Cigars 101

Have You Ever Gone on a One-Brand Rampage?

Among the things that make smoking cigars so enjoyable are the innumerable brand choices. I’d even venture that there are more premium cigars to choose from than there are restaurants in New York City. It’s almost impossible to know where to begin. The thing is, once you start it’s pretty hard to stop. Why? Because every year new cigars enter the market, and ardent cigar smokers are always looking for that next great cigar.

Let’s say you were to smoke all of the major brands manufactured by General Cigar and Altadis U.S.A. alone, including all of their line extensions; the list would be nothing short of overwhelming. Add to that such other bestselling brands as Arturo Fuente, Padrón, Rocky Patel, Oliva, Perdomo, Carlos Toraño, Drew Estate, Alec Bradley, Gran Habano, Tatuaje, Pinar Del Rio, et al., with all of their line extensions, and the challenge becomes insurmountable.

I think it’s fair to say that no matter how many different brands cigar lovers smoke over the years, many of them tend to drift toward a particular brand (or brands) that they smoke more than others.

So what am I driving at? As usual, what inspired me to propose the title of this post was something I noticed about my own habit. I was lighting up a cigar the other day and suddenly realized that I had been smoking a lot of cigars from a certain Nicaraguan manufacturer. For several weeks I was smoking at least one of this factory’s line extensions every day. Admittedly, this was due in part to having purchased a variety sampler from this particular manufacturer, but I was also mixing in cigars from the brand that were not in the pack.

That’s when I began to wonder about the possibility of smoking ONLY ONE BRAND until I had exhausted every line extension in their stable. Then, I would move on to another brand, and another, etc. Note that many brands have as many as a dozen or more line extensions, so variety wouldn’t be an issue. The grim reality is, besides spending a lot of extra money on cigars, I probably wouldn’t live long enough to get through all of them.

And now we come to the BIG question: Have you ever gone on a one brand rampage? Either you were so impressed with a particular brand, you just had to smoke every blend; or as described above, you were looking for an intriguing challenge. Maybe you have no desire at all, but something tells me I’m going to be very surprised by the comments.