Tag: Cigar

Have a Cigar: Oliva Serie V Double Toro

Chris Khatsch2 Comments

Name: Oliva Serie V Double Toro

Country: Nicaragua

Shape: Parejo

Size: Gordo (6 inches x 60)

Strength: Medium to Full

Another night of drinking, another night of smoking cigars.

Reading Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises this week also made me want to drink and smoke a little more, even though I had promised myself to cut down on drinking.

The news is that I smoked my first Oliva Serie V cigar just this Thursday.

The Oliva Serie V Double Toro is an amazing cigar with notes of medium roast coffee, chocolate, oak, and black pepper. I smoked it leisurely at Spine Beirut, which is one of the trendy rooftop clubs this summer. Of course, it was my wife who chose the place. She’s the one who’s always up to date with the latest trends in town. So, we booked a table, invited some friends, and made it happen.

I paired my cigar with gin and tonic and watched people dance like Lebanon isn’t going to hell. The cigar kept me company for about two hours. When I was finally done with it, it was already time to pay the bill.

I will have to get some more Oliva Serie V cigars. I liked them very much, and I have some extra space in my humidor.

One thing’s for sure: I’ll pair the next one with coffee.

Chris Khatschadourian smoking a Don Tomas Clasico Cigar in Lebanon

Have a Cigar: Don Tomas Clasico Rothschild

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Name: Don Tomas Clasico Rothschild

Country: Honduras

Shape: Parejo

Size: (4 1/2 inches x 50)

Strength: Medium

As Freud once said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

My wife had some friends over last night, and I had to sit with them. We had dinner: Armenian manti and sou boreg. I had a glass of red wine and ended up smoking the Don Tomas Clasico that’s been sitting in my humidor for ages.

I wasn’t looking for something strong or complex. It was already late, already past midnight. I wanted to smoke something easy and straightforward. And this Don Tomas Clasico hit the spot. It’s a cigar that is just a cigar, and I enjoyed smoking it.

Smoking a Casa Turrent 1880 Maduro at Château Kefraya Restaurant while drinking Comte de M

Have a Cigar: Casa Turrent 1880 Maduro

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Name: Casa Turrent 1880 Maduro

Country: Mexico

Shape: Parejo

Size: (6 1/2 inches x 54)

Strength: Full

The maduro wrapper is what grabs your attention first. You hold it in your fingers and feel it. Then you smell it. For some reason, it reminds you of cold winter nights by the fireplace. You smell it again. You know it’s going to be a fine cigar.

They pour you a glass of red wine, a full-bodied red wine that smells like memories aged in an oak barrel. You take a sip and detect a subtle taste that is not only wine. No. It’s as bitter as nostalgia and as sweet as hope. It’s something more than wine. Out of this world.

You close your eyes and breathe in the sunny day, the smell of the Beqaa Valley and the nearby winery.

Somewhere in the background your wife laughs and that makes you smile.

You can be happy. Yes. It’s possible, still possible.

You light the cigar and say to yourself, “Glad I’m here. Glad I’m alive today.”