Tropical Storm Alberto, the first named storm of the 2006 hurricane season, has brought heavy rains to Cuba’s tobacco-growing western province of Pinar del Rio.

Initial reports are that the weather had not severely affected the tobacco crop because the harvest has been completed. The leaves used to make the island’s famed cigars are already inside curing houses and need only be protected from excess humidity or storm damage to the buildings.

More than 25,400 people have been evacuated from the Pinar del Río Province due to the passage of the storm. Alberto, which formed during the morning of June 11 in the southeast part of the Gulf of Mexico, was moving away from Cuba’s coasts.

However, the Defense Council in Pinar del Rio has instructed that all precautionary measures be taken to protect human lives and economic assets, and warned that the danger was not yet over. The possibility of increased flooding in low-lying areas near reservoirs continues according to reports from the area.

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Matt at Matt’s Cigar Journal has a review up of the Camacho Select Torpedo. One thing that he mentioned got my attention right away.

“A fantastic, flavorful Cameroon that is as good or better than any other Cameroon I have smoked.”

Check out the rest of his review at his blog.

I am very fond of Cameroons, so this is a cigar that I plan to pick up and sample in the near future. Matt had a chance to sample some of the pre-production versions of this particular cigar and says that the production version has been kicked up a notch.

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From Karin Goodwin at The Sunday Times, Scotland:

He may have saved the country from Nazi occupation but even Winston Churchill is not exempt from the tentacles of political correctness.

Because of the ban on smoking in public places, Britain’s greatest wartime prime minister will be without his trademark cigar when he is portrayed on stage at the Edinburgh Fringe festival later this year.

Mel Smith, the comedian and actor who will play him in a production of Allegiance, a play about a little-known meeting between Churchill and Michael Collins, the Irish revolutionary, could be forced to use a plastic replacement.

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By way of David Savona at Cigar Aficionado:

Companies selling a Cohiba cigar called counterfeit by General Cigar Company were ordered to cease making, importing, and selling the cigars by a Reno, Nevada judge.

The order, issued by U.S. District Court Judge Brian E. Sandoval on June 2, also prohibits the defendants in a lawsuit filed by General from claiming that they have “any legal right” to use the Cohiba trademark, according to General Cigar. General Cigar owns the U.S. rights to the Cohiba cigar name.

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From Peter Vincent at the Sydney Morning Herald:

In an era where cigarette smoking is in decline for its health effects and faces increasing social censure, there has been quiet growth in the popularity of the cigar.

The theory goes that cigars are about more than just smoking. Sure, aficionados will praise the complex taste of the world’s best cigars, which are made around the Caribbean. But it’s also about how and where you smoke them.

“For me, a cigar is not an everyday thing, it’s something I spoil myself with,” says Spiro Ellul, a Melbourne collector and cigar smoker.

“I spend up to two hours smoking one, with a nice glass of red or a port and I’ll drift off and reflect on my daily life and organise my thoughts.”

Ellul spent about $15,000 last year collecting cigars. He has about 50 boxes in storage. True aficionados leave cigars to age for at least a year in a controlled humidity of between 65 and 75 per cent.

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