Patrick Lagreid News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

1. BETTER THAN EXPECTED All of us at  halfwheel were pleasantly surprised by the overall mood of the show, which seemed pretty good. That’s a far cry from the last time we were leaving the Sands Expo Center when disgust with the PCA organization and its trade show were at all-time highs. Getting people to smile and be happy has been such a struggle for this trade show over the years, but—for the most part—it finally happened. Furthermore, I was surprised by the lack of fall-off for Day 3 attendance, something that had become a problem in 2018 and 2019. Miami Cigar & Co. was one of a nu...

PCA 2021: La Galera Patrick Lagreid typically handles our coverage of the La Galera booth, but this year, after our initial booth division, Patrick ended up with far more booths than everyone else. So, I took a few of the booths off Patrick’s list, and one of them was Jochy Blanco’s La Galera. When I stopped by the first time, the booth was very busy, so I took a couple of pictures and left. Then I came back at the end of the day and the booth was even busier. As it turns out, I showed up right as La Galera was raffling off a few trips to Procigar 2022.

Release Date: September 2020 Number of Cigars Smoked For Review: 3 The first thing I notice is that the cigar appears to have a triple cap, which isn’t a common sight on figurado vitolas. Two of the three samples have slightly darker feet, I’m not sure if that’s an intentional feature or just a coincidence. I really like the way the band helps to bring out some of the reddish colors in the wrapper. Once removed from the cellophane, the cigar smells a bit like an old room filled with leather; there’s also barnyard, creaminess and some sweetness. The foot is much sweeter thanks to some ...

Release Date: Dec. 11, 2020 Number of Cigars Released: Regular Production Number of Cigars Smoked For Review: 3 I’ve mentioned this before, but I try not to read anything about the cigars I’m reviewing until after I’m done smoking the cigars. Given that Patrick wrote the news story about this cigar and Brooks went to Blue Smoke to buy them, I hadn’t seen one until I pulled it out of my review box. The first thing I noticed was that this is close, but not the proper 7 7/16 (192mm) x 38 lancero; instead, it’s the more common 7-inch version we see from non-Cuban manufacturers. The seco...

There are less than a dozen hours of the year— the year—remaining. As I’ve done at this point of each year for over a decade, it’s time for an article filled with something we otherwise try to avoid: speculation. Prior to the creation of halfwheel, at a website I started called  TheCigarFeed, I’ve closed out the current year by asking 10 important questions for the cigar world for the upcoming year and trying to predict their outcomes. Some years, there is a struggle to get 10 questions and a very large drop off in importance after the first few questions. The 2020 list of questio...