The tobacco industry is, by nature, and Adult Industry. So be prepared to meet it's challenges with all the Adult Trappings.
4. Build a relationship. This is my final point. Tobacco Shops are usually small. Often times, there's one dude working these small businesses at a time. As you can imagine, there's a very high demarcation of trust required for someone to put that key in your hand and say 'You're closing tonight.' but that's exactly what my boss does every time we have a new hire. He, and I, must trust these new people implicitly before we trust them to manage the register, the deposits, and the merchandise alone, from their very first day. So naturally, most people that walk through our door looking for a job are going to be disappointed when they find out that we're not hiring.

Of those four blocks, building a relationship is the hardest. Going into a shop weekly and buying a cigar will not cut it. Sit down, have a smoke, and have a conversation with the guy behind the counter. Make sure he acknowledges you as a human being and not just a customer. I check out hundreds of people a week who expect me to remember their names and flavor preferences. Unfortunately, I usually retain neither. My good regulars, however, I often remember their wives's birthdays before they do. It's all about that relationship, and it's not easy.

So there you have it. I've vented.

My apologies of this comes across as an ego-stroking adventure in yelling at college kids, but my hope was that my irritation might found something that's actually helpful to someone, somewhere.

Case in point, if you walk into my shop asking if we're hiring and request a job application while dressed in a backwards baseball cap and Minecraft T-Shirt, then respond to my inquiries about your tobacco experience with a joke about how much hookah you can smoke, I will probably tell you to get fucked.

-Ephram Rafael Nadaner

Current Smoke: Perla Del Mar, Toro size.

Honest Cigar Reviews - Ezra Zion Honor Series: FHK

Firstly I would like to apologize for my several month disappearance. What started as a broken laptop ended up a myriad of excuses in life that distracted me from these writings. I'm back now, for the time being, and hope to resume regular updates.

So our friendly rep from House of Emilio visited the shop the other day bringing in his marketing buddy. His friend tried to order some pornography on our cable box, only to be thwarted by our passcode. We all had a good laugh at this guy's expense (he was smashed after his team lost some sporting event, the nature of which he could not clearly articulate).

Anyhow, this rep left me with the new Ezra Zion FHK, one in their honor series. Last time I tried the cigars from their line, I was not that impressed, but Ezra Zion (and House of Emilio, in general) have been gaining traction in the last six months. I still, as of yet, have very little desire to stock their products. But that may change in the future.

To be honest, I hesitate to call myself "old school" due to my age in this industry being unusually low. However, I find House of Emilio's twitter-heavy ad campaign to be kind of a turn off. I guess anything that brings more notoriety to a growing cigar brand is good, but Twitter lacks the "soul" of the cigar industry, seeped in tradition and history. I compare it to the Belgian and German beer markets, where the purity law is the final word in manufacture and the New and Bold are dismissed. Part of me knows it shouldn't be so, part of me accepts it in my classical tobacconist training.

That being said, I love American craft beer. Their bold flavors and bolder ideas are really dominating the market right now, and if you love beer, and haven't tried something out of the smaller craft market, you're missing out.

And so, I smoked the damn cigar.

It was a longer vitola, about seven inches, and a smaller ring gauge. Halfwheel.com indicates I was probably smoking the "Truth" vitola, a 7x44. That seems about accurate.

At first, this cigar was brilliant. It's siren song of bolder flavors in it's smaller ring gauge drawing me in, initially drawing on delicious nutty tones early on. If someone had wanted me to really enjoy Ezra Zion as a brand, they'd done their homework on that honeypot.

Then, strangely, as flavorful as the cigar was, it suddenly all came crashing down. The back half of the cigar was utterly flavorless, tasting of stale cigarettes. It was the strangest thing. Imagine getting into a brand new 2014 Ford Mustang 5.0 and speeding down the highway in a luxurious and unapologetic rear-wheel drive space shuttle. Then, halfway to your destination, suddenly it transforms into an early Prius. It's still moving, but what's the point?

I put it down with about two inches to spare. Life is too short to smoke shitty cigars.

Maybe I got a bad one, I'm willing to acknowledge that. Either way, I'm not going to write off Ezra Zion completely. The market still seeks them out as viable, so I will continue to monitor them. But for the time being, I won't be scouting for anything they make before breaking into a Camacho or Pepin Garcia.

3/5, and I wish I could do more.

-Ephram Rafael Nadaner
Current Smoke: Some cheap bundle Conerico (I'm sick as a dog right now)

The Thrifty Reason for the Season

I'm ashamed of you all, our holiday sales have sucked. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

Holiday sales in general have been way down this year. People are still paying off holiday shopping from two years ago. I sell a luxury item. I get it, when the purse strings tighten, cigars are one of the first items to go. Our Black Friday deals were left untouched, too. This holiday season has been one of thrift.

As it turns out, I've spoken to a number of other small business owners aside from my boss, and they're experiencing similar issues. Good friend of mine who owns a Mercedes Benz repair facility just recently took in an S-class Benz that the guy had to default on - he couldn't pay the repair bill, and it went into lien, that's truly sad.

So we've had to change our game up around here, too. Previously, we've floated comfortably on our collection of regular customers, never really excelling as a business, but never in danger of closing our doors, either. Many of our clientele are affluent, some are downright wealthy, but when surrounded by people cutting costs, they've seen the writing on the wall and cut back alongside them. I'm not sure whether it's a show of solidarity or out of fear. The money has to go somewhere, and I go everywhere.

So our previous lineup was a fairly large percentage of super premium blends surrounded by many other top end sticks, moderately priced, like Pepin Garcia, Fuente, etc. We've kept the super premium lineup, but cut down the "middle class" of cigars. Now I know how Obama feels. ZING!

So I've brought in a lot of cheaper cigars. Not entirely comfortable about it, but that endless stream of reps has been good for something. I want to keep making money, and they share in my dream. Solidarity.

Take the Azan line we just stocked for example:

These cigars represent some great blends that have come out on the market recently, but their goal is to shoot down the competition based on price.

The right cigar is an Authentico Maduro at about ten bucks. Closest competition is Hoja de Florez's Maduro at around 12.50.

The tubo in the back? That's their burgundy line, a dark Sumatra at 5.50, sweet, and similar to Pepin Garcia's Flor de las Antillas (at around 7.50). I've sold a ton of these as gifts, since the tube makes for a better presentation.

None of the Azan line has really perfected what the competition is doing, but the small ring gauges and price tags represent a great choice for someone who doesn't want to blow as much money as the competition wants. We make slightly less on the lower-priced cigars, naturally, but retain a customer or get a new sale out of it. That's okay, I'm okay with that.

We've also been selling samplers, over a hundred of the damn things. I just pull five similar-bodied cigars off the shelf, bundle and label them, and knock 20% off the price. Suddenly a one or two stick sale becomes a five stick sale, albeit at a lower profit margin. That's okay, I'm okay with that.

Bundles are in now, we got ninety of them the night of the event from another rep, who was disappointed he couldn't showcase his premium product the same night, so it goes. In just shy of a week, I've iced over 20% of that stock. We only make about twenty dollars on a bundle, but they make a perfect companion for a new humidor, which should be kept at or above 50% capacity. That's okay, I'm okay with that.

We're working hard to keep business in Central Florida, and truth to be told, it's working.

-Ephram Rafael Nadaner

Current Smoke: Bundle Ecuadorian Habana (Solidarity, brothers!), and it ain't half bad.

Honest Cigar Reviews - 262 Paradigm

I lit this box-pressed stick on a whim from my humidor at the shop, and just wanted something mild to smoke. I decided that wasn't fair. Guy from Kuutz gave me this stick to review from 262 called the "Paradigm". Apparently, it's gotten a 91 from Cigar Snob, one of the magazines I actually still have waning respect for. We'll see.

Size is a box pressed Toro, or thereabouts, straight-cut, lit with a soft flame, drinking nothing for the moment. Yadda yadda, I treat this cigar like every other cigar I smoke - I'm giving it a fair chance.

Let's talk qualitative for a moment. The Paradigm features a Brazilian Mata Fina wrapper, Honduran binder, and a blend of Nicaraguan and Colombian fillers. No wonder my mustache has turned white. This is an interesting lineup for me. Leaving the wrapper aside for a moment, the filler/binder comes from not one or two, but three countries. I have to wonder if 262 thought more countries = more complexity or something, sadly, it's not the case.

Cigar is about medium, tested it out by retro-inhale. Not too shabby, and not unexpected. Nicaraguan tobacco tends to be more full bodied in the industry, Honduran tends to be a little milder, they met somewhere in between.

What this cigar is missing is in the flavor department. This four-country blend of a stick should be loaded with complexity, I expected rich coffee cocoa notes from the Brazilian wrapper, subtle earthy notes from the Honduran binder, and a little kick of pepper from Nicaragua's leaves. Of those three, the only one I'm tasting is a twinge of earthiness.

What I'm left with then, is this unique combination of flavors that tastes mostly bread-like going into the second third. Spice notes seem distinctly buried in the back of the palate somewhere, like they didn't want me to taste them, so 262 brands buried them out in the desert somewhere hoping I'd never find them.

When I re-lit (this smoke keeps going out, even with me puffing on it), I got a hit of leather, like I'd just walked past a leather store just as some lady came out clutching a new handbag she's just paid Coach pricing for with a "Made in China" sticker on the bottom. Great investment, idiot.

What else is there... uh... oh, draw. Draw is pretty open, which is actually surprising because the cigar looks like it's rolled pretty tightly. Also surprising, because it keeps going out as I mentioned before. Ain't this thing just a casual anomaly?

Singles are selling for 8.67 online when I checked. I can't help but bring up that manufacturers like Pepin Garcia can get you the total package for under eight bucks, when this cigar is struggling for a few cents more (keep in mind that's the online price). Variety may be the spice of life, but I cannot endorse a product that charges more for less.

I'd say I'm disappointed, but that's not entirely fair. 262 took a bold leap in combining four country's worth of tobacco into one blend, and it didn't work out exactly as planned. Perhaps they really like it, maybe they're just trying to unload it and get to the next project. But I have to give the guys credit for trying. I am not assigning this cigar an approval rating, it would not be fair.

-Ephram Rafael Nadaner

What Worked, What Didn't - Running a Successful Event

We hear it all the time. Underpromise, overdeliver. This last weekend was no exception as my shop hosted the wonderful Azarias Cordoba and his lovely wife Emille in our Cordoba and Morales Cigar event.

The event was a rousing success, pulling in our best day's take by orders of magnitude. And I attribute this success to several measures.

• Z and Emille are excellent people. They took care of most of our event preparation for us, including cooking the most amazing pork you can imagine. Z's pork might be better than his cigars. Might.
• We reached a pretty critical saturation of event advertisement between my last-minute email reminder, facebook notifications, in-person reminders, and general word of mouth. The place was packed, almost to our fire code occupancy. It was awesome.
• Cordoba and Morales doesn't make shitty cigars. Not a one of them is less than excellent. Their original lineup, the Front Nine, 19th Hole, and Family Reserve are all outstanding unique boutique blends, and if you haven't smoked them you're a bad person and you should feel bad. All joking aside, do yourself (and their growing business) a favor and try one immediately. They are crazy-talk good for the price.
• Their special edition Clave Cubana is also stupid-good. "Ephram," you say. "Two points about cigars? You're a mad-man!" Well, yes, it's true, their cigars are so good, they merit two points.
• We're small, and we're okay with that. One of our major competitors was hosting an event the same night as us with Drew Estate, and as you might imagine, it was wildly popular. I didn't even have to check to know that. Why do I know that? It's fucking Drew Estate. They're popular as hell right now for good reason, they've worked incredibly hard on a new series of blends that are coming out really great. Good for them, they're giant, and we're small, and again... We like it that way.

That's it, I think. So, yeah... if you were here with us, you done good, kid. If not, you should be ashamed.

In all seriousness, though, these events are going to be the lifeblood of this thing I'm managing, for better or worse. I'd love to have one every month, but I fear that might over saturate people with cigars and tire them out on us, so I'm going to settle for six a year - every other month - unless I receive indication that we need more than that.

So, in the spirit of my missing Friday update, and given that I've told you everything that worked really well, so far... here's what crashed and burned.

Our email updates went out late. Our provider, GoDaddy, only allows us 250 SMTP relays per day. If you don't understand what that means, never fear. It essentially means we can only send 250 messages per day. Our address list is over 700 names, so I had to spread these emails out over three days to fully saturate our email list. Unfortunately I only found out I had to do this three days before the event, so the final emails went out the day of the event. Obviously less than ideal.

In this email I advertised some things that none of us knew would not be happening. I'd been told about raffles and free drinks that never materialized. I should not have said anything about them, but at least no one grumbled at the lack of free shirts and cold beer. C'est la vie.

Finally, I advertised something else that I should not have. One of my regulars asked me to include information about a card tournament, explaining that he had already discussed it with my boss, the owner. As it turned out, he was lying. While I cannot stress that the card game going on was entirely legal tournament style play, my boss did not want that information included in the mailer because he was worried about perception drawing scrutiny while we're trying to make money here. As we all know, even when doing nothing wrong, legal complications can surround a small business and really drive it into the ground.

So that's it, with the mail situation sorted, I'll just have the owner sign off on a draft before mailing out about the next event, and we'll be all set.

S/BOTL, please have a happy holiday and remember the reason for the season - Enjoying great smokes with your friends and family while they're in town! Just kidding, but no really, smoke 'em while you got 'em.

-Ephram Rafael Nadaner

Current Smoke: Cordoba Hand-Rolled (from the above event, extremely good for being rolled three days ago!)

Content Blackout - My Apologies

Well folks, looks like I set myself up to fail with my rigorous content schedule. Last weekend was a whirlwind of people graduating, events happening, and getting personally engaged to the girl of my dreams.

Let the regular updates begin... again.