Sancho Panza Coronas

In my last post dedicated to the match between Cubans and Dominicans, I mentionned I smoked a Sancho Panza Corona. It was a pretty decent smoke. Quite mild, which I greatly appreciate for an afternoon smoke. Well you could tell by the colour of this cigar, very light indeed.

Brand : Sancho Panza
Format : Corona
Origin : Cuba
My Rating : BBB+ ( pls. refer to my Cigar Rating chart)

Cubans vs. Dominicans (part 2)

I am now fully recovered (pls. refer to my last post on Cubans vs. Dominicans), and I could smoke my first Cuban today (Sancho Panza, Corona). Yesterday evening I smoked the last Davidoff which was still sleeping in my cave. I would like, once again, to spend a few lines to try to describe my feelings.

Davidoff's combustion is perfect. Simply perfect. Davidoff cigars burn way better than most of the Cubans I have ever had. This Sancho Panza I had today, did not burn half as good as my Davidoff yesterday... But hey, get real ! I would prefer to smoke one Sancho Panza, rather than two or even three Davidoffs... Sad but true.

Christmas time ? Cigar time !

Yipee! Look I what I've got for Christmas : a brand new humidor for my babies! 100% cedar wood, lovely design & colour (blue-grey). Really happy about this!

Cubans vs. Dominicans

Got sick last week (fever, coughing, the usual cold you get during Paris winter)... I had to stop smoking for a week or so. Then I felt I could not start right away to smoke my regular Cubans again. I felt that to recover fully, I'd better start with something lighter, yet tasty. Enter the Dominicans cigars !
I had a few of them : Davidoffs, Griffins, Avo, you name it... I almost smoked everything that was non Cuban in my humid.

The verdict ? Well with all due respect... I'm sorry to say that with their best efforts, Dominicans simply don't match Cubans. They're just way too mild to deliver the same kind of aromas you can find in a Cuban cigar. And it's not like I'm psycho-rigid, I do appreciate non-Cuban cigars from time to time.

I know that consistency wise, Dominicas ought to be praised. But taste/aroma wise ?

Public Appeal : I'm an open minded person, if by any chance you know a Dominican brand which you believe equals the Cubans in the aroma/taste segment (richness of flavours), just react to this post (link below).

Consumer Research : Women's spending in China

Just found this article on the very good website www.danwei.org . Basically it is about the way women spend their revenue in China.
Things are changing quite fast in China (to say the least), so let's say that this article is valid at least for the next 3 months ;-)

Cigar Wallpaper

Here is my Christmas gift ! I give to all my readers a free Cohiba Cigar Wallpaper designed by... me ! I only have 1024x768 available, hope this will do.

• Cigar Wallpaper 1024x768 (colour version)

• Cigar Wallpaper 1024x768 (b&w version)

Enjoy & have a merry christmas !

Executive (lavish) Compensation

Reacting to my post on management's guru Peter Drucker, David posted a comment on this blog two days ago. "We need a corporate board reforms" argues David.

I bet we do !

Please refer to the McKinsey Quarterly article which demonstrates that a wide and comprehensive survey of the American corporate world shows that : "Directors and investors want to split the roles of chairman and CEO, to increase the accountability of directors, and to reduce executive compensation". And guess what? This can only be achieve by reforming the board.

We need less aristocrats & more entrepreneurs !

Churchill (cigar)

Another of my favourite format. The Churchill. I love the vitola, I like the man ! (or the other way around maybe? well anyway! ).
There are at least three very good cigars in this format :

• H. Upmann Sir Winston
• Romeo y Julieta Churchill
  
• Cohiba Esplendidos

Another contest I need to organize, it is likely though that the best Robusto (& part 2) will come first.

On a footnote, I found this very interesting text on the Web, written by Ian Buruma, a contemporary writer and essayist, about a Churchill cigar actually smoked by Churchill. I am wondering wheter this boutique still exists in The Hague...

The best Robusto ? (part 2)

In my previous post The best Robusto ? I short-listed three Robustos which stand magnificently above the crowd, namely :

• The Cohiba Robustos
• The Hoyo de Monterey Epicure #2
• The Partagas D4

I apparently did forget another great cigar of this "caliber" : the Ramon Allones Specially Selected (a.k.a. RASS). So we now have four contestants.

Cigar aristocracy

Listen to that : Partagas 2000 Millenium Reserve Salamon.

• Brand : Partagas - one of the most famous Cuban cigar brands;
• 2000 : i.e. 5 years old;
• Millenium Reserve : means limited editions, selection of tobacco leaves (top of the plant only), probably a long aging process of the leaves before they were rolled;
  
• Salamon : the most prestigious, yet uncommon, vitola.

Just to listen to this name makes me nervous !
No, no & no I (unfortunately) did not smoke this baby, but feel free to check the blog of the lucky gentleman who tried one of those.

Cigar Rating

I rate a lot of cigars in this blog, yet I realized I never gave any specific information about my ranking. I gotta fix that. Here you go :

My ranking for cigar ranges from AAA+ (best) to D (worst).

• AAA : Outstanding, fantastic, nothing you can complain about, above the crowd
  
• AA: Very serious cigar, very rich flavours and aroma, perfect combustion
• A: Very good cigar, rich flavours and aroma, good combustion

• BBB : Good cigar, nice flavour and aroma, enjoyable yet not exceptional
• BB : Nothing to be ashamed of, just a regular cigar, with some flavour
• B : Still smokable, but starts to lack the fundamentals

• C : Not a good cigar, poor aroma, poor taste, bad combustion
• D : Nightmare

The "+" sign (if any) means that this smoke could be even better (if only I had a box of 50, if only this cigar could age for some years in my humi., etc.)
The "-" sign (if any) means that I don't think the cigar rating could be improved by external conditions.

Cigar Quote...

If your wife does not like the aroma of your Cigar; change your wife.

Zino Davidoff

Partagas De Luxe

Smoked a Partagas De Luxe this afternoon. An old one actually... This one was definitely hand made (cf. one of my previous post on this matter). A good smoke... And a very nice look too : golden tube and golden ring, very classy...

Brand : Partagas
Format : Corona
Origin : Cuba
Rating : A+ (best AAA+, worst D)

Peter Drucker

"The man who invented management" says the article in Business Week.

"The world knows he was the greatest management thinker of the last century" Jack Welch

A very interesting character indeed... After having written some of the classics of the management litterature (e.g. The Practice of Management [Amazon link], The Effective Executive [Amazon link], etc.), he then famously argued that a CEO should make no more than 20 times the salary of the lowest paid worker... That was in 1984, at a time when C-level management was making roughly 45 times the wage of a production worker.

The Economist magazine which has started a war on executives lavish compensation, states in a recent article that today the ratio of CEO's compensation to the pay of the average production worker jumped to 431.

To be meditated...