Ok, so here’s the deal, for most of my adult life I have been smoking cigars – but even in my 30’s I feel like a cigar novice. I want that to change. I want to become a cigar aficionado.

As we are in lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tier 4 in London, I have decided I need something new to keep me occupied. I have set myself a new challenge and I want to try and document this on my blog. Whether I stick to the challenge who knows… I hope I do…

So what’s the challenge I hear you ask…

This Christmas I purchased the book ‘The Cigar Companion: The Connoisseur’s Guide‘, inside it features a section titled ‘The Cigar Directory‘ in it is an A-Z list of cigars. The challenge I have set myself… I want to try every single Cigar brand in that directory. I have no idea how many of them there are in the book, probably approx 26. I then want to review each one, giving it a score out of 0-10 (O being bloody awful, 10 being absolutely bloody delightful). I am hoping to find a few new favourite cigars. I have no idea how out of date the directory is (the book was published in 1997), or whether all the cigars are available in the UK – but that will be part of the thing I will learn and document here.

In the meantime, I have also purchased a brand new humidor Germanus ‘Turricula’ Humidor. My old one, in a flat box was rubbish and I could never get the humidifier to work. This new one seems to be active, but I have no idea or understanding of what humidity really is or does. I have also just purchased a Boveda Smart Hygrometer – have no idea how it works, but should alert me if I go above or below the min and max humidity for cigars via my mobile phone.

Right so now that’s all out of the way… here’s the first cigar brand I need to order… the Arturo Fuente!