Cigar Shopping (Zigarren)

In all fields of retail, especially those that dabble in luxury there are certainly those that wish to take advantage of ignorant customers. I’ve had my fair share of meeting these monkey’s in various fields, be that tea or wine, but certainly cigars too. Once in a while, you can meet someone who has motives other than just profit and is a joy to speak to and learn from. Danny from Zigarren’s is now my ambassador to the world of cigars. A foreign land to me, my intuition would have me believe it to be a great bridge between incense and beverages.

Several months ago after shopping at Chinook Center; May, Alice and I went to eat at Kinjo’s Sushi on McLeod Trail. As we were entering the front door, I saw a cigar shop across the street “Zigarren’s” — I wanted to go check it out but the timing was bad. Anyway here we are today, I just happened to be in the neighborhood so I stopped in. So cool.

First off, I went in through the backdoor. Once inside you’re in between 2 sets of doors and you have to ring the bell to get access. Once you open the next set of doors you enter the humidor. A blast of aromas from what looked like 3000+ cigars (I’m terrible at the estimate game) comes at you right away. Then in walks Danny — Mr. Miyagi in the flesh.

Everything I’ve ever read, heard, or thought up about cigars I tried to ask about. I had to head back to work so I limited myself to some extent, but I think I was in there for a good 20 minutes at least. I took some recommendations on where to begin my journey, and we’ll see where that takes me in the future. This is what I bought today:

Zigarren Store brand, Dominican, sugar added into binding glue
Cigar aromas: Hamster wood shavings, plywood, bitter chocolate, fermented leafs
Smoke flavour/aromas: Milk chocolate, walnut, fig/date, scorched marshmallow, black olive if it was sweet, dry apricot, toasted white bread

Don Tomas Maduro
Stables, Cocoa/Bitter chocolate, fermented leafs

Vega Fina (Hecho A Mano)
Cigar aromas: Horse fur, stables, hamster wood shavings
Smoke flavour/aromas: Hazelnut chocolate, earthy wood/leaf like roasted tea

With a bit of practice, I hope I can expand on these aroma impressions. 

Spanish cedar was a gift, I was asking about it once we started talking about lighters and Danny pulled out a sheet from behind the desk. To reiterate… Spanish cedar, not North American cedar. The important difference in that Spanish cedar burns nearly odorless by comparison. The idea is to splinter off bits of this wood and use them as kindle for the cigars.