Your First Epiphany Cigar


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On June 20, 2016 at 8:27 PM, planetary said:

PSD4, after months of occasional non-Cubans.  And of a sudden there was Shakespeare...

"I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine."

PSD4 for me as well.  My first love, probably a single from a box from about 1999 I would guess. I had smoked a handful of CCs prior to this but this was my Epiphany cigar.  Mad me go Wow at least 10 times!  

My Re-Epiphany cigar was a RYJ Short Churchill from about 2007--these were really incredible cigars around that time IMHO.  

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A Cohiba Siglo VI from Fincato LCDH in Rome. I smoked cigars very infrequently before that one. That is the one that led me down the hole , made me get a humidor, and started me on my path to here. The cigar was sheer brilliance. The atmosphere was outstanding.

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I cannot tell you when it was, nor the cigar. I do believe it was a Punch Coronas.

I was vacuuming out my car and sucked this cigar up in shop-vac. It stuck to the nozzle and was crisp as overdone bacon. Hard as a rock, light as a feather, the band was lose and mid-cigar. I removed the cap, pushed in the cigar lighter, shut off the shop-vac and lit it up...

It was then I discovered the height of flavor from Cuban tobacco. While I had other developed opinions certainly, it was that day I made the definitive like between water content and tobacco taste. I have been obsessed with the topic, and the taste of dryer, consistently stored cigars ever since.

-Piggy

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My first was a dark and lovely Monte 4.  I had been gifting these things to business acquaintances for several years but had never smoked one, or any cigar for that matter.  I'd always enjoyed a smoky cigar room though (but never an airplane cabin or restaurant full of cigarette smoke).  To me, cigar smoke had the scent of fine incense in its own unique way.

Anyhow, one evening on a rooftop bar overlooking Saigon I figured I'd better try one of these sticks I'd been gifting, just to find out if I'd been handing out schlock all these years and didn't know it.  Bam!  From the first puff it was fabulous and I was hooked.  

I stopped at Duty Free on the way home and ransacked through the shelves until finding a cigar with a particularly alluring cold scent, turned out to be 2009 Punch Punch tubos, and they smelled like dark chocolate dipped in honey.  Those topped even the Monte 4 and together are my two most vivid cigar epiphanies. 

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Not sure which vitola, but it was an Upmann in a tube. I was on my honeymoon in the Bahamas in 1985.  After dinner our first night, I went into the resort's gift shop and chose it based on size, probably a largish corona. Cut the cap, lit it, and SHAZAM. I instantly understood what all the talk was about. I'd smoked many cigars, both cheap and more refined, but this was something entirely different. Didn't even begrudge the princely $4 USD each one cost. It would be many years before I was able to obtain CCs at home, but I haven't been without them since.

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I have two answers for this... My first cigar that gave me an epiphany was a Tatuaje Havana VI Verocu #5. Beautifully oily, it was the first "decent" (Non-cheap) cigar I smoked, and the first time I discovered (for myself) cigars could have flavours beyond tobacco.
The second was a SCDLH El Principe. That was the first time I discovered cigars could have desert style (or sweet) flavours.

There were cigars in between those, but those are two that stick out as being eye opening!

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Another Monte 2 epiphany, actually two. Early in my CC experiences, after a steady diet of NCs, I was in Cabo. Went to a B&M selling legitimate goods and bought a Monte 2. That evening I went to the beach and had the Monte with an adult beverage. It was simply sublime and left a lasting impression some 20+ years later. The second Montepiphany occurred years later on a fishing trip in Alaska. One of the other members of our group was smoking a #2 and shared it with me and a close friend. We had finished whatever we were smoking and the absolute perfection of that stick was truly transcendental! I really want to believe that the settings did not enter in to my opinion of these experiences, but who knows.

It seems that when a Monte 2 is right it's REALLY right. Have smoked many #2s since and have not duplicated those two experiences. Such is the lottery nature of Monte 2s, me thinks.

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54 minutes ago, FLB03TT said:

Another Monte 2 epiphany, actually two. Early in my CC experiences, after a steady diet of NCs, I was in Cabo. Went to a B&M selling legitimate goods and bought a Monte 2. That evening I went to the beach and had the Monte with an adult beverage. It was simply sublime and left a lasting impression some 20+ years later. The second Montepiphany occurred years later on a fishing trip in Alaska. One of the other members of our group was smoking a #2 and shared it with me and a close friend. We had finished whatever we were smoking and the absolute perfection of that stick was truly transcendental! I really want to believe that the settings did not enter in to my opinion of these experiences, but who knows.

It seems that when a Monte 2 is right it's REALLY right. Have smoked many #2s since and have not duplicated those two experiences. Such is the lottery nature of Monte 2s, me thinks.

I think the setting often plays a part in the enjoyment of cigars. I don't think it's a coincidence that two of your most memorable just so happen to be when in Cabo and fishing in Alaska. 

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It was my first Cuban cigar. 1995. A friend of mine gave me an Epi 2 for my birthday. I remember thinking, "So THIS is what everyone is talking about." 

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My first CC was a Monte 3 in the 90's.  That was an epiphany, but the real mind blowing came with my first Monte #2, probably early 2000's.  I'd never tasted such complexity and depth in a cigar.  Like my first glass of Pappy. 

Still love them.  Still, only on special occasions, maybe out of respect and reverence.

 

- MG

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Monte 2 for me as well a couple of years back. Interesting how many Monte 2s are popping up as epiphany smokes.

I bought it as a single at a local shop. I picked it because it had a dusting of plume and it smelled amazing cold. It had serious burn and draw issues, because I think it was over-humidified. But still...it didn't even taste like a cigar. It tasted like a Sunday winter meal my mother would have made when I was a child. Remember the Ratatouile moment when the food critic is transported back to his childhood?

I've had subtle impressions of that flavour from one other Monte 2 since, so there is always hope that I might replicate that out of body experience again.

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Monte 2 like several on here got me hooked on cuban's in general.

 

More recently, Sir Winston.  I sought them out for a long time, and I'll never forget the smell when I opened that box.  That was the cigar that made me go from "enjoying the hobby" to "I need to get as many of these as is possible and save them in case of the end of days".

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