Honors and sponsorships kept Altadis U.S.A. and some of its products in the spotlight this past fall.

In November, the cigar-maker’s A. Turrent Churchill cigar, recently introduced in the United States by the company, was rated 91 by Cigar Aficionado’s Cigar Insider, placing it in the “outstanding” category.

The introduction of A. Turrent coincides with the Turrent family’s 125th anniversary as cigar makers. The family history dates back five generations to 1880 when Alberto Turrent left Cuba for Mexico’s fertile San Andres Valley. Today, led by Alberto Turrent IV and his son Alejandro, the Turrents are the industry’s oldest family as well as Mexico’s largest tobacco growers and makers of premium cigars.

(more…)

From Howard Fischer at Capitol Media Services:

A self-proclaimed cigar aficionado is launching an initiative drive to help preserve his ability and that of other smokers to light up in restaurants and bars.

The measure would let business owners decide whether their establishments have to be smoke free. But those who choose to permit customers to indulge who have to post a “conspicuous sign” that smoking is allowed inside.

These businesses also would have to tell would-be employees that smoking is allowed, permitting them to decide if they want to work their anyway.

But Eric Ulis, who created the “Arizona Cigar Lobby” of tobacco shops, said Tuesday that nothing in his measure would prohibit cities from enacting their own tougher ordinances.

(more…)

The new Cigar Envy Discussion Forums are open.

There is a block in the right column menu that will take you there, or you can click on the link above. The Forums are free, and I hope you will enjoy them.

The new Forums will provide a different level of interaction than takes place here at the main CE blogazine or on the Cigar Envy Deals and Discussion email list at yahoogroups.

Talk about starting cigar passes and trades at the yahoo discussion group led me to set up Member Forums here at the main Cigar Envy site to provide a bit more privacy and a quicker response time than the yahoogroup gives. The active Cigar Pass forms at the discussion board are private, by invitation only from the pass moderators, and can only be viewed by members of each pass group. This way, members can share their home addresses, phone numbers and the like while doing passes without spreading confidential information widely on the web.

To gain admittance to a Cigar Pass, post your interest in the Register For Passes Here Forum and a moderator will admit you to a group as soon as possible. Please do not post your home address of other personal information in the open forums.

As long as I was setting up the Pass Forums, I decided to set up a full message board. There are forums for member reviews of cigars, cigar accessories, and retailers. There is also a General Talk category with areas for politics, humor, disaster relief and other charities and other subjects. Livin’ Large is the are for diversions such as wine, beer, and liquor as well as sports talk, travel, entertainment and more. I’ve also set up some areas for pipe smokers. To protect member privacy, most of the forums are not visible until someone has registered.

(more…)

Under the heading of “Take That, Anti-Smoking Extremists” comes this story from Chad Binette at the University of Central Florida of a breakthrough that could affect all of our lives. The much-maligned tobacco plant could end up being the miracle health aid of the 21st century.

Tobacco is our friend.

Despite my banter, the story is a serious and important one. Read on:

Enough anthrax vaccine to inoculate everyone in the United States could be grown inexpensively and safely with only one acre of tobacco plants, a University of Central Florida molecular biologist has found.

Henry Daniell, a professor in the Burnett College of Biomedical Sciences, conducted his research on the anthrax vaccine with help from scientists at the National Institutes of Health.

(more…)

Regular readers may have noticed that there have been no updates here for the last few days.

The reason for the frozen condition of Cigar Envy since last week is directly related to another freezing event. I’m talking about the ice storm that hit the southeastern United States last week. It has caused hundreds of thousands of people throughout the region to be without electric power and other utilities for several days.

I wish that I was one of them.

Instead, I spent a couple of days in the hospital after an auto accident related to the storm. I was travelling in South Carolina on business when the weather turned foul. I was in a large pickup truck, and having no problems since I’ve lived and driven in places from Michigan to Arizona to New York and know how to drive in bad road conditions.

Unfortunately, that isn’t true of all people.

(more…)

From Rich Perelman at Cigar Cyclopedia:

Who can doubt that fact is stranger than fiction?

A tale that would be rejected as too fanciful in Hollywood actually took place, beginning in East Brunswick, New Jersey and Tampa, Florida in 1999.

Paul Magier, for just three years the owner of a tiny cigar company called Puros de Armando Ramos, closed a deal to buy 46,000 pounds of tobacco for $2.5 million, an incredible $54.35 per pound.

Expensive?  Yes.  Did he overpay because of lack of experience?  No.

This tobacco was special.

It was Cuban.

And it was legal.

Really.

(more…)