Summary:

Excellent medium-body cigar, rich and complex in taste. This one goes in my personal humidor in the “everyday, short, evening smoke” category.

Background Information:

The Rojito is 4 1/2″ long and has a ring gauge of 50 (making it a Rothschild even though you’ll often see it mis-called a Robusto). A Honduran San Agustin wrapper covers a binder made from Connecticut Broadleaf. The filler is an interesting blend of Dominican, Honduran and Mexican tobacco. The cigar is manufactured in the Dominican Republic at General Cigar’s Dominicana factory.

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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 Cigar Jack comes a tip about the Georgetown Cigar Party, a protest against the anti-smoking legislation recently passed in the state of Washington.

I’m in the process of getting more information from contacts in Washington which I hope to pass along later today, but the gist of the idea is to have a protest modelled after the Boston Tea Party. It will be held on Friday, December 2, 2005 from 3:00 to 6:00 pm at Rain City Cigar, 5963 Corson Ave., S., Suite 130, Seattle, Washington. Phone number for the store is (206) 767-3619 and their email address is raincitycigar@qwest.net.

Some of the tobacco industry people who will be at the Party include: Patrick Dewitt of General Cigar Co., Steve Martin of Altadis USA, and Don Hanes of Monarch Marketing. The event is being characterized in a flyer put out by Rain City Cigar as “an Act of Resistance,” where “great blue clouds of smoke” will be cast into the air before a copy of Initiative 901 will be symbolically thrown into the trash and the group will prepare for a protest march on Washington’s capital, Olympia.

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