Gordon Mott Most Recent Comments: See Also: Sinking InPosted: 04:47 PM ET, December 15, 2008 It has taken a few days for this news to sink in. I had drinks with a Mexican friend, Max Gutmann, who among his many businesses, owns the Casa del Habano franchise in Mexico. He came to that business honestly; he’s one of the biggest cigar aficionados that I know and has an extraordinary collection of Havana cigars. I wrote a blog once about getting chastised for a score we published on a Partagas Lusitania; it was Max doing the chastising and he emphasized his point by giving me a Lusitania that was one of the greatest cigars I ever smoked.
We had drinks at a midtown hotel in New York City, where there is not any expectation today that one might be able to have a cigar. You can’t. Punto final. But then he told me about the new smoking laws in Mexico which have been in effect since last summer. Somehow, I had managed to ignore that news, figuring that like many things in our South of the Border neighbor, there would be ways to get around a no-smoking law.
No such luck. Mr. Gutmann told me that smoking in public places has been virtually shut down, and in fact, you can’t even smoke in his cigar shops in Mexico City. He said the law was written with restrictions that make it one of the most draconian in the world. And, since it focused on the health of workers in the workplace, it’s hard to find any way around it. He said that among other things, the business that he used to do with restaurants around the country has dried up entirely because it is against the law for them to even offer cigars for sale.
Gutmann says there is some backlash building, and there is a chance that the law will be modified, and made less restrictive in 2009. But for now, Mexico, which was one of the last places on earth that I thought would go smoke free, is not a paradise for cigar lovers any more.
Fabulous New Cigar ShopPosted: 03:02 PM ET, December 02, 2008 Wow! That’s all I can say about the new Cigar Inn on Second Avenue, between 53rd and 54th Streets in New York City. Gus and Billy Fakih, who also own the original Cigar Inn on First Avenue between 70th and 71st, cut the ribbon on their second store this morning, December 2. Their other brother, Bass, was there too, since he is a partner in the new shop. About 50 people showed up for the 10 a.m. ceremony. There was a red ribbon. A rabbi blessed the store. And everyone tested the store’s great ventilation system by lighting up in celebration.
Full disclosure here: This Cigar Inn is the first time that Cigar Aficionado has licensed the use of its name with a tobacconist. Inside the shop, there is the Cigar Aficionado humidor and there is a Cigar Aficionado lounge at the back of the store. The lounge has lockers, which are for rent, and lots of couches and tables where people can sit and hang out. There’s no liquor license, but locker holders can keep their favorite beverage there for themselves, and, of course, they buy up their favorite cigars to keep them there. Not that anyone will ever lack for a selection of great cigars; the shop already has a pretty full compliment of all the most sought after cigar brands.
But here’s where it gets even better. There are two barber chairs that will have professionals doing shaving and hair cutting. And, there are two shoe-shine chairs, which will be the domain of young ladies who will also be working in the lounge.
I told the Fakih brothers there was only one word to describe the new shop: Fabulous. It’s been beautifully designed to not only cater to the walk-in trade, but to provide a comfortable setting for people to sit down and smoke a cigar. One of the guests said it was like having a new living room to go to and hang out with a cigar.
Take a look for yourself. Read more
A Political MomentPosted: 10:01 AM ET, November 25, 2008 I won’t presume anybody’s political leanings here. But I doubt anyone would argue with the statement that the 2008 Presidential election was one of the most important in American history. Regardless of whether your guy won or lost, you will have been present at a moment that will go down in the history books, and be noted 100 years or more from now. Partly because of its historic magnitude, there have been hundreds of stories told by people who were moved on election night to celebrate when their guy, now President-elect Barack Obama, won.
This is one of my favorites, and one that every cigar aficionado can appreciate.
Fifteen years ago, Garrett Oliver wrote a story for Cigar Aficionado about the renaissance in the art of beer brewing. He was, and is, the brewmaster at Brooklyn Brewery, a fine microbrewery that has a big presence on the East Coast. I had all sorts of connections with that world, since one of my best friends started one of the first microbreweries on the East Coast, New Amsterdam Beer, back in the early 1980s. But having Oliver write a piece of on the subject was like having Brett Favre write a book about quarterbacking. I had forgotten that during a post-publication visit, I had given Oliver a Fuente Fuente OpusX, a cigar that had hit the market about the time he wrote the story.
Here’s the e-mail I got from Mr. Oliver last week:
“Greetings from Brooklyn. Twelve years ago, I wrote an article for you about beer. You gave me an OpusX, which has spent those long years in my humidor. Marriage came and went, books were written, breweries were erected, houses were built, and still the cigar lay dormant. On Election Night, at 11:05 pm, I lit that cigar. And even though my humidor is full of Cohiba and his cohorts, it was the best cigar I've ever smoked. So thanks, and I hope this note finds you well. Read more
Smoking ScenePosted: 10:17 AM ET, November 14, 2008 I went to Club Macanudo last night with some friends. I was hardly ready for another cigar; we’d spent the afternoon working through the final selection for the next Top Cigar of the Year. A bit smoked out, and tired, I walked up Madison Avenue, past stores still lit up but empty of shoppers, and that was a nerve-wracking reminder of all the financial news that had been flashing across my computer screen all day—and Thursday was a good, albeit pretty tumultuous, day on Wall Street.
So when I walked through the door of Club Macanudo, and was hit by the sweet aroma of good cigars, I was little surprised at my reaction; a deep breath and a sigh of relief and a glow of pleasure. I felt like I was walking into a living room filled with friends.
My friend was already at the bar with a glass of wine, and a cigar given to him by the man who was the main reason we were all gathering, Arek Aboulian of Raffi’s cigar shop in Geneva, Switzerland. Arek had joined James Suckling at the Las Vegas Big Smoke for a panel on the state of the Cuban cigar industry, and was passing through New York on his way home to meet with some folks who frequent his store in Switzerland.
Arek handed me a wonderful aged cigar of “unknown” origin. I ordered a glass of Montecristo Rum on the rocks. And immediately, I was transported leagues away from the cares of the day. My friend and I began talking about golf and cigars and stories about our kids; he won the kid story competition but I won’t repeat it here. We were joined by more of his friends, some of whom I also knew from Sleepy Hollow Country Club.
I had said I could only spend about an hour there, and when I finally looked down at my watch, the hour had passed, and I had to leave. Fortunately, the cigar was down to the last third, although it was still painful to leave it behind. It was also hard to leave. The camaraderie and relaxation was just what the doctor would have ordered. Read more
Big Smoke WeekendPosted: 01:45 PM ET, November 10, 2008 I’m back in my chair Monday morning after a great Big Smoke Weekend in Las Vegas. Even though we didn’t top last year’s numbers, there was a huge turnout. Like always, there was a sea of happy faces, and everyone was drinking and smoking and generally having a great time.
I want to publicly thank all the attendees, and I want everyone out there to know about it. We were under some pretty severe restrictions about where we could smoke, and it would have been all too easy for people to ignore our pleas for compliance. But they did. It meant there were a few times we didn’t get to light up like previous years, but we managed to move from those rooms to the main seminar room where everyone could enjoy their favorite cigars. And the main Big Smoke room was jammed with smokers both Friday and Saturday night.
Our coverage of the Big Smoke will begin later today, and continue for the rest of the week. You’ll get to read about some of the really great moments: Jorge and Jose Orlando Padrón presented their 40th Anniversary cigar. Carlos Toraño told great stores about fooling Spanish smokers into thinking they were smoking Cubans, but they were his cigars. And Carlos Fuente Jr. reminded everyone just how much of a family effort the cigar business can be. There was a rolling seminar with La Gloria Cubana’s Ernesto Perez-Carrillo that demonstrated every step of the process used to make a great handrolled cigar; I even served myself up as fodder for making a fool of myself, trying to put a wrapper on a cigar in front of the crowd. Talk about nervous; I said I’d rather tee off in front of 50 people than do that again. James Suckling led a great discussion about the state of Cuban cigars. And then, James and Dave Savona led a great panel about the process of blending cigar tobacco. All I can tell you is that the seminars sold out more than three weeks before the event, so if you are interested in coming next year, give yourself a reminder for mid-year to make your reservations. Read more
The Champion!Posted: 11:19 AM ET, October 17, 2008 I promised everyone an update on my golf exploits. I won!!
As I explained in a previous blog, the Governor’s Cup is a season-long match play tournament with full handicaps that is open to all members in good standing of Sleepy Hollow Country Club. It does mean that the lower your handicap, the harder it is to win because you end up giving strokes. I gave strokes in three of my five matches, but in the finals, I was lucky to get four strokes from my opponent, a wonderful gentleman named Kieran Duffy.
I was surprised that I didn’t feel my nerves more on the first tee, but my first swing belied the truth; a classic big slice that suggests you’re a little tight and not getting through the ball. I ended up with a bogey, but my opponent’s nerves were apparently getting the better of him, too, and I won the hole. We halved two. But I lost three, four and five; each putt produced tremors in my hands that I couldn’t believe. But I turned it around on the 6th hole, a par 5 where, even though I was in trouble, I hit my fourth shot to two feet for a par that led to a win. I got back to all-square on eight, and then on nine, played my worst hole of the day, and I made the turn one down.
On 10, a beautiful par 3, we both hit the green, but I was a good 30 feet from the hole with a downhill putt over a ridge. I ran it 15 feet past the hole, and I realized I was looking at a two-down deficit. Instead, I sank the putt, he missed and we halved the hole. I won 11 outright so the match was all-square again. We both bogeyed 12 by missing fairly easy par putts, and then my run of putts began. I sank putts of more than 10 feet on the next four holes, leading to two wins and two halves. I was two up with two to play. I nearly drained a 30 foot par putt on 17 to end the match, but then he sank a great 15 footer for par to extend the match. Read more
Remembering the Good Old DaysPosted: 02:48 PM ET, September 23, 2008 Last night, I had the honor and pleasure of attending the 20th anniversary celebration for Food Arts magazine, another publication in the M. Shanken Communications world. The magazine’s audience is mostly limited to white tablecloth restaurants and top chefs, but it is truly an amazing food magazine run by Michael and Arianne Batterberry. The chefs and restaurateurs in attendance would wow any foodie from anywhere in the world: Alain Ducasse, Daniel Boulud, Jean Georges Vongerichten, Emeril Lagasse, Drew Nieporent, Mario Batali, and Susanna Foo were among the many celebrity chefs at the dinner at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.
But if happened once, it happened half a dozen times. Ken Aretsky of Patroon in New York asked me jokingly where we’re going to have cigars. Drew Nieporent said he had to leave one outside on the sidewalk because he couldn’t walk inside the Plaza with it. Adam Tihany, one of the top restaurant designers in the world, wanted to know when we could light up. No one seriously thought we could because the smoking laws in New York City are very well known, but just the joking tone was enough to reveal how much we all missed even the possibility of having a cigar after the meal.
It used to be, in those halcyon days before smoking bans, that every M. Shanken Communications dinner or gala event came complete with cigars and a fine selection of spirits for after the meal. Whether it was in New York, Miami, Las Vegas or even San Francisco in the early 1990s, the cigars would come out and people would light up. At the Wine Spectator’s Wine Experience gala banquet every year, it didn’t take long after dessert was cleared that you could smell the unmistakable aroma of a hand-rolled cigar; that even occurred for a few years after the smoking bans had been passed.
But times have changed. No one expects cigars and very few people arrive at the dinner ready to smoke. Read more
Don’t Jinx MyselfPosted: 10:59 AM ET, September 12, 2008 I’ve been holding off writing this blog, partly because I don’t want to jinx myself. But Dave has been putting pressure on us to submit some blogs, so here it goes.
Last Friday, I rescheduled a golf match to beat the weekend’s rains from Hanna. The match was part of Sleepy Hollow Country’s Club season-long Governor’s Cup, which is a match play format with full handicap. It is distinct from the club championships, and not all the low handicappers sign up, so it gives opportunity for hackers like me to get some real tournament experience and hopefully, not embarrass ourselves.
Last week’s match was in the semifinals. Yeah, after three years in a row of washing out in the first round, I had several miraculous recoveries this summer, coming back once from three down with four to play and once losing a three up lead with four to play, and then winning both matches. In fact, each of my first three matches had gone to the 19th hole, which is played on our first hole. I was beginning to feel invincible on that hole, however. In two of the first three matches, I had birdied the hole and in the third match, a quarterfinal, I played it perfectly to par it.
But the semifinal loomed as an impossible challenge. I was playing a great gentleman who carries a 25.8 index, and a course handicap of 31. The math was pretty easy. I was giving up 20 strokes. That’s right; a stroke a hole plus two holes with two strokes. To a man among my friends, not one thought I could win the match. Count me among the skeptics. I haven’t had the greatest of golf seasons as I’m been working on a swing change since late last year; after several years with an index in the six to seven range, it had climbed as high as 10.5 in June before dropping back to 9.2 by September. So, without one round under 80 all summer, I knew that I was hanging by a thread against my opponent before I ever teed off.
Last Friday was a perfect day. Read more
My Favorite SmokesPosted: 04:53 PM ET, September 02, 2008 I was reminded again this Labor Day weekend what makes a cigar special. When you smoke for a living, as we do here at Cigar Aficionado, it’s safe to say that sometimes you smoke because you are required to meet a deadline. Because we never know which cigars we are smoking, there’s never any real choice. Right now, there is a stack of cigars with numbered bands in my humidor on my desk. The extent of the decision process about which one I’m going to smoke consists of deciding what time of day I’ll be tasting, and then I reach in the humidor and pull one out…sometimes without even looking at it before I begin the task of examining the variables that we use to rate a cigar.
So, when my wife and I headed off to a friend’s house on Sunday for dinner with he and his wife, I relished the moment when I was finally showered and dressed, and I stopped in front of my humidor. I opened the doors, and the lovely aroma of aging cigars filled the small alcove where it is located. I pulled out the top drawer, where I keep most of my “special” cigars, and spent a good five minutes thinking about the evening, about the bottle of 1986 Dow’s Port that I was bringing with me, and which cigar would go best with it. I knew it wouldn’t be a super late night because I had a golf match in the morning so I didn’t want an overly big cigar. I settled on a Fuente Fuente OpusX PerfecXion X cigar, dampened the hydration slip in my Elie Bleu two-cigar humidified case, and put the cigars in it. With one last look at the tray, I closed up the humidor and walked out the door.
The cigar was sublime. The port matched the light sweetness of a nearly 10-year old Opus perfectly and my friend and I sat on his porch looking out over the dark shadows of the Hudson River and the Big Dipper up in the sky. It was a perfect late summer evening, made all the more special by a cigar that I wanted smoke. Read more
Canadian SmokingPosted: 09:24 AM ET, August 04, 2008 My family and I took our annual pilgrimage to the Canadian Rockies in July. Five days of hiking in backcountry is good for the soul, even if it includes one day of walking in a snowstorm that left between four to six inches of fresh powdery stuff on the ground above 6,500 feet. And, as usual, we kicked off our vacation with a stop at the Post Hotel, a Relais et Chateaux property in Lake Louise.
Andre and George Schwarz have run the small European-style hotel for 30 years, and have turned it into a luxurious outpost with a great restaurant that has received Wine Spectator’s Grand Award for its outstanding wine list. There’s also a wonderful pub-style restaurant with a lot of comfort food in a relaxed setting.
But after dinner, I was hankering after a good cigar. I figured I was going to have to go outside and sit on the patio because of Canada’s smoking laws. And, the last time I’d been at the Post, they had told me their smoking lounge had been shut down out of concerns over how to interpret the law. I won’t get into the details, but because Lake Louise is on federal park land, there are some exceptions to the law, and the smoking lounge was open for business. It has a glass door separating it from the main Post dining room.
I lit a 15-year-old Don Carlos No. 3, ordered a glass of 20-year-old Graham’s Tawney and sat contentedly puffing away in a big, plush leather chair. There are about 20 seats in the lounge, which has a low ceiling, a fireplace and a fully stocked humidor of fine Cubans: the inventory in July included Bolivars, Cohibas, Romeo y Julietas and Montecristos. The bar also had a full-range of American Bourbons and fine Single Malt Scotches. The Don Carlos supplied all its sweet, earthy leather notes, and I was in heaven.
Andre Schwarz came in the room and we sat chatting for nearly half an hour about the lodge, the winter ski season, the smoking laws, and whether or not the strength of the Canadian dollar had slowed the arrival of American tourists. Read more
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