Weeqi

I dunno, man. As is said, Gurkha probably has a 95 point cigar hidden out there somewhere, but that doesn't change the fact that we have a pretty good reason to avoid a cigar purely because it comes from them. Maybe when you're spending 95% of your time reviewing cigars that all come from Havana, I can see how it makes sense to not review the brand. But it's way more useful to understand what a brand is trying to do over understanding what one of their blends did. I haven't smoked every Illusione, but I've got enough understanding of what Dion's goal is make a decision about what I smoke if presented by something of his against something from Pete Johnson or Padron. Whereas I've smoked 5 or so Andalusian Bulls, I understand what that cigar is about, but I have no experience to speak of with the rest of LFD and can't speak much to what that company is trying to do. All that to say, I think "we review cigars not brands" should be reconsidered, and interrogated for any vale with reviewing brands as tool for not only selecting which cigar to smoke, but how that cigar interacts with the rest of brand's. What was the intention of this cigar, knowing how it contrasts with others from the same blender? In that way, understanding the brand is more important than understanding every note of the cigar in question, when it comes to reviewing it.

The ways of approaching that stats on this are beyond my ken. There are three ways of approaching it: 1. It's odd enough that life exists at all in the universe as it it is, so the odds of it happening more than once seem astronomical. Smaller even that it occurred once. 2. The chances that there could be a habital world are astronomically small. The chances of there being two is even lower. Points and one and two are statements about the set of things where life might occur. The first refers to a property common to each item, that is of being in the universe where it seems odd that there even is life. The second says that every item in the set happens to have the same property: worlds rarely, very much so, seem to be livable. The third oberservation assumes something like, For every object (planet) in the set, there exists an X chance for life to exist, where X is greater than zero. The number of items in the set is sufficiently multitudinous to assume that the occurrence of life is greater than 1. So, number three is: 3. It is unlikely that only one planet supports life. Both have some strong intuitive weight to them. However, it seems more likely than 1 or 2 is a better picture of things.

I find JSK to be a C tier boutique brand. That is, they aren't pumping out trash like General Ciger et al, but there's no reason to smoke them when you have access to blends by Kelner Jr, Holt, Gellis, Saka, Mellio, Giolito, ect (all of whom produce vitolas in the corona range) who are competing at the same price range. I'd never want to put anyone down for following his passion and for opening up a business and going for it, but I find the following is everything I have to say about JSK. Everytime I get a cigar of the month shipment from retailers in the US, I groan when I see a Red Knight or something or other taking up a slot that could have gone to an interesting cigar.

Europe is way more sane when it comes to a lot of this stuff. In particular, Spain was great. Anytime I sat outside for a meal or a coffee, I could light up. At first, I would use my broken Spanish to ask if smoking was allowed, and was greated with strange looks. I assumed it was my pronunciation, but over time, as my Spainish improved, I still got the looks. Eventually, I was wandering around thousand year old castles and nobody cared. Sitting in the middle of a bullfight and it was fine.