My First Cigar of 2015

Vitola: Amistad
Size: 5” x 50 ring gauge
Price $16.49
Purchased at Burns Tobacconist

New Year’s morning I moved slowly. It could have been because of too much drinking and partying the night before…well, it could have been that for other people…if you know me very well, though, you’d know that wasn’t the reason for me. With the exception of the annual Chattanooga Tweet-Up, I don’t party all that hard and I did not on New Year’s Eve. Instead my wife and I stayed home and watched The Blacklist…despite my skepticism that something on NBC could really be that good, I highly recommend it.

I moved slow because of the weight of 2014, which I was just shrugging off my back. It was a long year, filled with some hope, some promise…and a whole mess of the disappointing act of treading water. At least I can say that it ended better than it began, but then I’m getting ahead of myself.

This year I decided to make a new tradition for the beginning of the year…I would make my “world-famous” chili! Except it’s not really “mine,” so to speak, and it’s definitely not world-famous yet. I learned my recipe from the one and only Alton Brown, on his show Good Eats. It’s a mix of “from scratch” and “let’s shortcut this step a little bit.”

The start is “from scratch” creation of chili powder. I’m sure there are some perfectly acceptable store-bought creations, but fresha is betta! A stop at the Mexican food store in Rhea County (the only one?) netted me some choice dried chilis: Cascabel, Ancho, and Arbol. I also picked up some roasted chipotles in adobo sauce while I was there. I de-seeded and chopped up the chilis and toasted them a bit in an iron skillet with some ground cumin (whole cumin seeds are apparently out of the question here…but I will be looking harder for my next batch of powder). Mix that with some other ingredients in a mini food processor for a few minutes and voila…a chili powder to bring you to your knees!

I browned a pound each of beef, pork, and lamb stew meats, deglazed the skillet with some Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA, then combined the “scratch” ingredients with the “shortcut” ingredients (a big jar of salsa…so you don’t have to cut up all the veggies…and a mess of crushed corn tortillas chips…which contain the masa needed to thicken the whole mess). Then put it in a crock pot for the next…uh…maybe 6 or 8 or 10 hours?…and then serve it with some fresh cornbread.

In the meantime I have some reflecting to do and time to smoke. I opted to make the Arturo Fuente Don Arturo Destino al Siglo Amistad my first cigar of 2014. This was one of Fuente’s cigars released to celebrate their 100th anniversary in the cigar business back in 2012. It’s a “special” cigar in the same way the Opus is special: crafted over a long period of time with some special leaf, then sold for a steep price tag. This cigar is wrapped in a creamy-looking, oily Habano leaf grown by Fuente in the Dominican Republic. They aren’t saying where the rest of the leaf comes from. Makes me wonder if it’s possibly the same core as the Opus with a different wrapper leaf…that’s one story I’ve heard about the Añejo, so it wouldn’t necessarily be unprecedented. These things run over $15 a stick, which usually means I don’t get many. I smoked one last Saturday, though, and it was so good that I had to get a couple more…the last two that Burns had on New Year’s Eve, as it turned out. It was after 1:00 on New Year’s Day when I finally took this cigar out on the front porch with my “morning” coffee.

The cold draw of the Don Arturo Destino was great; it had touches of natural tobacco, hay and molasses. Once lit, though, the blend showed a more robust profile filled with earth and red pepper, while Dominican toasty notes were more buried in the mix. Right from the start I would call this cigar medium-to-full in body and very different from pretty much anything else that Fuente offers.

As I alluded to earlier, 2014 was not what I would call a “banner year.” This blog was a bright spot for me, providing me with an outlet to talk about cigars, a camaraderie with the other reviewers who gather here (virtually gather, anyway…although I have had the chance to spend time with each of them in person in 2014), and a chance to make new friends with our readers. Other good things include my part-time work at Burns Tobacconist, the Chattanooga Tweet-Up, and of course, the continued good health of my family.

My “regular” job is something I’ve disliked for several years. I’ve worked on a couple different projects to try to escape, but they just didn’t work out. The one that showed the most potential fell through on the lies and neglect of the person on the other side of the agreement; while that hurt at the time, it is somewhat gratifying to see his venture become less relevant by the day. I don’t want to come off too arrogant, but I think I could have helped the whole thing come to a different outcome.

So I stayed put in the “regular” job. Then heard through the grapevine that they were planning on laying off pretty much all graphic designers in the company so they could save a buck and outsource all the work to India. That plan fell through after a couple months and some very-bruised customer feelings…but I could (and can) see the writing on the wall: the company does not value what people like me do for it, they see us as a “cost” and if there is a chance in the future to lower that “cost” I have no doubt that they will do so.

Plans started to be laid in the second half of the year to find a way to make a break. I more diligently explored the expansion of my freelance graphics business and was able to start doing a little work for a few other print sales people with other companies. Then in the last month of the year, the opportunity came up to get some work…maybe a lot of it…for another company. In the last days of the year, that came one step closer to being reality.

I spent every other Saturday through the year working hard at Burns Tobacconist, hoping for a time when that could expand to something larger. There have been some trials and set-backs in the business, but under our new ownership things are starting to move and groove. Here in 2015, I feel like I am standing on the brink of “all things new.” Maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement…but for the first time in a long time I have a reasonable expectation that the coming 12 months could be something really special.

The Don Arturo Destino al Siglo speaks to that feeling…it truly is something special. I thought this line would be a once-only release for the 100th anniversary of the company, but it seems it might take a place alongside Opus X and Añejo as a regular release…something to look forward to.

I wish every one of you a very Happy New Year. Make no resolutions…just make your plans to make this year the best one yet!