no business like cigar business

Remember dear old dad

2007-06-13T13:37:00.001-07:00

Dear Son / Daughter / Wife / Friend,

I am writing you on behalf of dear old dad. This has been a tough year for him, he has spent hours upon hours working, watching football, tinkering in the garage and slaving over his grill. This year he probably has replaced the oil in your car, or helped you out with school tuition. He deserves a little something for all his effort. He deserves a membership to the best cigar club around!!

Dad will be smoking cigars with his buddies in no time with Stokes Cigar Club's monthly club selection. Every month our 4 cigars are hand packaged and gift-wrapped, and laid on a bed of Spanish Moss. We also ensure freshness by including a humidifier that lasts up to 6 weeks.

Sign up Dad for a membership today. Memberships range from 1 month to 1 year and we guarantee you won't get a better price, better selection, or better service than what you will get at Stokes Cigar Club.

Order today by 8pm CST to get it there in time!

Tell Dad you love him with Stokes!

Best,
James and Jon
Stokes Cigar Club Founders
stokescigar.com

PS - We now carry hygrometers, humidors, ashtrays and cigar cutters too!

Urban Cigar Legend

2007-05-30T11:21:00.000-07:00

"A man bought several boxes of cigars and had them insured against fire. When he had smoked them, he put in a claim against the insurance company that they had been destroyed by fire.

The company refused to pay, and the man sued. The judge ruled that the company had given the man a policy protecting against fire, and must pay.

As soon as the man accepted the money, the company had him arrested on a charge of arson."

Do you know where this originated? Snopes.com says that it originated from a book published in 1965. Interesting how an old story can get new legs on the internet

Toraño Takes Over Dunhill Cigar Distribution

2007-05-30T07:01:00.000-07:00

Toraño Takes Over Dunhill Cigar Distribution

The Dunhill Signed Range has been hard to find in the U.S. market. Produced by Toraño Cigars in Nicaragua for tobacco giant British American Tobaccos, the cigars had been distributed in very limited form by a unit of Reynolds Tobacco, but that changed last week. The cigars are now being distributed in the United States by their maker, Toraño Cigars, which sells to 1,400 cigar shops.

Read the rest from Cigar Aficionado

Gispert cigar review

2007-05-29T12:31:00.001-07:00

Gispert cigars. Stokes Rating: 91

Last night I smoked the Churchill and a friend smoked their Robusto. Both of us were very impressed. Construction was top notch. For a cigar that competes on price and has such a nice wrapper, it was good to see it hold together all the way through. Draw was consistent and burn was even.

These cigars are not going to knock you down when you smoke them and some smokers may eschew them due to the American fondness of a bold and strong cigar. If that is what you are looking for, then look elsewhere. Perhaps a CAO or Padron might be more up your alley, but if you are looking for a creamy, almost light smoke, in a great package then this is for you. To use the word light might be a misrepresentation. These cigars have plenty of body, and a certain woody/cedary taste to them. There was little to no bite or harshness and sat well on the palate.

I would recommend this for new cigar smokers or a nice summer smoke fit for a day at the lake.

self portrait

2007-05-11T08:48:00.000-07:00

On vacation I took this as my self portrait... Kind of dorky and trying to be hip, but I thought I would share it with my loyal 3 readers anyways!

Courts Side with NYC Cigar Bar

2007-05-08T11:48:00.000-07:00

From Cigar Aficionado

The Cigar Lounge at Merchants NY

A New York State Supreme Court Justice last week upheld the rights of a Manhattan cigar bar to stay smoky.

The Cigar Lounge at Merchants NY, a go-to smoke spot in the Big Apple since 1997, has been under fire from the New York City Health Department over its status as a "tobacco bar." The eastside lounge, located on 62nd Street at First Avenue, had been fighting the health department in the courts over the past few years. The department claimed that the establishment was not in accordance with the city's Smoke Free Air Act, which went into effect in March 2003. To legally be labeled as a "tobacco bar," a bar must have been in business since December 2001 -- without expansion or change of location -- and annually generate at least 10 percent of total gross revenue from the on-site sale of tobacco products.

"We opened as a cigar bar in 1997, and that's the way it was designed," said Richard Cohn, who owns the bar with Abraham Merchant. "We've never closed and never stopped – we are enforcing our rights…."

Merchants NY contended that it was in accordance with the law because it met all the specifications for exemption and that the health department was endeavoring to find ways in which to deny it its right to allow customers to puff indoors. The health department pointed to a change of ownership in 2003 and improperly reported revenues as grounds to refuse exemption.

The establishment counts its basement-level cigar lounge as a separate and self-sufficient business from the upstairs restaurant: having separate ventilation, bathrooms, hours and financial records. Both Merchants NY and the health department were in agreement that the 10 percent requirement for the lounge was met, but the department argued that the lounge and the restaurant had to be considered one entity and therefore did not meet the criteria.

Justice Alice Schlesinger's conclusion favored Merchants, ruling that it met the conditions for exemption and that the claims made by the health department were both "arbitrary and capricious in form and substance."

2007-04-19T10:33:00.001-07:00

cigars heal the world's ills?

2007-04-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

smoking ban is banned

2007-04-17T11:21:00.000-07:00

smoke law: the new frontier in legislation?

I suppose some people would like nothing more than taking away smoking rights...

obligatory salesman

2007-04-16T12:38:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I apologize to all readers immediately if you are grossed out by me plugging a product that my company sells. But, mostly, I want to tell all my readers of the awesomeness of Xikar's cutters and knives. At Stokes we only sell the cutters, but maybe we should get a few of their knives for sale as well. Then all the hate mail we get for selling cigars can be matched with hate mail for selling weapons. Which, by the way, cigars are not nearly as bad for you as everyone makes them out to be. Here is the true way to know how bad they are for you, call up prudential life insurance and find out the price difference for life insurance for cigar smokers and life insurance for cigarette smokers. Huge difference, and if a life insurance company doesnt seem to bothered by a couple of stogies, then maybe there is something to it. I digress... I will write more about Life Insurance and health later.

This post is supposed to be about the awesomeness of Xikar cigar cutters. I once, in my brilliance, decided to take my cutter apart. Must be the inner-engineer in me. Anyways, I got thing apart and lo-and-behold getting it back together resulted in me over-torquing the screw and thus broke my cutter. Alas, I felt like an idiot, but I thought I might try calling Xikar and seeing how much it would cost to fix. Since they have a lifetime guarantee, the cost amounted to $0.00. Well, I did have to pay postage, but otherwise totally free. So, I was totally surprised and they have earned my business personally as well as corporately. Stokes Cigar Club will only sell Xikar cutters. Because of their persuit of quality and commitment to their word is just like Stokes Cigar Club.

CAO Gold Maduro Cigar announced

2007-04-13T12:43:00.000-07:00

C.A.O. International Inc. has created a new version of its popular C.A.O. Gold brand. The C.A.O. Gold Maduro, which goes on the market this month, combines the filler blend and binder of the C.A.O. Gold with a maduro wrapper grown in Brazil.

The Gold Maduro is a C.A.O. concept cigar, plucked from the display known as an escaparate at company headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee. The escaparate is a glass-walled, humidified enclosure with 22 bins housing more than 400,000 cigars made from 11 different blends, none of them sold commercially until this release. The escaparate is one of the first things visitors encounter when entering the building, and the rich, heady aroma of tobacco hits their nose long before the cigars are seen.

“C.A.O. Gold Maduro was one of our very first concept cigars,” said C.A.O. president Tim Ozgener. “Over the past two years, we received such overwhelmingly positive feedback from guests of C.A.O. who sampled the blend that we decided to bring Gold Maduro to the marketplace.”

sourced from Cigar Insider April 10th, 2007

Exciting times for CAO lovers!

more cigar box guitars

2007-04-13T07:21:00.000-07:00

If anyone really is interested, here is a great site to get you thinking in the right direction.

cigarboxguitars.com

If I get a high class cigar box guitar, then I will up the prize to a 6 month membership to Stokes, plus a free tee and ashtray.

music to my ears

2007-04-13T07:02:00.000-07:00

So, there is a recent trend to see women carrying cigar box purses. In fact I have had several women ask me about getting extra cigar boxes to use as purses once they find out I am in the cigar business. But have you ever had anyone ask you for a cigar box to make a guitar? Turns out that cigars have quite a history in music.

So, I offer a prize to any Stokes reader, make a cigar box guitar that functions and send it to me, and I will send you some cigars and a Stokes tee. If anyone wants to make a really cool one that works really well, maybe we can auction it and donate the proceeds to charity.

Keep on Stoking!

cigar symphony

2007-04-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

"But for me, none of them tops the meaty aroma of a good cigar. Light 100 of them at once, and you have a cigar symphony. That night, at the club on Cañon Drive, we were like the Vienna Philharmonic."

From LA Times Column

cigar quote of the day

2007-04-12T09:19:00.000-07:00

Every cigar goes up in smoke.

- Brazilian Proverb

the inevitable first post

2007-04-11T21:06:00.000-07:00

Recently my family has been going through some tough times, probably the toughest we will have to go through for a long time. And I am not going to write some trite muse about how it will all be better some day. I am also not going to pretend that running the business has been easy during this tough time. But I will say this. When you are dealing with loss and grief, there aren't many words to apply to the situation. There are a lot of tears, yes, but very little words. And the words that people do offer are often shallow or unintelligible.

Mostly, it just takes time and love. Two things the world is pretty short on if you ask me. Also, as a man, it is hard to make an impact in these two areas. One of the best ways I have been getting through this whole thing is by smoking cigars with my Dad. Having a burning cigar gives me something to exert my energy on while we mull over our loss and grief. We remember the good times and we chat about our feelings. Sometimes, we men have a problem with this, however a good cigar always helps me calm down, focus, and be still. Mostly it has been a good time to be together doing something together and being able to talk and focus.

This isnt much of a first post, and I realize that I am dealing with a lot of issues right now, but I think it is worthwhile for me to ramble on about cigars and the impact a simple cigar has had on me as I go through this valley of grief. Not to rule what God is doing in my life, however cigars have been a nice avenue for discussions as we go through this time as a family.