Villiger Trill Cigar Review

If you’re like most cigar smokers, your exposure to the Villiger company is limited to their line of machine-made cigars, made in Switzerland—like the Villiger Export or the Villiger Kiels. I’ve always liked the Villiger Export—in the Sumatra wrapper—and the Villiger Premium #7. These are well-made, mild, consistently satisfying small cigars that don’t require much thought, time, or trouble to enjoy.

Sometime back in April, I pulled the trigger on Cigar King's“Villigers Gone Wild” sampler— twenty-five cigars in all, five of each from the Villiger Trill, Villiger Talanga, Villiger Colorado, Villiger Kreme, and Villiger Cabarete lines.  At $49.95, I thought it was a pretty great deal on a fairly slept-on line of cigars. Although founded in 1888 and possessing a solid footprint in Europe, Villiger is a relative unknown in the American premium cigar market. Today’s cigar—the Villiger Trill Habano Gordo—is the result of Villiger Cigars North America's more aggressive push into that segment of the cigar smoking public. According to halfwheel, the Trill was released to retailers in April 2014. It is made in Jochy Blanco’s Tabacalera La Palma factory in the Dominican Republic.

Something about this cigar’s branding seems self-consciously cigar lifestyle: from the gold ribbon around the foot of the cigar to the sharp black and gold band, complete with scroll work and emblazoned with the motto, “Can’t hustle a hustler.” A little off-putting, but from an aiming-for-irreverent-and-hitting-silly standpoint, things can always be worse. I’m reminded of Zino’s "His Majesty's Smoking Dawgs" ads.

Everything else about this cigar is no nonsense. The first third of the Trill is nutty, with a tart flavor coming from the wrapper. The retrohale is spicy, the cigar producing a nutty aroma with some pepper spice. The head of the cigar cracked somewhat when I cut it, but since none of the other four Trills in the sampler had this problem, I’m attributing the cracking to the difference between the humidity/temperature in my humidor and the humidity/temperature outside. Either way, it wasn’t a serious obstacle.

Now sporting a solid gray ash, the nutty, peppery flavors continue into the second third of the cigar—the spice in the retrohale is pronounced. I notice here what I can only call the habano wrapper’s signature tangy spice—savory and sharp.

The Trill’s strength increases in the final third, with pepper spice and some sour flavors on the finish and a spicy retrohale.

At 6 ¼ x 60, the Habano Gordo size is a little larger than I usually prefer, but the cigar nevertheless smokes and draws well. Since its release I’ve smoked almost a dozen Villiger Trills. While not exactly a strong smoke, I always find its strength just sneaky enough to keep me interested and its flavors solid and enjoyable. Don’t hesitate to pounce on any Villiger Trill deals that come your way. 

And until next time...
Smoke thoughtfully.

Microhistory: Small Things Make For Big Storytelling

Sometime around the year 1660, in the southern French town of Tarascon, Ruben de la Vialle and his friends entered a lavishly-decorated cave. Images of bison, ibex, stags, and “heavy jowled” horses were everywhere. Like generations of young men since, de la Vialle marked the occasion by writing his name on a wall—less than four feet from “a large, well-preserved, and extraordinarily striking depiction of bison and ibex painted in black.” Also like generations of young men since, there is no evidence that he—or his friends—thought much of the work already on display.

Known as the Niaux Cave, these paintings belong to the Magdalenian Period—they predate de la Vialle and his companions by several thousand years. But as David Lewis-Williams observes in his work on cave art, The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art, this was no willful act of vandalism. Living two centuries before Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was first published, de la Vialle and his crew subscribed to the consensus view on human origins and the relatively young Earth. “[V]irtually everyone believed that human history started miraculously at a moment that was not very long ago.” Before people had an idea of their prehistory, they simply couldn’t see cave art for what it was: the community work of thousands of years of human activity.

We suffer from the same case of tunnel vision when studying big historical events. Sweeping “macro” histories tend to warp the reality of life on the individual level—projecting a more modern, omniscient “big picture” perspective on events lived moment-to-moment.  The microhistorian, by contrast, shrinks the field of view, focusing instead on “small units and how people conduct their lives within them.”* As a storytelling device, microhistories dramatize larger events in ways that are relatable, digestable, and blur what we think of as indelible race, ethnic, class, and gender boundaries.

My first interaction with microhistory came as a history undergrad at West Virginia University studying early American History. First, through the story of George Robert Twelves Hewes—a modest Boston shoemaker who participated in both the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party; then, incredulously, discovering that there was an exhaustive history of the color mauve (Simon Garfield’s Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World). A series of one-word microhistories was soon to follow (Rats, Salt, Cod).

As we’ll see in his history of the Johnstown flood, David McCullough uses a full complement of people and their work—railroad employees, telegraph operators, pastors, merchants, captains of industry—to chronicle the afternoon of May 31, 1889 in Pennsylvania's Conemaugh Valley. McCullough explained his approach in a 2012 interview with 60 Minutes. “The only way to teach history, to write history, to bring people into the magic of transforming yourself into other times, is through the vehicle of the story. It isn't just a chronology. It's about people. History is human.”

If the town meeting or the local referendum is the “laboratory of democracy,” then ordinary people are the vessels where great currents of thought and event, shared ideas and values, often collect. Anyone who’s ever exchanged bits of folklore with friends and neighbors understands the truth of this statement. These are the stories we tell amongst ourselves, about ourselves, and as close as the historian—and the casual reader—can get to life in our skin without feeling the heat from the blast furnace or the dog-days-of-summer chill of the coal mine.

*see Sigurdur Gylfi Magnusson’s "What Is Microhistory?" 

Book Review: Mountain Time

Mitch Rozier has problems. He’s estranged from his two kids, neither of which quite understands his budding relationship with Lexa McCaskill. The environmental newspaper he works for is going under. And now his father, Lyle, has called him home to Twin Sulphur Springs, Montana with another get rich quick scheme. Enter into the mix Mariah McCaskill—Lexa’s freewheeling sister. A photojournalist home from her latest whirlwind tour of dangerous assignments, Mariah is ready to ambush Mitch with a collaborative effort that will force him to confront his troubled relationship with his father.

We’re first introduced to the McCaskill clan in English Creek—the first book of Doig’s “Montana Trilogy.” The McCaskill family history is intertwined with the first century of Montana statehood. The story of four generations of McCaskills sprawls across the pages of the trilogy: from Scottish forebear Angus McCaskill’s story in Dancing At The Rascal Fair (book two); to his son Varick and grandson Jick’s story in English Creek (book one); to Jick and his daughter Mariah’s trans-Montana Winnebago adventure in Ride With Me, Mariah Montana (book three).

For decades, this was author Ivan Doig’s well-traveled terrain: a post-boom town, post-Great Depression Montana, still struggling to find an identity somewhere between dude ranches and rodeos and coffee shops, craft beer, and predatory corporate ranching. 

The tension between Big Sky country as natural beauty and nature’s bounty—between past promise and present frustration—works its way through Mountain Time, and through the personal lives of its characters. We find a conflicted Lyle Rozier—ready to reduce his patrimony to rubble to pave roads for natural gas exploration, yet unexpectedly sentimental about his work building a fire tower for the CCC (one of the Roosevelt administration’s “alphabet agencies”) in the national forest’s “primitive area.” Mitch is haunted by the small town hopes he’s carried with him since leaving his hometown for the Univerity of Washington on a football scholarship; and his vagabond life in print media ever since. And Lexa fears that the life of sad compromises she left in Alaska following the Exxon Valdez spill is visiting her relationship with a suddenly adrift Mitch in Seattle.

Doig, who died in April of this year, hated seeing his work dismissed as “regional writing.” “I don’t think of myself as a ‘Western’ writer. To me, language—the substance on the page, that poetry under the prose—is the ultimate ‘region,’ the true home, for a writer.”  The prose of Mountain Time is spare and haunting, painting scenes specific to the cold, often hard lives lived in the shadow of mountains; but the themes are universal, and not without plainspoken truth and beauty. Or, as Mariah says to Lexa (quoting their father)—describing the Hebner clan, their hard luck written in their features—“All the faces in that family rhyme.” 

Screwpop Cigar Cutter

I’m never sure where the industry is trending with large format cigars. I remember a time when a 56 ring gauge cigar was considered huge. But in the era of 70+ ring gauge cigars, your average guillotine-style cutter just won’t do, and guillotines designed to accommodate even today’s ridiculously large cigars seem like an exercise in designed obsolescence. So it was with these thoughts in mind that I finally, after almost fourteen years of cigar smoking, turned to cigar scissors. 

In my experience, most cigar scissors suffer from a fatal design flaw. The hinged design either crushes the cap, or it pulls the cap off—rather than shears a portion of it off. Inexpensive, entry level scissors aren’t very sharp. And unless they fold, they’re just not portable.

About a month ago, Craig Vanderslice of the Cigar Craig blog sent me a prize package of eight Toscano-style cigars (think of the cheroot in every Clint Eastwood spaghetti western) and a neat little gadget—the Screwpop cigar cutter. Screwpop bills its products “the world’s most clipable keychain tools.” With a line of keychain-friendly tools that includes a Chapstick-holder and Travel Stash (for storing money, emergency meds, etc.), I’m inclined to believe them.

Although it resembles a guillotine cutter, The Screwpop’s hinged design makes it adaptable to wherever the ballooning cigar trend strays. The two halves of the Screwpop swing wide open, which makes this a better than average cutter for 70+ ring gauge cigars. For a cigar tool that fits conveniently on your key ring, it’s surprisingly sharp. The folded wing finger rests feel comfortable in the hand, giving a fairly high level of control.  And the blades fit together nicely, so there’s no deflection when cutting. I’ve been using the cutter for the better part of a month—on cigars of all sizes—with little complaint.

There are only two downsides, as far as I can tell. (1) For such a small cutter, the Screwpop is a little heavy. So if your key ring already looks like it belongs to the caretaker at Papa John's mansion, you may have second thoughts about keeping the Screwpop on your person. And (2) the bottle opener takes some practice.

But all things considered, this is a nice add to your cigar tool collection. And clocking in at under $20, it’s reasonably priced.

Until next time...
Smoke thoughtfully

Book Review: The Paradox of Choice

We live in an era of virtually limitless choice. Individual freedom in the Western world has never been greater. Yet dissatisfaction with our daily lives is high, stress and its physical complaints are on the rise, and clinical depression—particularly among young adults—is at historic levels. The gap between personal opportunity (and achievement) and personal satisfaction is growing. We're doing better but feeling worse about it.

Barry Schwartz, a professor of social theory, has identified this paradox as “the tyranny of choice.” "As the number of choices we face increases, freedom of choice eventually becomes a tyranny of choice (Schwartz, 234).”

Relying on the research of other social scientists, Schwartz divides the world into two groups: “maximizers” and “satisficers.” “Maximizers” look to achieve the best possible outcomes from their choices. “Satisficers” settle for something that is “good enough.” But it’s not that satisficers don’t have criteria and standards: rather, once a search yields a choice that satisfies those criteria and standards, the satisficer is content with his/her choice. “The difference between the two types is that the satisficer is content with the merely excellent as opposed to the absolute best (Schwartz, 780.)” And maximizers, almost without exception, suffer terribly for their pursuit of perfection.

Social comparisons—unavoidable in the era of social media—convince us we are losing ground in the rat race. “A person living in a blue-collar neighborhood forty years ago might have been content with his lower-middle-class income because that brought him a life comparable to what he saw around him…But not anymore. Now this person gets to see how the wealthy live countless times every day (Schwartz, 190).” The democratization of information in the digital age has carried over into our aspirations: anyone’s life could be ours. Adaptation and spent emotional and time resources guarantee that, over time, we will be less satisfied with the choices we have made, or stop making choices altogether—indecisiveness.

To counter this endless angst, Schwartz offers strategies that enable the individual to narrow the field of available choices and increase their contentment with the choices they’ve made. He suggests that we make more personal rules (e.g., "always wear a seatbelt";"never drink more than two glasses of wine in the evening"; “never shop in more than three stores for an article of clothing”). Rules allow us to avoid endless, deliberate decision making. To limit harmful positional comparisons, Schwartz suggests finding your own, narrow social and professional circle and staying in it—“staying in your own pond.” “Instead of comparing ourselves with everyone, we try to mark off the world in such a way that in our pond, in comparison with our reference group, we are successful. Better to be the third highest paid lawyer in a small firm and make $120,000 a year than to be in the middle of the pack in a large firm and make $150,000 (Schwartz, 190).”

Make room for adaptation. Understand that, over time, your new luxury car will return less and less joy on the time and work you’ve invested in earning and researching it. When you’ve found “the best” (wine, cigars, restaurants, etc.), enjoy the best on only rare occasions—even if you can afford to enjoy the best regularly. “What’s the point of great wines [or cigars, meals, etc.]  if they don’t make you feel great (Schwartz, 187)?”

And finally—and maybe most helpfully—cultivate gratitude in your life. Studies indicate that gratitude doesn’t come naturally to most of us. As an exercise, keep a notepad at your bedside: every night, write down five things that you were grateful for that day. They can be small victories (finishing a difficult article in a magazine) or large victories (a promotion at work), but the habit of thinking about and recording them will make gratitude more natural, and your satisfaction with the life you live—rather than the life you want, or the life you’re told you should want—greater.

 "Good enough" is ultimately better than you’d ever suspect.

601 La Bomba Review

There’s an old joke around these parts that asks, “What’s West Virginia’s official state flower?”
Punch line: The satellite dish.

Like most digs at what’s still a largely rural state, the joke worked because it contained more than a grain of truth. Homes with little else in the way of creature comforts had at least a satellite dish; just as towns—no matter how sleepy—had at least a Rite Aid, a Family Dollar, or a Dairy Queen. A booming West Virginia metropolis had all three.

There was a real possibility last week that the punch line “an umbrella” would have also worked. I can’t remember a wetter July in the Charleston area, or less welcoming conditions for the outdoor cigar smoker. But that’s not much of an obstacle for an addictive personality with cabin fever, and the soggy weather broke just long enough for me to enjoy a 601 La Bomba Napalm.

These cigars are made in Erik Espinosa’s La Zona factory in Esteli, Nicaragua. I’m pretty impressed with almost all of La Zona’s output, from the 601 lines down to the humble La Zona Habano and La Zona Connecticut lines. And I was excited to hear that Erik is reviving the Murcielago brand—an enjoyable cigar with great imagery (Murcielago translates to English as “bat”).

Speaking of imagery, the 601 La Bomba is forbidding. With names throughout the line like the “Atomic,” the “Nuclear,” and the “Sake Bomb,” and a pigtail cap worked to a “fuse” that runs alongside the cigar, the La Bomba evokes a blend packed with heaping amounts of strong, spicy ligero tobaccos. Sold in boxes of ten, the Napalm is a large robusto—a 5x52, rather than the more traditional 5x50.

Don't let the name or the scary imagery intimidate you. This IS a powerful cigar. But if you can weather the peppery blast of the first third, the La Bomba settles into a complex, full-bodied treat, loaded with dark fruit and syrupy sweet flavors.

There’s some talk in the blogosphere about what this cigar was like when it was still in the hands of Pepin Garcia. I can’t speak to that—I never smoked any of the Pepin-made La Bombas. But the peppery opening remains true to Pepin form. And I can say that, like a once-legendary athlete, if the 601 La Bomba has “lost a step,” it had it to lose. This is still a great cigar. 

Welcome to Leaves & Leaf!

My goals with this blog are as simple as they are personal and global: I want to be more active and engaged in two hobbies that I enjoy—reading and cigar smoking—and share my experiences with like-minded bookworms and brothers [and sisters] of the leaf (BOTL).

Each post is a snapshot in time: the book that I happen to be reading on a particular day, with the cigar I happen to be smoking. I won’t (consciously) be selecting cigars based on what I’m reading, or vice versa. But I will give a general overview of each book, and tell you whether or not—in my opinion—it complements the cigar smoking experience (or however you choose to spend your free time). There is a universe of cigar-friendly pairings: some obvious, others…not so much. I know of several cigar/lifestyle blogs that join cigars with beer; cigars with whiskey; cigars with coffee; cigars with guns; cigars and golf, etc. I can’t think of many that join cigars with books, even though many cigar smokers report enjoying a good cigar and a good read.

You should probably expect music reviews, too--especially of the jazz variety.

I find cigar ratings highly subjective—and here I’m lifting some wisdom from Joel Sherman’s book Nat Sherman’s A Passion For Cigars (a great resource for anyone new to cigar smoking). I’ve always thought that the “best” cigar is a cigar that you enjoy, and that can vary from cigar to cigar (even in the same box); or depend on the condition of the cigar (“too dry” or “too wet”?); or when you smoke it and how you feel when you smoke it: on an empty stomach or after a heavy meal? Early in the morning or late at night?  Leisurely celebrating a big promotion or rushing from errand to errand?

So because there is no perfectly-controlled environment for cigar smoking, and no one-cigar-fits-all-tastes approach, there are no ratings here.

Thank you for reading, and until next time…
Smoke thoughtfully.