Cuban Cigar Website – a Follow-up Conversation with Proprietor Alexander Groom, February 2016

[JohnS]

Greetings dear friends,

As some of you may be aware, last year a series of interviews with Trevor Leask, Rob Ayala and Alexander Groom were published detailing the history of Cuban Cigar Website. Last month I had the opportunity to catch-up with Alex at a get-together organised by Trevor, attended by a few dear Sydney FoH friends and members and a few days later in the Sydney CBD for a few cigars and a chat about Cuban Cigar Website.

Cuban Cigar Website Founder Trevor Leask and Proprietor Alexander Groom

[JohnS]

Cuban Cigar Website a Follow-up Conversation with Proprietor Alexander Groom

Cuban Cigar Website Current and Future Direction

John Stivaktas: What have you been up to with Cuban Cigar Website since our last interview?

Alexander Groom: There’s always work to do keeping it up to date and answering people’s emails, but nothing too major… there was a batch of changes around six months ago. Nic Wing from UK Cigar Scene reached out to me – he was looking for a site to recommend for people who needed evidence of their collection for insurance purposes. In order to accommodate that I gave members the ability to upload pictures of their boxes and add pricing and source info for each box.

It’ll be interesting to see how the pricing stuff develops overtime – at the moment there are only around 1500 boxes that have prices associated with them, but as the dataset grows it could potentially be used to give a good guide to trends in market price of vintage cigars and so on.

JS: Is there a future direction you want to take with Cuban Cigar Website?

AG: Just recently I’ve been looking at re-photographing everything. Earlier in the year I was looking at maybe doing a book version, but I ran into a stumbling block when I discovered that at the moment most cigars on CCW are photographed at 10 pixels per mm, or around 250dpi. For printing purposes they really need to be at at least 300dpi, and preferably higher. For now I’m doing any new cigars that come in in as high a resolution as I can muster, and will gradually work my way through all the old stuff. There are a lot of discontinued and limited things I don’t have any more though, so it may never be achievable. We’ll see. 10 year project at least.

In the more near term I’d like to make the design of the site better so that it works on mobile devices, and maybe implement a trading diary to complement the smoking diary component. By all means, please email me if you have any ideas for features.

[JohnS]

The Personal Inventory

JS: How did the Personal Inventory section of Cuban Cigar Website start and how is it currently developing?

AG: Like everything on CCW, it started because I wanted to use it. I knew I had hundreds of singles, but I really had no idea what was there. On my blog, Dusky Beauties, I like to smoke my way across an entire brand’s worth of special releases over a few months, and I really needed a way to quickly be able to see what I had and what I needed. That’s how it was born. Once I’d built it for me it made sense to open it up for everyone else.

People seem to like it. At the moment there are about 1000 active members with 200,000 cigars in their collections.

I’ve really been pleased too with how the review stuff has turned out. Something people always used to ask me for was to add tasting notes to the site, but I always refused as Trevor and I had always tried to keep CCW as an objective encyclopaedia, with no subjective commentary. By adding the Smoking Diary and tasting notes, I was trying to figure out a way to make flavour profiles objective… and it’s kind of worked! There are now around 10,000 reviews in CCW’s database, and when you look at more popular cigars, you can see strong trends toward consistent flavour profiles – for example 30 people noted cream for the Upmann Conni 1. The algorithm could use some tweaking, and it’ll only get better as the dataset grows, but it’s interesting to see it emerge.

[JohnS]

Supporting the running of Cuban Cigar Website

JS: As Cigar Enthusiasts, how can we support the running of Cuban Cigar Website?

AG: 2015 was the most chaotic year on record for releases, with heaps of cigars coming up to a year late, and little or no information out of Habanos SA. If something new comes out in your region and you don’t see it released on the site, please email or PM me. For a lot of the regionals in particular user emails are the only way I have to get info on this stuff.

Secondly, please send cigars. Some users send photos, which is great, but really the only way I’ve found to get consistent lighting and picture quality across the site is to take photographs with my own gear, which means obtaining at least a single of every regional and exotic cigar. If you can help, please do:

Alexander Groom
Parcel Locker 10069 63954
Shop 1, 250 Elizabeth Street
MELBOURNE VIC 3000
AUSTRALIA

If you don’t have access to exotic cigars but would like to send something anyway, of course that is much appreciated.

Finally, cash donations towards the running costs of the site are always appreciated. There is a PayPal link on the front page of the site to handle this.

[irratebass]

Thanks for sharing this John. I just started uploading pics of my small, but growing collection to CCW.....and I plan on using the diary. It is a fantastic site.

[JohnS]

If you peruse Cuban Cigar Website regularly, you'd notice the many images that are used on the site. The amount of cigar images, as you'd agree, is impressive. Are you able to assist with sending current cigars for Alex to photograph? For me, it was a pleasure to assist by providing some cigars that are recent but had no image, the San Cristobal Torreon and Montecristo Media Corona...

Alexander Groom and John Stivaktas with the San Cristobal de La Habana Torreon and Montecristo Media Corona donated for Cuban Cigar Website

Some recent releases without images include the Trinidad Vigia and Partagas Maduro No.1. Also, there are recent Regional releases on CCW without images. If you'd like to assist, but don't have these cigars, you can still contribute to CCW by providing updated cigars of common brands such as Cohiba, Montecristo and H.Upmann which have older banding on the cigars.

Personally, I'm honoured to know that every time I visit CCW, those two cigars I donated are photographed and catalogued for the benefit of cigar enthusiasts worldwide.

[JohnS]

Thanks for sharing this John. I just started uploading pics of my small, but growing collection to CCW.....and I plan on using the diary. It is a fantastic site.

Cheers and thanks for your good wishes and support. I concur, it's a fantastic site and personally I wouldn't have anywhere near the knowledge of habanos history, current vitola ranges and current releases without it. I also use the inventory as a diary to catalogue what I am smoking, with notes which I often go back to weeks and months later.

[topdiesel]

Cuban Cigar Website is such a great site and a fantastic legacy. Trevor, thanks for all the hard work getting it where it was when Alexander took over. Alexander, you have made some wonderful upgrades. The community is lucky to have both of you.

I have been quick to adapt to the photos and the pricing. Another great thing that I have noticed is when you add a custom flavor profile while doing a review, it might just appear as one of the options the next time. That is really cool and shows that you are constantly working on the improvement.

One suggestion would be to allow a manual entry for the size of a custom cigar. there have been times where the size I have is not listed and so I just go with the closest thing. Not a huge deal since I can enter the size in the notes. But if it isn't too difficult to make possible it would be cool.

John, thanks for the interview

[CigarSense]

Thanks for the interview indeed.

I fully agree, Cuban Cigar website is a precious bible. I am a donator and encourage anyone else to support too. I think it's so great that we get such quality information without seeing ads displayed.

[luv2fly]

The CCW is a fantastic resource. John, thanks for posting this. I have turned my cigar smoking friends on to CCW and they love it. I look at it at least twice a day if not more. Drooling mostly....

Well done all especially Trevor for starting the site!

[Yagermeister]

As a frequent visitor but unregistered user, I had no idea about the reviews and tasting note aggregation for each cigar. Now that I've registered, that's a pretty cool feature!

I wish the collection feature was a little easier to use. I'd like to be able to populate my entire collection from one screen, but unless I'm missing something it looks like I have to browse to each individual cigar and then add a quantity from there, which would be quite time consuming. I'm happy enough with my Excel sheet anyway.

[stogieluver]

My thanks to Trevor and Alex for this great resource. I have my entire collection cataloged and keep track of my inventory down to the cigar. If you haven't tried it, you are missing out on an easy to use inventory control tool.

[planetary]

As a frequent visitor but unregistered user, I had no idea about the reviews and tasting note aggregation for each cigar. Now that I've registered, that's a pretty cool feature!

I wish the collection feature was a little easier to use. I'd like to be able to populate my entire collection from one screen, but unless I'm missing something it looks like I have to browse to each individual cigar and then add a quantity from there, which would be quite time consuming. I'm happy enough with my Excel sheet anyway.

Agreed - I need to look into this. I'd also look forward to a UI revamp!

[ayepatz]

Nice one John.

[Habanos2000]

Supporting the running of Cuban Cigar Website

...

Finally, cash donations towards the running costs of the site are always appreciated. There is a PayPal link on the front page of the site to handle this.

I'd like to propose that all of us reprobates make a monetary donation to a resource that is certainly worth its weight in gold!

Many thanks to Trevor and to Andrew for their time and work in creating, compiling and maintaining the most comprehensive resource on our beloved Cuban cigars in the world! HSA should officially sponsor you!

Cheers to you both!

[westg]

Keep it up ...nice work John

[Fugu]

Thanks John and Alex!

[Smallclub]

Thanks Trevor and Alex for this indispensable resource!

[ATGroom]

Thanks John and everyone for your kind words and continued support.

I wish the collection feature was a little easier to use. I'd like to be able to populate my entire collection from one screen, but unless I'm missing something it looks like I have to browse to each individual cigar and then add a quantity from there, which would be quite time consuming. I'm happy enough with my Excel sheet anyway.

Yeah, there's a bit of a hump when you first put in your collection. What I think is probably the quickest way at the moment is to use the search to get the entire database onto one page, and then just run down that adding boxes. You're still looking at three or four clicks per box, but it's quicker than loading each page.

​What I did when I entered my collection was have a friend come over, get everything out of the Tupperware and sorted into brands, and then just enter everything over the course of an evening. One person on the computer, one person on the floor calling out box codes and quantities. Served as a good audit / condition check at the same time. Your experience may vary depending on the size of your collection.

​Would be happy to consider implementing any UI tweaks that you can come up with to speed up the initial entry.

​Just doing an importer for people's spreadsheets is impossible, unfortunately. I could easily make an importer for the spreadsheets you can export through the site (but what would be the point), and if there was another popular online humidor program that people used I could probably make an importer so that you could switch over, but for individuals' custom spreadsheets there's just not enough consistency.

One suggestion would be to allow a manual entry for the size of a custom cigar. there have been times where the size I have is not listed and so I just go with the closest thing. Not a huge deal since I can enter the size in the notes. But if it isn't too difficult to make possible it would be cool.

I'd have to separate the custom sizes from the regular sizes somehow, but it shouldn't be too difficult. I'll look into it.