Nicaragua Play by Play
Alex Svenson
BlogAdministrator, Everyone, ForumsAdministrator, Moderator, Owners, Registered Users Posts: 1,204
So I hate Twitter but guys have asked for more pay by play from my trips. So I am going to use this tread to give you guys a play by play of my trip to Nicaragua this week. I will post pics when I can.
330am wakeup in Chicago. Driver comes at . Arrived airport 445 for a 550 flight. Not too crowded and grabbed breakfast at the dunkin donuts kiosk.
6am travel agent did a great job on the seats..... So I thought. Got the exit row for extra leg room since i am a towering six feet five inches but the other big guys on the flight had the same deal so while I can stretch out the legs, we are cramped up top shoulder to shoulder.
10am arrived Miami and met Josh. For those of you who don't know, Josh is my right hand man at cigar,com along with tim. We grabbed a rum and coke at the admirals club and hustled to our gate to meet our flight to Managua. We were one of the last ones on and as soon as I entered the plane I heard someone holler out my name. I looked down the aisle and saw pete Johnson from tatuaje cigars and don pep in Garcia. We exchanged hellos before finding our ways to our seats. They are yelling at me to turn off my iPad. More to follow when I get to Nicaragua.
330am wakeup in Chicago. Driver comes at . Arrived airport 445 for a 550 flight. Not too crowded and grabbed breakfast at the dunkin donuts kiosk.
6am travel agent did a great job on the seats..... So I thought. Got the exit row for extra leg room since i am a towering six feet five inches but the other big guys on the flight had the same deal so while I can stretch out the legs, we are cramped up top shoulder to shoulder.
10am arrived Miami and met Josh. For those of you who don't know, Josh is my right hand man at cigar,com along with tim. We grabbed a rum and coke at the admirals club and hustled to our gate to meet our flight to Managua. We were one of the last ones on and as soon as I entered the plane I heard someone holler out my name. I looked down the aisle and saw pete Johnson from tatuaje cigars and don pep in Garcia. We exchanged hellos before finding our ways to our seats. They are yelling at me to turn off my iPad. More to follow when I get to Nicaragua.
Comments
This sounds like an awesome trip.
3pm arrive esteli and knowing we need cigars stat head right to the fernandez factory. We go strait to the office and greet AJ and his business partner Kris. Immediately, AJ is pulling us downstairs to the factory floor to check stuff out. Two bodegas are full with dozens of brands. Each aging room had close to 700,000 cigars. I love the sight. He explains that with all the rain in esteli, he has had to age cigars longer than usual and the bodegas are backing up. He hands our group two cigars, one habano and one maduro, both measuring 4 x 58. He tells us the are "Fernanditos" which translates to little fernandez cigars.. He wants our opinion on the blends as he has been playing with them for a new project. I smoke the habano and it comes out of the gate strong with lots of spice but settles down nicely. The maduro was good but I felt lacked some complexity. We gave AJ our tasting notes and relocated to the packaging department where they were busy banding Diesel Shorty Cigars. Shorty is blown away, grabs a few 5 packs of the table to smoke later at dinner. From the packaging department, we go back up to the office where a fresh batch of cuban coffee is waiting for us. We sip coffee and return to shooting the ***. AJ reappears 20 minutes later with two new samples. They are triple maduros he has been working on for a proposed line extension for the Verdadero line. The rain is picking up and we have had a long day of travel so we take the cigars to go and head back to the house. We sit down and light up the triple maduros.
530pm we arrive back at the house and commence smoking the triple maduro cigars which we had been drooling over the entire car ride. Josh and I both agree that one of the blends has some potential but needs some changes as everything is perfect but the finish is just a tad too bitter. We add to our agenda for tomorrow to look over the blend with AJ and make some additional tweaks. As soon as we finish our notes there is a knock on the door. The factory manager remembered we were out of cigars and dropped of 10 of the Diesel Unlimiteds and 10 Man O War Ruination so we had something to smoke at dinner.
I am attaching some pics. One is of Pete and Pepin hitting the duty free in managua after we cleared immigration while we waited for our bags. The other is of Shorty and I on the production floor in front of the tables. As a gift, Shorty brought us some of his logo panama style hats which we are sporting in the pic. A little blurry I know, but we snagged them with our iphone.
edit: i have seen in the past forum updates (even new platforms) that retain all posts and all post counts.
i hope that is what happens here as well.