Humidor

Have you ever bought a really expensive cigar and it was dry or just not as good as other times you have had it?

Yeah it happens to the best of us...If I owned a cigar brand, I would make sure that all the shops that sold my sticks maintained the perfect conditions of my cigars.

When I go to a cigar shop anywhere in the world, I like to ask the vendor how they buy their cigars and how many middle men are between the rollers and the shop. The shops I frequent here in Seattle, have direct relationships with the growers and rollers and use their direct reps to bring the cigars into the USA.

Also, look at the walls of your cigar shop's humidor...is it 100% Spanish cedar? They should be. Here's a picture of my fav. humidor in Seattle at FK Kirsten's in Ballard.

The start of cigar curation

I started smoking cigars in college, kind of just after the cigar boom of the early 2000s. It was kind of one of those things you did before you were allowed to drink, or to give off a persona, project a lifestyle, etc. (ie. cigar aficionado)

When I started working for a small but fast growing restaurant chain, I found out that if you were to smoke cigars, it gave you a free pass to spend extra time with the CEO and key vendors. Being an intern in accounting, that extra face time gave me big growth opportunities and eventually gave me the vital connections I needed to open my own restaurant chain. We have now grown to three locations and are looking at adding a Concessions StepTruck.

Being that I was in college I was in a "learning experience the world" mindset. Smoking cigars started to become more of an obsession, not just the smoking part, but the process of how it gets from seed to smoke and everything in between. In this blog I will attempt to continue this learning for myself and the rest of my readers and give reviews, information, and suggestions for my fellow cigar fans and future cigar curators.