EARLIEST MEMORY OF YOUR BEST CUBAN CIGAR EXPERIENCE

[raymond5737]

My earliest memory was about 30 years ago when I first started smoking cigars. I'd had non Cubans but never a real Cuban. My girlfriend and I (now my wife) went to Playa Del Carmen, Mexico with a couple of friends. We stopped of at a Sanborns Department Store in CanCun because we knew that they only sold authentic Cuban Cigars and picked up two Cohiba Lanceros. Even back then they were expensive. at $18 or was it $23. We played golf the next day in Playacar and just got blasted with Cohiba goodness. We actually played good golf regardless of the strength of those cigars and those flavors of cream, vanilla, caramel. I distinctly remember how smooth the wrapper was in the humidity and how I babied it so it would last a long time and of course so I wouldn't get too messed up. My buddy Dave and I talked more that day then ever before. We talked about all kinds of stuff and we laughed our asses off. Suffice it to say, I was hooked and I had to smuggle some home.

[brutusthebuckeye]

Circa 1997 a friend of mine went to Canada and brought back a few RyJ and Upmann's along with some Molson XXX and Alexander Keith's......Good Times...

[garbandz]

'87 or '88,private estate miles from civilation,fishing pond,cooking two pigs preparing for a party the following day,cold brew on ice,first Cuban,RyJ tubo.

Green, veiny,smelled and tasted like Heaven.Still count it in my top 10 best ever cigars...........

[stunod]

I was 21, I'm 49 now, we went to a cigar dinner at the Hilton in Atlantic City. For the cocktail hour they gave us an Ashton Churchill.

Wow... I was hooked.

I have a horrible memory , but that night is vivid in my mind.

[ogus]

A guy who was broke and desperately in need of help gave me a prized RYJ church his brother had gifted. He and I were both grateful.

Another was I was jonesing for a cigar and considering options at Disney. My best mate and I were waiting to be seated in a restaurant and I look down. A bag with two Montie 4's inside. The hostess told me to keep them. I shouted commendations to God everyone could hear.

[yannis]

I was 16, in 1986

davidoff chateau margaux......i was alone in my family s home in that night ,I was in a trance...then my mother came and she was furious!!

I ll never forget..

[yannis]

today still best cigar I ve ever smoked

[yannis]

the first one!can you believe it?

[Balboa]

I was 8 years old, my friend's dad was so pissed Leonard lost to Duran at the Olympic Stadium, he came home and threw his celebration cigars against the wall. They were tubed RyJ no.2 tubo.

My friend snuck one out into the lane and we did our best to light that cigar. We imitated his dad by using our fingernail to cut the cap, what a mess.

Eventually, we managed to light that cigar, and even at 8 years old, I still remember the smell and taste of that cigar. I wasn' t sick, but my friend turned green after 10 minutes.

Been hooked ever since

[TCContender]

First authentic Cuban was in Niagara Falls, Canada when I was 20. Some college buddies and I went up for a Raptors game and debauchery afterwards. Canadian ballet and a Partagas SD4, outstanding.

[El Presidente]

I remember plenty but a few hold a special place.

My first PL Magnum in the early 90's. Perhaps the first truly great cigar that made me stop everything else I was doing. Up until that time, I never had a cigar do that to me before.

The Cohiba Siglo III that I was smoking with my friend Manu at Fidels lounge in Melbourne 1995. It was the night that I decided to go into the cigar business.

[leftimatic]

My first cigar ever. A Punch Punch on the deck at a resort in Varadero. Kids napping, wife wondering about. My brother and I drinking Bucanero's and Cristal's and smoking away. I go back everytime I light one up.

And a RYJ#3 Tubos bought on the same trip only smoked two years later. In the shop working on my motorbike. It was amazing. That thing could of been 3 feet long and I still would of nubbed it.

[Scroats]

Not the first and not really Cuban, but a great story. Cruise for my brothers wedding. We stopped in Nassau, and I procured for uncle and myself a pair of Hoyos and a pair of cohibas.

While the newlyweds and the rest of the bridal party got sloppy at senor frogs, my uncle and I drank coffee and played shuffle board. At least we think we played shuffleboard, neither of us knew the rules, we just made it up as we went. The "hoyos" weren't bad (and with nothing to compare it to, assumed authentic) but the "cohibas" were just awful. The flavor and the burn issues. They were pitched off deck.

Fake cubans, fake shuffleboard but at least the coffee was real.

[JWPlatinum]

In Vancouver, vacationing with 3 best friends nearly 15 ago in our early 20's.

I just remember I went into a small legit cigar shop and purchased some RYJ #1's, I think, for maybe $12 or $15. (My previous purchases had just been the non-CC RJY from BevMo haha, since none of us really had the means to acquire them back then.) I didn't know much about cigars back then but I was just fond of the RYJ brand. Exchange rate was great back then too!

(The rumors at home I remembered were always if you went to the right "shop" in a certain shopping plaza in my neighborhood, that you could get one for $50 haha).

I was just amazed and thrilled at how much smoother and better tasting than it was from my previous BevMo versions. Thoroughly enjoyed that first genuine experience....then off to the nightlife.

[bolivr]

A La Corona Corona as a single from Alexanders in Toorak in about 2002. Delicious. I had a slight thought then that this was going to be quite a hobby.

[almudawi]

Mine was a montecristo no 4 in 2002. My first cigar and by far the most memorable one I had so far. The chocolate in that cigar was unbelievable. This cigar did put me on a trajectory that ended with me going pro in 2008

[Smallclub]

Partagas Culebras, with my father and my great brother (we were youngsters), I forgot the reason for the celebration, but the moment was magic, even if the machine made culebras of that time weren't very good…

[moryc]

My first CC experience was when back around 1994. I was 15 at that time, my uncle brought back a box of Siglo I from Cuba. We were at an Easter dinner and I got a chance to have one along with a Pina Colada. I can remember that time so clearly.

[NJP]

Being allowed to smoke with family. It wasn't so much the cigar ( Justus van Maurik ) but the sharing and coming of age.

[JoeyGunz]

a PSD4 from a B&M after doing some reading on the internet.

was too much for me really and didn't realise how long it would take to smoke but boy it tasted good!

[ErikB]

Summer of '95 I found myself on Curacao. I'd been smoking dutch cigars for a while but never any handmades. I bought a RyJ tubos no 1 and I loved it, even though it was totally plugged, like sucking syrup through a straw. So after finishing it I passed out.. I can still feel the excitement though, to me cubans were so exotic! Never mind the fact that they sold them at my local B&M too, as I later discovered

[jsummers157]

In my freshman year of college, I was dating a girl from Nicaragua whose father smoked Cubans on occasion. He gifted me a 5er of the CCE and smoked my first one on a drive up to college from home and pushed me over the edge towards Cubans never to look back at NCs.

[Mycroft]

Spring 1995, New York City. After a miserable night of soul searching and rejection found myself in L's Brooklyn apartment drinking strong coffee and commiserating over the job she'd just lost. Saw a cheap flight listing on the back page of the Village Voice. Lets get out of here. And next day at 10am we landed in Cancun airport. A flight to Havana was listed on the departures board. Workers' Paradise - why not? An hour-and-a-half later we were in José Marti - with $100 and a bunch of unusable US credit cards. ****!

Two French backpackers (F and C) we'd met in the plane took pity and offered to take us with them on a trip in their rental car. Spent the week cruising around western Cuba searching for bad food and rough rum for cuban pesos, and farmers who would put us all up illegally for a few dollars a night.

We spent some scant dollars on a visit to the cigar factory in Pinar del Rio and F sourced some black market Cohiba Especials outside. I tried one, first cigar I'd ever smoked, it was beautiful, just beautiful. Next day a guy in the fields sold me a couple of his personal smokes. He rolled one of them on the spot from leaves in his pocket. Even better than the fake Cohibas. I was hooked on cuban cigars (and Cuba) and ran the blockade through Cancun many times in the following years. Frenchman F was hooked on L. They got married a year later and live in Lille with two kids. Thinking about it maybe their kids have kids, it's been a while. Now I live in Vienna and the Cuban cigars are real, but not the same. They will never be the same. Like sands through the hour glass.....

[SmittyinAZ]

Punta Cana, DR. Late evening after dinner with the wife just chillin. First time having a HDM Epi 2. So weird, I swear after every puff I stared at it, so good, another puff, so good, as my arm extended away, there it was, that stare at the sheen, the perfect ash.......ahhh. Couldn't help it. Even the wife was coughing, um, dear, I'm over here. Yup I know babe. hahaha Like my buddy's tag line for his pig roasting business, you never forget your first pig (or 1st great cuban in this case).

[Rushman]

about 10 years ago, in the B&M i frequented in Los Angeles......shop owner had a locker in the back, first CC was a HdM Double Corona followed I believe by a R&J Ex #4.

They were both such good smokes, and quite different then anything I had smoked before.

Up until that time I had smoked NC's off and on for 5-10 years. Shortly after I made my first online purchase and for the next 5 years or so smoked a mix of CC and NC. Been smoking CC's almost exclusively (except for trips to the US when I frequent a B&M) since 2010 or so.

There is some personal backstory that I won't share details of online that makes those cigars even more special to me now - funny how life works sometimes.