Weekly Email – August 5th, 2015

We had a great time at our big Customer Appreciation Cookout last weekend, and we hope you did too! Plenty of food and drink, great cigars courtesy of ourErik Espinosa and Fernie Zacarias, excellent live blues by our pals Evan Eggert and Steve Rittenhouse, and the last hurrah of our great friend Mico Simbari, who has officially retired after over 16 years of slinging tobacco. Mico (seen at right in the photo above, with Rodney Nix and Eddie Chick, a.k.a. theBBQ Crew) sends his regards and affection to everyone, as do the rest of us here at ASW. Thank you, Mico, and God bless… We miss you already. To the rest of you:

In addition to the new Red Label (which is our Cigar of the Week – see above for details), we’ve received another new release from La Palina: Mr. Sam, named after La Palina president Bill Paley’s grandfather Samuel Paley, himself a cigar maker who purchased the Columbia Phonographic Broadcasting System – yes,that CBS – in 1927 with the intention of using it to promote his original La Palina brand which was immensely popular in the 1920s.The new tribute cigar is a medium/full smoke with an Ecuadorian habano wrapper and Nicaraguan binder and fillers. It starts out rather spicy: a rich cocoa-and-coffee base with notes of cedar, clove, pepper, and a touch of sweet toffee or nougat during the middle third; a rich treat with a lot of body and character.

It’s available in three sizes: Robusto (4¼” x 54), Corona (5½” x 42), and Toro (6″ x 50), and we have them all. (Also, the Red Label is available in a 5″ x 52 Robusto as well as the Toro featured above.) Tune in to Mr. Sam – and the Red Label! – while you can!

Padrón lovers, rejoice! We now stock the new Padrón Dámaso, another cigar named after a beloved ancestor… in this case, Dámaso Padrón (grandfather ofPadrón president José Orlando Padrón), who emigrated from the Canary Islands to Cuba in the late 1800s and began growing tobacco on a rented parcel of land in Pinar del Rio.The Dámaso is a cylindrical cigar, rather than box-pressed, a first for Padrón. It is also quite mild, bearing a Connecticut-seed wrapper (the country of origin is as yet undisclosed) around Nicaraguan binder and fillers.

We have two sizes in stock: The No. 8 (a 5½” x 48 corona) and the No. 15 (a 6″ x 52 toro). Come try this revolutionary new release and take a walk on the mild side with Grandpa Padrón!

This week I’m going to skip the review and talk about a segment of the pipe smoking hobby known as “cellaring”
tobacco, in particular tinned tobacco.

Cellaring is simply the act of amassing a personal stock of your favorite tinned blends for the purpose of aging, fending off the possibility of a tax increase or the discontinuation of the blend (which happens more often than you might think). The above list is just a few of the many reasons why we pipe people hoard tobaccos.

You may notice that some of the grizzled veteran pipe-smokers (you know who you are) who frequent the shop are, for the most part, very content-looking individuals. There’s a good reason for this: They have amassed a giant 90 – 250 pound personal stash of their very favorite pipe mixtures and therefore have every reason to feel content. There is no way they will outlive their stash. They are bombproof, invincible. You will also occasionally notice a grumpy pipe guy, the one scanning through all the tinned tobacco and complaining that there’s noEsoterica Penzance in stock. This is the guy who didn’t prepare for the Tobbaco-pocalypse.

Cellaring is easy. Get an old Rubbermaid container or a large cooler and start your personal stash of your favorite blend (or the ones you think will one day become favorites). Age those Virginia Perique blends and rest assured that in five years you are going to have some of the most nirvana-like pipe-smoking experiences you’ve ever known. Buy at today’s prices, not next year’s; suppliers are constantly raising prices and the consumer takes the hit. Don’t let this happen to you!

Take a Sharpie, write the purchase date on the tin, and place it in your container. Keep it stored in a cool, dry place and let nature do the work. Aging can do wonderful things to the flavor of pipe tobacco and you owe yourself that enjoyment. We here at ASW have a very large selection of tinned and bulk tobacco on hand (more than we’ve had in some time, to be honest) so come on in and see what’s available.

Feel free to come in and ask questions! We are all here to help and we are all currently active pipe-smokers, not just guys who sell pipes and tobaccos. I personally would enjoy taking the time to help you make some selections or to talk more about cellaring your favorite blends. Puff On!