The Cigar
Psyko Seven 5.5 x 50.
A Medium cigar produced by Ventura Cigar Company and crafted by Henke Kelner in the Dominican Republic. It has a Dominican Hybrid Wrapper. Mexican Sumatra Binder. Peruvian Pelo de Oro Viso, Honduran Holancha Seco, and Pennsylvania ligero Filler.
This ended up being more of a Mild to Medium leaning towards medium. As it goes along, there comes a cedar type taste. It has a creamy smoke that you can make good smoke rings with. A little pepper, like a mild version of pepper. No real flavors of nuts. A little bit of a tannin taste which is where the leather comes in. Pairs really well with dry drinks. Since this is a Mild to Medium cigar, it should go great with liquors that are not that strong. Otherwise, the liquor might overpower the taste of the cigar.
Overall, this was a great cigar. Highly recommended for those that want to stretch out fo the Mild cigar comfort zone. Also would be good at the end of the night after smoking more Full cigars.
The Liquor
Vanua Fijian Rum.
Sports oak flavors followed by a sweet vanilla touch. Won the 2018 Gold Medal San Fransisco Competition. MSRP $25.
This is not the same rum that Darrell had in Fiji, but this one is not as sweet. A mild, dry rum that is not as sweet as most of the rums out there. Not getting any woody flavor chilled, but both of us can taste the vanilla. Chilled the vanilla comes through pretty good. This liquor pairs really well with the Psyko Seven.
At room temperature there is more of a sting in the mouth. It is interesting that there is no sting chilled, but there is at room temp. The vanilla flavor comes out
The More
2020 Winter Whiskey Tasting:
If you have not already, go to our events page and select the city of your choice for the 2020 Winter Whiskey Tasting. This event will be hosted in five cities (Dallas, St. Louis, Denver, Chicago, and Minneapolis) on January 25th, 2020. Get your tickets now. While the specific location of each event are TBD, they will have venues and you will not want to miss this. They have ticket price ranges for everyone. From $35 up to $60. Depending on the level of ticket you get you can taste from 2 hours for 15 tasting up to 3 hours for 20 tastings. There will be food available, giveaways, and more. From Scotch, Irish, Single Malt, Rye. . . this is a great way to start the year off. We will be a the event in Dallas. We look forward to seeing you there.
Year in Review:
What a great year! And it has only been three months. Our first release was in Sep 2019. On the equipment side, the podcast stated by recording on a computer, then moved to the Zoom H5. Recording is a bit better and more convenient with the Zoom. Some technical difficulties were had along the way, such as not having the memory chip in the Zoom and having to do the same episode twice. There was one where the batteries ran out on us. We still have to do something about the echo in the garage.
There was a lot of fun with events and interviews. We attended the 2nd Annual Cigar and Spirits Tasting hosted by Micallef Cigars. Interviews with Tony Formby from Acre Distilling in Fort Worth, Twelve from Third Watch LEMC, Al Roman from the TheGoodCigar YouTube Channel and Brent Richardson who not only came back from a Cuba trip, but also gave us information about the Non-Profit he supports.
Both of us have come along in our journey in picking out flavors in cigars and liquor. Our CLM Cigar Journal, flavor wheels, and listening to other content creators:
Cigar Talk Podcast with Rob and Bryant
TheGoodCigar with Al Roman as both a YouTube Channel and Podcast.
A great thing for us was our release of the first CLM branded product which is our CLM Cigar Journal. This journal has been a help for Bill to picking out flavors. Designed bumper stickers and Koozies.
The goals for 2020 include better equipment, do more interviews (especially with Distillers), and add some kind of a video component to the show. While we have already announced our CLM Monthly Give-Aways, we will have some extra things going on for those that support the show. Not completely finalized yet, but we will be announcing more in the 2020. Of course the most important aspect of this show is you, the listeners. We really want to have more of a dialog with our listeners and get y’all more involved in the show. Being three months into the show, it is still a learning process, so if you have any suggestions on how you can be more involved with the discussions and reviews, be sure to let us know.
Texas Whiskey Trail:
Love that we have a Texas Whiskey Trail. We are going to make it a goal in the new year to go through bottles from the various Distilleries on the Trail. An attempt will be made to visit and interview as many listed on the Trail as we can, but at the very least want to review the liquors from each of them. The first one on the Texas Whiskey Trail is Iron Root in Denison. We have a review of the Promethean Bourbon 100 proof. Take a look at the review and you can see why it is listed on the Trail. As you know we also have had the Lone Elm whiskeys which you can check out from our 2nd podcast episode.
Look Back:
Rocky Patel Decade from 2013. It was not aged in Darrell’s humidor, but right out of the box. We need to review on an episode. Notes from Darrell: “Great smoke, medium/bold.”, “This is one of the best smokes I’ve had”, “Yum, yum, yum”, “I smoked it to the roach, it was sooo good.” The general rating was roach clip worthy.
