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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Tabacos de la Cordillera™ has introduced its new Variety Sampler, with 3 each of its flagship Cumbres de Puriscal™ premium cigars in Gold, Silver, and Emerald bands. The cellophane-wrapped mini-bundles of 9 cigars are available in 2 of the most popular shapes … Robusto (5″ x 50) and Torpedo (6″ x 52).

Company Director John Vogel states, “Cigar lovers now save 40% off the cost of buying 3 of the regular 5-packs of each of the Gold, Silver, and Emerald lines. Being new to the market, we want to make it more attractive for smokers … especially those who favor Cuban cigars … to discover our unique and incomparable cigars.” The breakout company is the world’s only cigar maker to grow tobacco from “ancestral” pre-Castro seeds that date as far back as 1945, to Cuba’s Golden Age of cigars. Vogel, a graduate agronomist and 40-year genetical researcher in the premium cigar industry, grows all the tobacco naturally on Tabacos de la Cordillera’s 65-acre farm near the Costa Rican mountain town of Santa Marta de Puriscal.

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From Julia Preston (NYT):

Cuba cannot enforce the trademark of Cohiba cigars, one of its most prestigious brands, in the United States because of the decades-old trade embargo against President Fidel Castro’s government, a federal appeals court ruled. The Second Circuit Court in New York overturned a May 2004 district court decision that General Cigar, an American company, had violated trademark laws by selling cigars under the Cohiba name in the United States.

Although Cuba never registered the Cohiba trademark in the United States, the lower court judge found that the name was famous enough to deserve protection. But the appeals court ruled that the embargo bars Cuba from acquiring any American trademarks.

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.

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From Martin Fricker at The Mirror comes this piece on an upcoming auction of JFK memorabilia–including a couple of humidors still containing the cigars favored by President Kennedy:

This is history under the hammer… a bidding war for some of the most astonishing American memorabilia that has ever come on to the market.

Thousands of items that once belonged to John F Kennedy are up for grabs, many of them on internet auction site eBay.

But the glory pieces will be auctioned off in New York - including the watch he wore during his 1961 presidential inauguration and the flags that flew on his limousine when he was assassinated.

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Cigar Jack has a brief guest review of a Cuban Bolivar Petit Corona that rates it a 9.5 and has some very positive things to say about it. The review is based on 1990 cigars.

There is also a more detailed review of this cigar over at My Cigar Blog , based on 2003 cigars, that says the brand “lives up to its hype” and is “highly recommended.”

So, if you are not a U.S. citizen and if prime Cuban cigars are legal for you to “consume,” you might want to take note of it.