Sunday Morning Smoke

Christmas is my favorite time of the year. Food, music and good cheer, naturally brings out the sentimental Irishman in me. Le Madame (always) gives me a baleful look whenever I say this, but, no better an Irishman than Hunter S. Thompson said: "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."

Anyway, Christmas morning in my house was grand (once I was awake). My daughters, who are 10 and 8, began shrieking around 6:30 a.m. and by 6:35 a.m. we could hear the dawg, (FuManChu) chiming in with woofs, probably for no better reason then everyone else was making noise! My children were like whirling dervishes, ripping and tearing open presents that my wife had carefully and laboriously wrapped. Towards the very end of the mayhem, I slipped away to my office for coffee and a smoke.

Coffee: Central Costa Rican Tarrazu Peaberry. Peaberries result when the coffee fruit develops a single, oval bean rather than the usual pair of flat sided beans. The aroma is fruity with wood notes (pine and cedar). The flavor is tartly sweet and the finish is full. A morning brew like this goes well with a full bodied smoke. To quote Emo Philips, another slightly cracked Irish philosopher: "When I wake up in the morning, I just can't get started until I've had that first, piping hot pot of coffee. Oh, I've tried other enemas..."

Cigar: Hoyo de Monterrey Double Coronas (Cabinet) 2001 (vitola is Prominente). IMO, this is one of the great cigars. Smooth to the touch, the stick was very fragrant pre-light. IMO Hoyo cigars have a mellow, floral aroma mixed with cocoa, coffee, leather and creamy tobacco flavors, that get better as it draws down.

My wife, who is a very good cook, goes all out during the holidays (we have a house full of people so there were twelve for dinner). Christmas dinner began with Portobello (mushroom) puff pastries, and potato and onion tarts stuffed with smoked bacon. Salad: field greens with spiced pears followed by Four Onion Soup; the cheese course: Feta cheese with sun dried tomatoes in Phyllo. The main course was a maple glazed sirloin of beef in a Burgundy Shallot sauce with pan fried long beans and onions in a Bordeaux sauce.

We had our choice for desert(my eyes were bulging by the time we got to this): A raspberry Bûche de Noël (chocolate cake filled with raspberry flavored cream and covered with a rich chocolate glaze and served with raspberry purée on the side.); and hot crepes with pan roasted cinnamon apples, black cherries topped with brown sugar. Add to this a half dozen bottles of wine (Domaine de la Romanée Conti 1996 Richebourg) and by the end of dinner we were ready to blow the roof off with a great attack of flatulence. Before we (the men) crawled, rolled and oinked our way to my office, we all applauded Adrienne for a wonderful meal. (Le Madame was most pleased). Of course, being Irish, I could not leave well enough alone. I proposed an Irish toast to my wife:

There are many good reasons for drinking,
One has just entered my head,
If a man doesn't drink when he's living,
How the he** can he drink when he's dead.

Le Madame snorted, laughed and chased us out of the dining room.

A festive meal deserves a powerful smoke: H. Upmann Sir Winston (vitola is Julieta). In keeping with the CastleCrest notion that 'if you let cigars rest, they taste the best', I cracked open a box of 03s. The stick started off smooth and fresh, building into a rich and complex cigar half way through. Three quarters of the way through (about the 2 hour mark), my office was filled with a rich and spicy smoke that was so thick I could have almost cut it with a pair of scissors. IMO, the H. Upmann Sir Winston compares very favorably to the Cohiba Esplendido as possibly two of the best Churchills in the world.. The Sir Winston adds to this by having a flawless wrapper. The draw was excellent and it had a good burn. IMO, the Sir Winston is a very complex smoke. At first, we all noticed the woodiness, but that was followed by vanilla flavors, spice and aromas of musk, wood and toasty coffee.

I put on jazz (Duke Ellington) and poured Bowmore Single Malt Scotch (25 year old) which has flavors of sherry, whisky; brine, peat, and salt; the finish is long. Bowmore is a lovely amber/red and when you slosh it along the tongue the peat notes stand out. We smoked our cigars and I continued to pour Bowmore. To finish the evening I quotedW.C. Fields as a right and proper addition to the day: "If I had to live my life over, I'd live over a saloon."

cian

P.S. Merry Christmas and best wishes to Bloofington, Vince and all other readers and posters to this thread.

The best to you as well, and thanks for another powerfully fascinating episode of life in . . .

The Land Of Cian. :thumbsup:

cian said:

There are many good reasons for drinking,
One has just entered my head,
If a man doesn't drink when he's living,
How the he** can he drink when he's dead.

Click to expand...

A very fitting quote!

Okay, it's not a Sunday morning cigar, but my Sunday night cigar is a Cuban Heirloom by Nick Perdomo, robusto 5 1/2x54. This tastes like barbecued beef with a side of sliced jalapenos. You could also say it tastes like char with flint, and lavender flowers. I like this cigar because it's light to medium bodied, but with rich flavors and only a bit of a kick. Like many of my current favorites, it's all Nicaraguan tobacco, something Nick concentrates on.

Cian, I really enjoyed reading your post.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

I started my day with a Freedom Press of Mocha Java, looking forward to some good food, and of course, a weekend of trying new bourbons, and a cigar or two. Don't hit that accelerator too hard, Vince, you've only just gotten back to your regular life style. We want you around in 3006, never mind 2006. mg: :rotflmao:

All the snow from the recent 11 inch storm has melted, but we're getting some light stuff today, large flakes, looks really pretty. I had a Mayorga Maduro Churchill in the wee hours this morning before going to bed. It had at least a year of age in my own humidors on it. There was a funny sour tobacco taste prevalent in the first half, but it disappeared in the second half and became a really delicious, somewhat complex, cigar.

Have a safe one Vince. Have a safe one, everybody at AmBack and Cigar.com, all over the world, wherever you are. The final games of the NFL season start in a couple of hours. I'm there.

Yep..what Vince said..Have a great New years and a safe party tonite.

Me and a buddy had some great smokes at the quarter deck and its gonna be a winter mecca for me when the wife is out playing Volleyball.
Thanks for that Opus my friend.

Good Day to all! It is hard to believe that it is 2006 already, it seems like 2000 was just yesterday.

Vince, I think I can speak for all of us when I ask you to take it easy big guy, nobody else can write like you do, and we all want to continue reading your storys for a few more years at least, I mean hey, I just started to read your little coumns, and they are definately a high point of my computer time.

It looks like our snow is here to stay, but it makes eveything look so nice, that is kind of a good thing. We have been haveing the strangest weather though, -4, and -5 all week. It just ain't natural! Where is the 20 below that we usually have. Oh, well, it will shorten the winter that is for sure.

We are still eating turkey leftovers, and man are they good! I heated some of it up with some gravy today - kind of like chipped beef - and it was delicious. Somehow I just enjoy that bird better the next day than on the big night - it just seems like so much less stress than when you are cooking for a lot of people.

There you go. Happy New year everyone!

Gordon

:cryinlaugh: :cryinlaugh: :cryinlaugh: :rotflmao: :rotflmao: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :rotflmao: :cryinlaugh: :cryinlaugh:

God bless you, Vince. PLEASE take good care of yourself. Despite the fact that we've still never met, my life over the past five and a half years has been that much richer because of you.

I can smell the kraut from here!!! I myself, am having duck, with some greens wilted in duck fat, with shallots and garlic. :lol:

We do the pork roast and sauerkraut thing in a crock pot and sit it out in the carport to cook.

We are well into high season in the Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Caymans, etc. This means the best 6 months of weather during the year (from November through May) occur now; consisting of mellow sunrises, days in the mid-70s and perfume soft sunsets.

Coffee: Panama Esmeralda. IMO, this is a world class coffee. PE grows above 5,000 feet at the highest altitude of Panama’s Boquete region. It is a Gesha heirloom variety that originally was grown in Ethiopia. It has to be one of the more unusual coffees that I've drunk, having a jasmine-like fragrance with blueberry and cherry notes. Out of the cup, it is crisply bright and lemony with chocolate overtones. Delicious with cigars. To paraphrase a popular survey: "You, too, may be a coffee lover if you (a) grind your coffee beans in your mouth; (b) your lips are permanently stuck in the sipping position; (c) you want to be cremated just so you can spend eternity in a coffee can; and (d) your eyes stay open when you sneeze."

Cigar: Cohiba Sublimes 2004 LE (vitola is Sublime). First, I am an unabashed fan of Cohiba and smoking this cigar was nearly 3 hours of pleasure. IMO, this smoke ranks in my top 3. The cocoa flavor hits first, followed by coffee, vanilla and a steadily increasing creamy flavor. IMO, the stick burns well (54 ring guage). Visually, it is a very large cigar with volumes of smoke and the wrapper is a beautiful dark brown.

New Year's Eve found us at the Governor General's Ball on St. Thomas (the gala is held every 3 years). What makes this event interesting, is that it is a costume party for around 2-3,000 folks sponsored by the territorial government. Speaking of costumes: Richard Nixon (at least 6 that I met and one that tried to mooch me for a smoke) is making a big come back along with many pirates; Draculas beyond count, too many pirates to even b other about, and one Bill Clinton life sized bobble head doll. I was going to say something to the Clinton doll but Le Madame, noting the gleam in my eye (usually the precursor to 'oh no, he is going to say something incredibly daft and embarrassing'), elbowed me and whispered "you don't know who that is!" Deferring to her superior logic, I said nothing, reminding myself of the great Churchill quotation (which I would like to point out, Sir Winston rarely ever followed): "a closed mouth gathers no feet."

Le Madame went as Marie Antoinette (how original). At first, I was going to go as myself but after 30 minutes of histrionics from Le Madame, I gave in and agreed to go, as Al Capone (at least I could smoke cigars – and I packed a pocketful!). My wife, mollified, asked why Capone? I explained to her that Big Al, along with his other accomplishments, was a sometime philosopher. She guffawed, so naturally I quoted her an example of his thinking: "You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone." Adrienne made a tittering sound and suggested that perhaps another of my "quotations" would better serve. I responded vis-à-vis George Carlin: "Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines."

However, all was not lost. How often does Al Capone get to slow dance with a tall, blond Marie Antoinette wearing a skin tight, silver-satin body stocking, and while nuzzling your neck whispers in your ear in such a way that you break out in a sweat and are smiling ear to ear (even if the tiara and some of the rhinestones on her collar, did poke me)!

cian

P.S. Happy New Year to Bloofington, Vince and everyone else who reads and posts to this thread. Vince, it is great to read that you are back to smoking cigars and feeling so much better. My thanks to you and to Bloofington for your very kind remarks about my scribbling.

P.P.S. Brenda – Thank you for your kind words.

:thumbsup:

Seems like a good time was by all, but especially Cian. :sm_angel: