The great cigar smuggle

Tuesday very early in the morning my good friend, who wishes to remain anonymous, arrived on Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam Holland. He had spend two weeks at his girlfriend's place in Miami. In his lugage my friend had 40 cigars. 50 are aloud, dont mind the title of this post, mothing illegal is going on.

When you say cigars many people think Cuba and Havana being the cigar capital of the world. This is a very common mistake. The cigar capital of the world is Miami. After the Cuban revolution many plantage ownerws fled the country with the prices possesions, the seeds of the tabacco plant. With the embargo after the Cuban missle crissis no American could smoke Cuban cigars, or at least import them. In these 50 years without Cuban cigars the Americans didn't sit still. American's and Cuban immigrants imported tabacco from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras and Brazil, they worked hard to produce good cigars. Families like Padron set a new standard in quality cigars.

My friend brought two boxes of cigars. Two brands we can't get here in Rotterdam. The highly anticipated CAO and the inmens populair Rocky Patel series. I was amazed by the care that was in the production of these cigars. Two beautiful boxes, wellcrafted, no exepeces were spared to safegueard the cigars inside. The Patels came in a classic wooded box. The CAO came in a luxureous Brazillian flad designed box. When I opened this box there was a little humipack inside. I couldn't believe. I know there is a special CAO cigar edition that comes in a box which is a humidor but still I was just amazed I saw this little humipack to safeguard the humidity of these cigars while traveling. I love to witness the love cigar companies put in their product. If you look at interviews of cigar families or look at the CAO site and watch the president of CAO tell his story you see people who love and enjoy their product themselves. To quote Fuente family "we make the cigars that we want to smoke ourselves". Then there are the aficianados who love to smoke. Cigar smokers aren't smokers like cigarette smokers who always complain how bad smoking is for their health and who always tell that they want to stop. Cigar smokers are smokers who enjoy a good smoke.

I added the cigars my friend brought to my humidor. Perfect timing, my humidor was almost empty, now it is full with good, good, very good smokes. Thanks buddy!