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LGP 59 - Macanudo Emissary France
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This week, we try out the second release in Macanudo's Emissary series. This time, we shift from Spain to France, with a 4-year aged filler grown in Bourdeaux.
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Transcript
Introduction & Opening Jokes
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to Let's Get Pairings. ah Today we're go to be smoking Did I say pairings? Let's Get Pairings. Welcome to Let's Get Pairings. It's okay to be plural about it.
00:00:10
Speaker
ah Let's Get Pairings. It's like Drew's Estates. you know That's right. ah Today we're smoking the Macanood Emissary and we're smoking France version.
00:00:22
Speaker
I'm unclear whether, um, I don't know any French other than like Parlez-vous Francais. Um. Omelette du fromage? And omelette du fromage, yes. Wow. Uh, but, uh, it just says France on the band. The other one said Espagne, but I don't know if there's a a French pronunciation of France.
00:00:40
Speaker
Uh, but we'll, you know, it doesn't really matter. We'll talk about the
Cigar Spotlight: Macanudo Emissary France
00:00:44
Speaker
cigar. We're gonna do some pairing. Uh, but for now, grab yourself a drink, grab yourself cigar. Let's get pairing. Uh,
00:01:10
Speaker
And we're back. Welcome back. This is Let's Get Pairing. I feel like I messed up my camera placement. I feel much closer to the camera than normal. I'm sorry if you can see all my pores. Welcome back. I'm your host, Tripp. This is episode 59 of Let's Get Pairing ah with the MacNudo Emissary France. I keep almost calling it the Espana because I've said that so many times.
00:01:31
Speaker
um I'm your host, Tripp, here in the Casa de Monte Cristo studio. ah with my co-host Dennis, as always, in the dungeon of Death Dark Dank. Dank something.
00:01:42
Speaker
Something's going on. I'm going to kick this. I'm just calling it Death Dark Dank. It's triple D. this the Triple D in a different way, and that's okay. Yeah, man. I'm going to kick this off.
00:01:55
Speaker
This French show. Well, the France cigar, we'll call Let's lean on the French angle for a second. I'm going to kick you off with what to expect for the next hour and change.
00:02:06
Speaker
You're going to be met with lots of good talk about pairings, lots of good talk about the cigar, and quite a few really awful jokes. Hell yeah. Certainly dad jokes, if you will. I'm in the dad joke mood. I have to get it out of my system. Okay, Tripp, are you ready?
00:02:20
Speaker
First one off the gate. Why are French omelets so small?
00:02:27
Speaker
Something about petite? I don't know. Because in France, one egg is un oeuf. I can't properly pronounce it. Un oeuf. Is that how you say eggs in French? I don't even know enough French to get that joke.
00:02:46
Speaker
but I like it nonetheless. Now that I know, it's funny. you know They call a Big Mac in France, right?
00:02:54
Speaker
or or a double double double ah cheeseburger. I don't know. Double quarter pounder with cheese? What was that? What was that from Pulp Fiction? Oh, double quarter pounder with cheese. A Royale, motherfucker.
00:03:05
Speaker
Yeah, Royale with cheese. Oh, yeah, Royale with cheese. All right.
Uploading Episodes: Platforms & Plans
00:03:11
Speaker
Before we get into the cigar and I get you all the details, I do want to note, if you're listening to this or watching us on Spotify, you may have noticed I am finally in the process of catching up I've been uploading as many as I have time to process and upload.
00:03:29
Speaker
I have a much more streamlined process now. So instead of being like half a day's work or more, um it's like 15 minutes of work, which is which is great. So I've been cruising through those.
00:03:40
Speaker
We should soon have this episode up. um And then we'll be back to getting episodes up weekly in video and in audio on Spotify. So if you open up the Spotify app,
00:03:51
Speaker
Check out Let's Get Pairing. You can watch ah right now. It's most of our it's all of our older episodes. I think I got up to episode 44. I'm like 15 behind.
00:04:02
Speaker
um But ah you can you can watch video on Apple and Spotify now, which is sweet. So check it out. um Or if you're you know driving in the car, you want to listen to us. Our dulcet voices talk about ah beer and whiskey and cigars.
00:04:18
Speaker
Check it out. ah All right. Now let's get into the cigar.
Macanudo Series: Tobacco Origins & Composition
00:04:22
Speaker
So this is the Macanudo Emissary France. It is the second release in the Emissary line, um which when we did the, this was, ah just processed the episode. It's episode 30 something, maybe 38 was the Emissary Espana. Oh,
00:04:38
Speaker
I believe it was 38, actually. In the late 30s, yeah. I don't remember exactly. So the Espana, when that one came out, we didn't quite have clarification on what the emissary line was going to be exactly.
00:04:51
Speaker
um We knew that the first one was Espana, but we didn't there was kind of rumors that were unconfirmed. There were no official announcements on whether the follow-up or follow-ups would be focusing on other countries. So this time, they've clarified that by releasing the France um So as with the Espana, the Espana focused on a particular Spanish tobacco, and this one focuses on a particular French tobacco.
00:05:19
Speaker
um So we can, I think, look forward to seeing more in this series from other interesting, likely European countries. So this one adds a four-year aged filler grown in Bordeaux, France.
00:05:33
Speaker
um And we'll we'll talk about the details of this cigar. So this cigar is a
00:05:40
Speaker
I wouldn't call it reasonable, but I wouldn't call it expensive. Um, a kind of par for the course, 1499, um, for this five and a half by 50 or five by 52 Robusto.
00:05:52
Speaker
It's that mid range for kind of what you expect. That's pretty mid range these days. that We've come to, in a sense, really, we've come to expect that kind of a price point. Yeah. It's the higher end of mid range, maybe the lower end of expensive. Yeah.
00:06:04
Speaker
Um, but the, the,
00:06:08
Speaker
bomb on this the bill of materials that's a technical term used in my work uh that's bomb in your case yeah uh so the bill of materials for this the wrapper is an ecuadorian habano aged for 10 years the binder is u.s broadleaf they don't specify whether it's connecticut or uh pennsylvania um but it's also 10 years aged Dominican Peloto Cubano to age 10 years.
00:06:38
Speaker
yeah More USA Broadleaf, eight years. Sorry, I forgot to, like, I'm talking about the filler, and I was left the word filler off at the beginning. So the binder is U.S. Broadleaf, 10-year age.
00:06:51
Speaker
The filler is Dominican Peloto U.S. age, age. I'm losing it already. ah U.S. Broadleaf, eight-year age. ah Brazilian Arparaca, seven-year age.
00:07:02
Speaker
That French, four-year age. ah leaf that I was talking about before. um So a pretty well-aged, you know, range of tobaccos from, how many is that? One, two, three, four, five different countries.
00:07:20
Speaker
Just pretty impressive. um Country of origin is Honduras. These are made, of course, at the Honduran American Tobacco S.A. factory, which is ah uh, SDGs Dominican or a brother Honduran factory.
00:07:33
Speaker
I'm losing it, dog. Like I can't get it together. Uh, Steve Ludington says, Hey guys, hey stranger. How you doing, brother? man Um, all right.
Initial Cigar Impressions & French Humor
00:07:44
Speaker
Now for the question of the hour, Dennis, what do you think of this cigar so far?
00:07:49
Speaker
Uh, well, I'll tell you what now. i My opinion five minutes ago was very different than my opinion. Now, off the light, as we talked a lot about this a little bit in the green room right before the show, I was not really digging it off the light. It was a little bit too dry, too almost sour.
00:08:04
Speaker
in ah Sour in the way that you get that like fresh grape sourness on the skin. Okay. and yeah i mean That, that, that, uh, what's the word?
00:08:16
Speaker
Tannic. Can we say a tannic sourness? Does that make sense? Definitely a tannic quality to the cigar. Um, and I think now that it's warmed up a little bit, I'm actually enjoying it a lot more. I'm not very far in.
00:08:27
Speaker
probably, ah be saying couple of minutes off the light, right? But now it's starting to develop into something a little bit better, so i'm getting much nicer cedar qualities to it. Again, very dry, very crisp.
00:08:39
Speaker
That kind of cedar that but almost bites the nose. Very different than that leathery kind of room note cedar that where a lot of us are used to. So i'm hoping that it starts, as it warms up a little bit, it'll start to kind of even out and and get a little smoother.
00:08:55
Speaker
I'm getting a little bit of a um like like a brown sugar kind of sweetness. Um, little, just a hint kind of, of spice, like black pepper and baking spice, those cinnamon nutmeggy kind of flavors.
00:09:10
Speaker
Um, a little bit, just a little bit of that, uh, like, uh, roasted almond skin kind of dryness that you're always talking about.
00:09:22
Speaker
yeah um Yeah. And on the, uh, on the retro hill too. Yeah. and And then there's like a, a really nice, but kind of different earthiness to it. I feel like. that I can't quite figure out, but it's like a... don't know. It's kind of a middle-of-the-road earthiness. Usually i talk about like a black, wet, dirt, dank kind of earthiness. You get the minerality to it. Yeah, or that really dry, sandy kind of earthiness.
00:09:48
Speaker
And it's kind of right right down the middle of those two. So far, it's not great, but it's not bad. um I do think it'll be kind of interesting to pair with. It doesn't have that like...
00:10:00
Speaker
um The Espana had this like as soon as you taste it, you're like, whoa, that's a flavor I've never tasted in tobacco before. This does not have that for me.
00:10:10
Speaker
um Same. It does have a little bit of like a ah little bit of a difference to it. um But it's not... you know that's That's not a bad thing. It's just saying like... you know ah Certain cigars have a flavor that you've never tasted in a cigar, which is like kind of shocking and surprising.
00:10:29
Speaker
This has... different flavors that I'm used to tasting, but they're all flavors I've had before just in a different mix. Right. and Um, I think reading that blend on paper kind of makes sense.
00:10:41
Speaker
You can taste a little bit of, ah like broadleaf, whether it's Pennsylvania Connecticut, I can't tell. Um, you kind of get that Brazilian Araparaca, uh, sort of sweetness and and dryness at the same time.
00:10:57
Speaker
um A lot of these, to me, are very earthy tobaccos. The Broadleaf, the Araparaca. um I think the size also, to be fair, lends itself really well to this particular blend.
00:11:10
Speaker
Had it been bigger, I'd say probably less of an enjoyable experience. It'd be a lot harder to hone in on specific flavors. And similarly, if it was a smaller cigar, those flavors would just get completely blown out of the water and you'd just be smoking basically just a burning newspaper right at that point.
00:11:28
Speaker
Yeah, you might be right. Well, because, you know, in certain tobacco, it's not knocking on the cigar necessarily in any way or the blend. It's just certain tobaccos require at a base minimum, depending on how much of that tobacco is in there.
00:11:39
Speaker
You need a certain size. You need some of that volume in there to to to help you commingle the flavors, obviously, as you're smoking it, but also to kind of ease the burn. Yeah, for sure. And you don't want those to burn too fast.
00:11:52
Speaker
Yeah, you got to have that balance of of flavor and burn. That's the thing that Jose Blanco always talks about. So this is also available in a Toro, Churchill, and a Perfecto.
00:12:03
Speaker
um So none of those sizes are going to be crazy different than this. um The biggest difference is the Churchill going down to 48 ringgit.
00:12:12
Speaker
Which, I got to say, good choice. 48 is the right ring grade. 48 49. I don't want to see a 52 or a 54 Churchill. That's a double Toro or a double Corona.
00:12:23
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. i feel I feel the same way. I know people will argue one one way or the other. That's fine. you know Personal preference. That's how it goes. so I was going to say, Jose Blanco, you mentioned the balance thing that he said.
00:12:35
Speaker
It immediately reminded me of like, Jose Blanco is the Tony Hawk of balance of the cigar industry. Yeah. ah That's fantastic. If Jose knew who Tony Hawk was, I would tell him about that. He He might.
00:12:49
Speaker
He might. I'll tell next time i'll see. see. Yeah. All right. Let's get into some pairing here now that we've got our first impressions out of the way.
Korean Craft Beer Exploration
00:12:56
Speaker
um I went to the Asian grocery store yesterday with my son.
00:13:02
Speaker
Um, my wife and I had, wife had to go up to Tampa. There was a new Asian grocery store that opened a few months ago on the way home. Um, so we decided to hit it up. And as any good Asian grocery store that a craft beer section, you know, I had to go pill for that and look for all the gems and goodies.
00:13:19
Speaker
Um, oh my and shockingly other than, one brand, uh, Kiba, Papa, Ichiban? I can't remember.
00:13:31
Speaker
No, it's a ah micro-brew that I had on the ah show a couple of weeks ago. Orion? In Japan. No, there's much smaller than that. It starts with an A. It's like a Kiva or something like that.
00:13:44
Speaker
A Saki? No, that's a giant brewery. yeah Goddamn, I don't know. okay That's okay. You don't need to know. um But that was the only one that I saw that I recognized. Like, they had a bunch of stuff I didn't recognize. I started look a little closer. A lot of these were Taiwanese, Korean, Indonesian beers. some good stuff out there. um So, I grabbed a little selection, and I've got two of them to share with you tonight.
00:14:09
Speaker
but The first one... Look at that bottle, man. Like, this is one where I was like, I don't know what that is. i don't know what a Pelong ale is. That looks Korean.
00:14:20
Speaker
But I want to try it. This is Korean. Is that Korean? Yes. Oh, yeah. All right. Cool, man. Yeah, my son has kind of taught me to look at the the the words and be like, is that Korean or is that other language?
00:14:31
Speaker
um Because Japanese and Chinese can be harder to tell apart, but Korean is, like, very distinctive. um So Jeju Beer Company, they were founded in 2015 in Jeju, South Korea, which is an island off the southern end of the peninsula, ah like way out there in the water.
00:14:47
Speaker
Not that far out, probably 50 or 60 miles, I would guess. I didn't measure it on the map. um But I lost my notes behind my camera.
00:14:58
Speaker
um Now there are more breweries on the island, but in 2015, they were the very first brewery built on that island for beer. um They say that that island has long been known for alcohol production. They made sochu and stuff like that there previously over the many hundreds of years.
00:15:17
Speaker
ah This was the first ah modern brewery there. Since the founding of the company, Jeju has become one of the most popular microbreweries in South Korea, holding a mind-blowing 28% of the market in 2020.
00:15:33
Speaker
and twenty twenty ah damn That's wild. like That's pretty serious, man. I don't think any company has 28% of the market in the U.S.
00:15:45
Speaker
like We're talking market all of Korea. all of All of South Korea, yeah. well prop are yes Not North Korea, because they probably don't even have beer up there. I think they have beer.
00:15:56
Speaker
In all of South Korea, they are, um if not one of the leading, the leading ah brewery in the country, which is nuts. um They kind of... um I looked through their portfolio a little bit. I have another beer from them to try next week or some other time.
00:16:15
Speaker
um But it looks like they're kind of American-inspired, which is neat. um So they're going for the kind of Funky craft beer style of the U S which is neat.
00:16:28
Speaker
That's really cool, man. So like I said, Jeju Pelong Ale. I was like, I don't know what a Pelong Ale is. Um, don't even know what Pelong means. I still had trouble finding a translation, but I did figure out that it means shine or sparkle, which still gives me no information.
00:16:45
Speaker
I still have no idea or had no idea until I looked it up what this beer was going to be. Um, And it is their pale ale. So this, I mean, it's as big as this bottle. It's much smaller than we're used to. 11 ounces.
00:17:04
Speaker
ounces oh interesting. So it's it's it was like I've taken one sip out of this. so But I'm going to take a couple more sips and see how it tastes with a cigar because I haven't tried it with a cigar yet.
00:17:16
Speaker
um I did forget to look at what the ABV on this was. Oh, 5.5%. Pretty standard. um But again, very American to have it 5.5%. That's not macro beer levels.
00:17:29
Speaker
That is not typical outside of the U.S. whatsoever. No, you'll generally see beers between 2.8 to probably 4.3, something like that, unless it's a very special release.
00:17:41
Speaker
um You'll see a lot of your barrel-aged stouts being... you know, or Russian Imperial Stouts being in a much higher category, but your classic beer, if you walk into a anywhere, any bar, anywhere, and you get a beer, you're looking at probably about four, 4.2 to 4.5. Yeah.
00:17:58
Speaker
Um, and I, I've been having a hard time. I tried to find like a list of their beers and a lot of them were a diagram rather than like a webpage that has all their beers.
00:18:10
Speaker
And all of the text is part of the picture. So it's just a diagram with a bunch of beers in like different spots and lines, like a graph kind of, but everything's in Korean. So I don't know what it said.
00:18:22
Speaker
So it didn't help me at all. ah Anyway, what it cool what are you drinking ah first up here?
Wine Pairing: Boggle Family Vineyards
00:18:30
Speaker
I'm having, i don't know if I'm having first thoughts or second thoughts, but I'm definitely having thoughts about my first pairing.
00:18:37
Speaker
I wanted to go. i had some wine sitting around that I just I've been meaning to get around to to to check out. And I figured, hey, why not? What's this perfect time to do it for a show? Right. So this is the the Boggle family Boggle family vineyards out of Clarksburg, California.
00:18:54
Speaker
This is their Cabernet Sauvignon. And the vintage on this one and he is 2022. For those of you that care, this is a 2022 vintage.
00:19:06
Speaker
And interestingly enough, this is the Cabernet is the most popular wine that they release. They've been around since, well, officially found in 1979.
00:19:19
Speaker
And they really started farming in the 70s, like early 70s, finally started selling their wine in 1979. Chris and Patty Boggle, they were third generation farmers that decided to get going on this and turn their business, what they had the time was just a farm, into a proper winery.
00:19:37
Speaker
And I'm mentioning in Clarksburg, California, it's somewhere around Sacramento, roughly, if I'm not mistaken. I want say around Sacramento. I think you California people will correct me. I'm not certain. I don't know my way around California too well.
00:19:49
Speaker
Yeah, but they're still family owned. So they're run now by the sixth generation of the Bagel family members. The estate overall is 1,200 acres proper for estate vineyards, which really, if you think of it, is not a whole lot in terms of kind of a nationally accessible wine.
00:20:11
Speaker
Generally speaking, you're looking at something like double or even triple that for a nationally available wine. Their whole thing is that they focus on sustainability. So they're kind of and tuning things back a little bit to focus on more quality rather than the the volume of production.
00:20:29
Speaker
Okay. And yeah, so this is the Cabernet Sauvignon that I'm drinking now. I thought, you know, thought maybe the the plum characteristics, those like very nice dry blackberry cherry, little bit of that cocoa funk that Cabernet Sauvignon's generally get would help.
00:20:49
Speaker
I don't know that it's helping necessarily. um But I, so I did mention that the sustainability thing. i want to make sure i don't miss any of my notes on these cats because they do some cool stuff.
00:21:01
Speaker
um What else did they do? Let me check out some of my notes here. um And your trip, you're familiar with Cabernet as well, right? This is a line that you've had over the years, for better worse.
00:21:12
Speaker
Yeah. I like a Cabernet. Cabernet is one of my preferred... but i don't even know the name. Styles? Reds? Yeah, it's a style. Yeah, it's a style of red. There's a word for it, but I can't find it in my head right now.
00:21:29
Speaker
I should have mentioned also, so they do... Varietal. Sorry. A varietal. It is a varietal. ah Did you know it's most popular grape? Really? Overall. I didn't that.
00:21:40
Speaker
It's the most planted red grape in the world. Wow. Originating in Bordeaux, France, and kind of has been propagated throughout the world in different terroirs and slightly different experiences. The California Cabernet is really distinct to the New Jersey Cabernet, and certainly the Cabernets that you see in Europe, um Spain, notably speaking. But...
00:22:02
Speaker
What was I going to say about this? Oh, so they do a mix of steel tanks and barrels as well. So not exclusively steel tanks, which is fine. No judgment to any winery that does steel tanks. It's totally fine.
00:22:14
Speaker
ah But they do a mix of both. In this case, this is American oak for that added bit of that that kind of what we call the tannic bite. Or I call the tannic bite. I don't know what the the industry calls it, but it's it's got that funk to it.
00:22:29
Speaker
Right. I don't... I don't know what the wine industry calls anything. but I just read what's in what I am able to to put in my notes and and wing it from there. and So this brings us, before I hand it over to you to talk about your first pairing, this brings us to our next our next joke segment of the evening.
00:22:50
Speaker
Tripp, let me ask you this. Why do the French eat snails? Do you know? Because they're delicious when they're covered in enough butter. uh butter and cheese i agree totally lovely that is not the correct answer i'm sorry sir the correct answer is no point because they don't like fast food that was pretty bad stick with us it's gonna get worse promise i love it but um all right so this beer i did find a couple places they call this their ipa
00:23:24
Speaker
on English websites where people are calling it IPA. To me, this is, it's kind of mimicking the style of Sierra Nevada pale ale. It's like, It's almost a West Coast IPA, but kind of a West Coast IPA that took a couple days off.
00:23:40
Speaker
You know, like, it it's kind of a ah ah less excited yeah yeah West Coast IPA. And that's what this tastes like. Like, it's it's a reasonable facsimile to, so like, Sierra Nevada Pale.
00:23:55
Speaker
um It's delicious. It's actually working better than I would expect with a cigar. that kind of bready quality beer has, um, is working with that.
00:24:08
Speaker
I keep, I was thinking brown sugar, but it's like darker than that. Like, may I guess dark brown sugar or Demerara sugar or something. yeah Like it's got a little bit of that.
00:24:20
Speaker
umami kind of flavor, um, on that sweetness of this cigar. Uh, and I find that's really working with this beer. It's kind of bringing out that flavor a little bit, um, while accenting the brightness of the beer.
00:24:35
Speaker
Um, like it's, man, I, I can never stop talking about sound. All the highs are coming out of this beer. All the lows are coming out of cigar and they're like mixing together really well.
00:24:49
Speaker
That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. We talked about this too earlier where sometimes you may not like a particular pairing by itself or a particular cigar by itself. But then when you sit down, you have that one or the other with a cigar or or a spirit or drink, whatever it is, that that combination is really what hits the
Fermentation Practices in South Korea
00:25:08
Speaker
mark for you. and Yeah, that can be kind of where magic happens.
00:25:11
Speaker
I would agree. Wholeheartedly would agree with this cigar. And I think also speaking about that Korean beer you have, man, I think... really the shining star for them, even beyond the yeast, the yeast I'm sure is great, but beyond the yeast is that the malt profile, the base malt they're using is so distinctly local.
00:25:30
Speaker
It has to be. I would think so. They're not ordering things from Germany and anyone else. They may, but unlikely because they have access to so many great different grains that they can use, malt houses they can use. I know that for a fact in South Korea.
00:25:45
Speaker
So you're experiencing a very different...
00:25:49
Speaker
but what's the word now? It's it's a pallet wheel. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. It's a different pallet wheel that you're getting that's in that same vein of where you used to, but it's slightly different.
00:26:01
Speaker
um And can I read you a couple of their ah beers? I found a list. They have a wit beer. Actually, they have a couple of wit beers. Oh, interesting.
00:26:12
Speaker
They have a blonde ale. This is their IPA. They have a passion fruit pale ale, which sounds interesting. I got the dark ale. That's the other one that I have ah a bottle or a can of. can't remember it's a bottle or a can.
00:26:24
Speaker
um They got a citrus beer. They have a fresh hop brute IPA. Like they're doing crazy stuff over there in Korea. um A Hefeweizen, an Amber Lager, and a Pale Lager. At least that's what I can find as far as lists go.
00:26:39
Speaker
um But they're really like, it's crazy that they're really doing the American craft beer kind of thing. Like they're mimicking companies like Sierra Nevada and ah
00:26:53
Speaker
who's the other one? that That other big one with the juicy stuff. New Belgium. would ranger New Belgium? yeah Yeah, they're really trying to kind of emulate that style of the bigger American craft breweries.
00:27:04
Speaker
I would say it's not surprising to me to see South Korea finally getting their beers out into the into the the world proper. ah Because, again, they are experts in fermentation.
00:27:15
Speaker
Different kinds of fermentation, sure, but With such a really great, long history, hundreds hundreds of years of fermenting things, now getting it into like, oh, we're going to ferment this grain tea.
00:27:29
Speaker
That's child's play. That's easy. We can do that, man. The hardest part is probably getting the hops or growing the hops. Yeah, you're right. I had not considered that, that like... They ferment everything in South Korea. Like, they ferment their hot sauce. They ferment their rice. They ferment their breakfast. They ferment their dinner. Well, out of necessity, but also for pleasure.
00:27:49
Speaker
I mean, it started out of necessity, right? Yes. In modern times, you don't really—the need to ferment is kind of gone. um But, you know, those became cultural flavors that, ah you know, but it doesn't make sense to get rid of the flavors that you're used to.
00:28:04
Speaker
Because you don't needat they're not necessary anymore. um Same can be said for beer, right? like That's why beer was hoppy. And we still love hops. We probably love hops a lot more now than we did back when it was a necessity, to be honest. I think people really hated the hops back then, personally.
00:28:21
Speaker
I think they liked the malty characteristic. But again, also, some people only had that beer as a meal sometimes, yeah so it made sense. um And the hops eventually became part of the aristocracy and part of people that had a little bit more money to spend and could afford to go like oh go wild hop stuff.
00:28:39
Speaker
Let's experience this weird, bitter thing. Where generally, culturally, at least from my experience from Eastern Europe, that that was not a thing. Well, I mean, hops started as IPA, like a way to preserve.
00:28:53
Speaker
Yeah. Like, it was either you drink beer that'll kill you or drink beer with a lot of hops in it. Because ah hops prevent, like, botulism and horrible stuff like that that's going to not have a good time for you.
00:29:08
Speaker
And the Egyptians not having hops were very clever in that they used a lot of different roots and things they had, like acacias and other barks and roots that were available that had similar antiseptic properties and would add those into their, what would we would call kind of beers, but you know really back then it was just a ah beverage. It was a jug of water that sat outside that had a bunch of stuff. Malt liquor, basically. Or jungle juice, maybe. It was the jungle juice of the desert in a sense.
00:29:36
Speaker
But yeah, everyone drank it. The toilet wine of the time. That's right. All right. How did your... No. It's having an en blanc. It's no. Okay.
00:29:49
Speaker
It's a no for me, Doug. Sorry. um Well, that's unfortunate. Because next up, I have ah something pretty close to it. Before I get to that, I meant to ask you...
00:30:02
Speaker
I meant to ask you before the show started, but on the air is probably the
Memorable Cigar Experiences
00:30:05
Speaker
best way. Oh, wow. How did you fare after the asylum last week? The megalophobia. You know what it was? Can we just do a quick retrospect on that?
00:30:16
Speaker
I had we're we're head of the nub somewhere here. I still have mine here. like i was telling Dennis, i can't bring it's starting to crack. It's covered in ashes I've been sitting in my ashtray.
00:30:26
Speaker
It's so big and so like... ah I don't know. It's just such a behemoth. There's a lot going on. I can't yeah i can't bring myself to throw it away because I keep looking it next to the nub of another cigar like this.
00:30:43
Speaker
Look at that. It's ridiculous. i didn't put it so i can tell you this I didn't put it down because I disliked the flavor or because I felt the nicotine was too much. I actually felt fine. so i didn't I didn't feel sick. I didn't feel dizzy. I didn't feel nauseous or anything else.
00:30:56
Speaker
We sat on that show for, what, seven hours? A little over seven hours? a little over six and a half. Oh, six and a half. Okay. Okay. So it's a long time for single sitting, right? It really is. And I felt fine.
00:31:09
Speaker
I had to put it down because I was just sleepy. I was falling asleep. At 2.30, I was like, I have to go to bed. I wish I could finish this cigar, but I can't. I knew I would die if I sat there. i didn't I don't know how Coop did it, but around the time I went to bed, he had like nubbed the cigar, basically.
00:31:29
Speaker
he He like powered through the last bit. And and i aggressive I think I like ah hit a hit a stopping point because I was so tired through. I think it was like a three quarter to maybe an inch at most. what he but but Whatever he had was impressively small.
00:31:43
Speaker
I think it was a one point five inches. It was a one point. Well, he didn't measure it. and forgot And he he did the math. So it was if it was a normal Robusto, it would have been point eight inches left.
00:31:56
Speaker
Wow. Like three quarters of an inch. oh And that also reminded me that I did some math. And as I got inside, my wife was like, the so the house reeks like cigars. I have an exhaust fan. I'm in a garage, but there is a wall between me and the garage door.
00:32:15
Speaker
And then I have an exhaust fan that just blows air straight out. um but i keep I had it going at a good clip that night. And I did the math, and smoking that cigar was the equivalent of five people in the room smoking Robusto at the same time. Yes.
00:32:33
Speaker
ah Yeah, that cigar was ah next level. It was was an experience, man. You don't smoke that cigar, you experience it. i will I will advocate for that cigar any day and say, if you have the money to spend and you want to spend the money and you were having second feelings about getting that or not getting it whatever, absolutely get it because it was a great cigar.
00:32:58
Speaker
I think we all, the consensus was we all loved the flavor of the cigar. The burn was great. um it it was just a good experience overall, and we were all so dumbfounded by it. I certainly was.
00:33:10
Speaker
um Yeah, we were... Everybody was completely shocked, including the maker of the cigar. um but Which, you know, is a good thing, bad thing, I don't know I think it was humbling for all of us to experience that together with him.
00:33:23
Speaker
Yeah, and and as Dennis said, like it is it is a very good cigar. um If you are in the market for a $125 cigar,
00:33:34
Speaker
Well, $250 really for the box. Yeah, $250 for the box. If you're at a shop that happens to have a couple boxes, you could probably score one for $125. ah But you won't get that cool lighter.
00:33:45
Speaker
ah I don't know that there's a better value for $125 as quite number $100 cigars the cars go like you know ah there are there are quite a number ah hundred dollar cigars out there None of the other ones are are the equivalent of 15 cigars. ah So at least it's got that going for it. And it's it's legit a good cigar.
00:34:11
Speaker
Now, your friends might chastise you a little bit for it, but... As they should. you know For the size. For the size and this the ridiculousness of holding this... What used to be...
00:34:23
Speaker
2004 Chipotle burritos. Remember those 2004 burritos when they're actually sizable where you couldn't eat more than half of it and you had had to save it for later. Now you need to get two burritos to to fill the same gap.
00:34:35
Speaker
No pun intended. Yeah. yeah and You know what else it's the size of? foot long from Subway. I'm afraid to ask. Is it? Oh, yeah. Actually. It's exactly the size of a foot long from Subway.
00:34:47
Speaker
That is absolutely true. Is it 13 inches by two? 134. 134. yeah one thirty it's It's crazy. Sorry. I just had to get a quick retrospective going there.
Wine Pairing: Chateau Les Clotiers Bordeaux
00:34:59
Speaker
um Now we'll talk about my middle pairing, which I don't have a lot to say about because there's not a lot of info on this one. um This is Chateau Les Clotiers or something similar to that. Oh, my.
00:35:15
Speaker
A wine from Bordeaux, France. That's a proper Bordeaux. One of the... ah tobacco leaves in the cigar is this is 85% Merlot 15% Cabernet Sauvignon believe it's a right bank but I don't really know the difference so ah if I'm wrong please forgive me um I mean you know got all the all the French stuff on the back there saying what the appellate is and the nobis loose white sir it's all stuff I don't understand I know this is ah French wine
00:35:51
Speaker
I know it's fairly cheap for a French wine at about 20 bucks, maybe less. Not bad. Okay. um Yeah. um The reason being that this is from the much maligned spirits direct or a rather wineries direct line from total wine.
00:36:08
Speaker
Very maligned. Yeah. It's not always a good thing, but it's not always a bad thing. Almost never a good thing. yeah. Yeah, a lot of times it's not. i I don't have experience with a lot of the wines.
00:36:22
Speaker
The last wine I had that was wineries direct was like incredible. It was in the same price range, about 20 bucks. It was also French. And it was like, I love French wine. Now, since that one, I haven't found one that I really am a big fan of.
00:36:35
Speaker
See about this one. Um, but what the, what the wineries or spirits direct means in total wine terms is just that they're getting a good deal on it. That's really what it means is that they have a better markup than they do on normal stuff, um, which also means they can put it on sale more often.
00:36:53
Speaker
Um, with a lot of stuff, including this, I believe they are the exclusive distributor in the U S. Um, it's not, it doesn't always mean that there's some stuff like, uh,
00:37:07
Speaker
Do remember what that gin was that Bear had on last week? From Scotland? um Yeah, it's on my list of ah to buy. Because that's a um dont call that's Spirits Direct on Total Wine.
00:37:20
Speaker
Oh, is it? really It doesn't mean that it's exclusive to them, necessarily. it may mean that. But ah what it does mean is that they have a better markdown or markup on it. So, like, you know, if a case...
00:37:33
Speaker
they're getting cases at 15% less than what everybody else is or something like that. ah then they'll stick that label on and they'll push the hell out of that stuff. Um, the one thing I can recommend at total wine, never ask for help.
00:37:47
Speaker
Just know what you're looking for. There's any other wine shop. There's going a guy who's like, Oh, you know, this is, this is great. I love this wine. and This is what I have when I make dinner or whatever. At Total wine they're going like, oh, winery's direct.
00:38:00
Speaker
That's what you want. Just whatever it is, winery's direct. They get a better commission off that stuff. That's the difference when you walk into an established cigar shop versus when you walk into light Joe's cigars and smokes.
00:38:12
Speaker
um it's And it's not a knock on the business. It's just more of a matter of of the staff is trained in a different way. and And which is fine, ah but but certain shops will have the staff trained specifically to cater to the customer for a certain demographic and certain um kind of the person looking for a very specific thing that can talk you through the correct purchase.
00:38:34
Speaker
Yeah. And that's fine. If you have that, that's great. If you don't have it, don't, don't feel crappy. It's not a knock on you in any way. Yeah. But that's where total one, I think gets a bad rap on this direct stuff is that they push it so much that people are like, they pushed this one and it was garbage, but you know, it was a $12 bottle of whiskey. but What do you expect?
00:38:53
Speaker
Kind of stuff. Um, they import or they import, they have that label on a lot of really good stuff. Um,
00:39:02
Speaker
I can't think of any others at the moment, except Smokehead. Smokehead is now under that, which is a blended scotch. It's very Isla forward. um And it's very good. smoke head I've had a couple bottles and it's it's really good stuff.
00:39:16
Speaker
um But a lot of, they have a bunch of the ah
00:39:21
Speaker
differing expression. Like they have the sherry bomb and the rum cask and the something other cask. that are all under that label. um Sorry. Just went off on a little tangent there, but just give clarity.
00:39:34
Speaker
It doesn't mean it's good, it doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. um Yeah. In this case, I'll give it some more s sips and get back to you with my thoughts. What is your second pairing of the evening tonight, Dennis?
00:39:46
Speaker
I'm having second thoughts about my second pairing, and I will tell you. How apropos, second thoughts about my second pairing. We're getting into a winery that's about eight minutes from my house called... Let's see if I can get the... Bellevue? in brush There it is.
00:40:00
Speaker
Yep. Bellevue. This is their 2022 Chardonnay. I should mention this particular one is oaked. They have a an unoaked offering, which is just straight all this out of the steel tank.
00:40:13
Speaker
Um... Yeah, we talked about this a little bit on a, well, probably say a couple of shows, few shows ago. But quick recap, found that in 2001 in Landisville, New Jersey.
00:40:25
Speaker
There used to be a farm for a long time. And they decided, hey, let's let's do some grapes. Now they're running on about 40 acres of estate grown grapes. 40 acres is a sizable amount.
00:40:38
Speaker
And it's also very pretty. i I've visited them multiple times. Very pretty. It's nice to sit outside, have some wine, hang out with them. this the our This one is considered the one of the more popular wines from them.
00:40:53
Speaker
I'm generally not a Chardonnay guy. I try so hard to get into Chardonnay. I cannot. You know, in in previous shows, I also mentioned the sort of the the terroir, if you will, of this outer coastal plain, this loamy soil that we have in this part of New Jersey is really great. It's normal drainage.
00:41:15
Speaker
Well, it could be. But again, to be fair, jokes aside, we are next to the Pine Barrens. So we have a really interesting foundation for very good drainage. We have a foundation for a lot of nutrient-rich soil.
00:41:30
Speaker
It makes sense. I would say, yeah, certainly makes sense to grow this grape here. um again, another grape that originated in Burgundy of France and very, generally speaking, very popular and very popular in both ways, meaning oaked specifically in a barrel and also un-oaked coming straight out of a, out of a tank.
00:41:53
Speaker
Versatile, generally speaking, as they say, I don't think it's a bad wine. I think it's just a, ah you know, I made a terrible choice in my pairing tonight. That's a bummer. It's,
00:42:04
Speaker
ah It's not working. It's not working well. And in a sense, it makes me feel a certain way about my my joke for this segment of the show. I feel similarly kind of defeated, if you will.
00:42:18
Speaker
Oh, man. Sad, even. Let me ask you this, Trippy. Why did the French give the Statue of Liberty to America? Do you know?
00:42:31
Speaker
They didn't want it anymore? They had no use for a statue with only one hand raised. i ah That's a good one. And that's how I feel about this wine. i I'll give it half my hand. I don't know.
00:42:46
Speaker
Getting close to two. ah But yeah, man, how is your second pairing going for you? What do you think? um It's better than the last. So as I said before, I've only had a couple of French wines before.
00:42:58
Speaker
had one that was like, wow this is good. And then I had the last one I had on the show. I can't remember what it was called. It had a full name. It was like from a castle or something. That might have been the first one, actually.
00:43:11
Speaker
um But it wasn't very good. It was okay. not i I didn't realize like it was kind of too bright and fruity. This one has some of that bright and fruitiness, but it has at least a little bit of that, like, leathery, earthy quality that I got in that first one that I really liked.
00:43:28
Speaker
But... Sam Fennel, you met you may have noticed me. Well, Dennis may have. None of you did because you didn't see it. ah Using a cocktail shaker. So Sam Fennel said, take some of that port on a cocktail shaker and shake it up and then try it.
00:43:44
Speaker
Oh, interesting. okay And I was like, I should try that. So just did. I have a second glass here that I have just shaken in a cocktail shaker.
00:43:55
Speaker
And we'll see how it is. Interesting.
00:44:02
Speaker
Okay. That definitely did exactly what he said it would do. Like, really cut that brightness down. There's a different flavor that has now appeared
00:44:15
Speaker
that I can't figure out. It's like almost a slight sourness, but not as, like, tart as before. Before it was, like, black cherry kind of tart.
00:44:30
Speaker
Yeah, it just like cuts a little bit of a brightness out. um It does lose a little bit of like the fullness of flavor. This is kind of a full-bodied wine, which is nice.
00:44:41
Speaker
right. Sorry. I got sidetracked with that, and I haven't even smoked my cigar in a couple weeks. Same. I've got to pick mine up as well. I've been slacking here. Yeah, so I think this actually works pretty well.
00:44:54
Speaker
um I think the big difference is that... you have had ah couple of wines that were kind of more bright and juicy. And this is more, ah heavy and, ah very dark fruity, not fresh fruity, dark fruity, like yeah stewed sour cherries kind of stuff.
00:45:18
Speaker
Um, Which I normally really dig. Yeah, I think this is actually working pretty well. i was I had very low expectations for this wine because the last one I had was also 85% Malone and 15% Cab Sav.
00:45:31
Speaker
And I was like, yeah, I kind of hate that. um This one I think is ah not too bad. I kind of like it.
00:45:41
Speaker
Yeah, i think I think it works. I'll circle back to it. For now, how's your... Oh, you already told me. I just interrupted myself. um All right.
00:45:51
Speaker
Let's get on to joke. How you say in French, less I less I. The French Napoleon Bonaparte has cursed me.
00:46:03
Speaker
I just burned my hand on my dropping my cigar. Jesus. Fuck. Okay. Hold on. the Oh, God. ah yeah Where are we at? Are we on the next segment of jokes? We're on joke number three or four. However many jokes we've done at one.
00:46:17
Speaker
All right.
00:46:20
Speaker
ah Are you ready for this one? I hope you are, sir.
00:46:26
Speaker
What's the difference between a tick and the Eiffel Tower? Any idea? No. Well, one is a pain in the ass and the other is a pain in the tower.
00:46:43
Speaker
I'll lie. These are painful. I love it, but they're painful.
00:46:50
Speaker
All right. Now let's move on to our last pair. ah oh Let's do it, man. So my last pairing comes to me from Baron Brewing.
Baron Brewing: German-Style Beers in Japan
00:46:57
Speaker
Baron being German for bear. Makes sense.
00:47:03
Speaker
ah So guy named Takeshi Kimura. started working for a large Japanese brewer after college um and in the early nineties. He was doing sales.
00:47:15
Speaker
He was going, you know, he would be in bars and restaurants and liquor stores all the time, taking orders and meeting new customers. um In the early nineties, Japanese beer industry was kind of booming or starting to.
00:47:29
Speaker
um So he, he was doing pretty well um during his visits to all these liquor stores and restaurants. He started trying European beer for the first time. um And he came to the realization that like Japanese beers, there's five or six big companies at the time all making Japanese beers.
00:47:47
Speaker
They're all kind of samey. They all got one beer that is ah the same as the other guy's beer, just with a different label on it, or at least close enough to be the same. um Kind of like brewing was here in the 80s and 70s.
00:48:02
Speaker
most of the seventies and eighties that is, um, or most areas in the seventies and eighties and the eighties crap brewing was starting to take off, but only in pretty small areas. Um, and he kind of came up with this idea, like the, the European beers have this, uh, you know, every, every beer is from a different village and you get what beer has been in that village for the last 200 years.
00:48:28
Speaker
It might be a dark beer. It might be a light beer. It might be a wheat beer. It might be a, um I don't know, a pulse or something. um But that was a time where, you know, most breweries made one beer.
00:48:42
Speaker
um But in Germany and other some other parts of Europe, the beer was yeah vastly different across all of Europe. ah Everybody had different styles of beer that was their focus.
00:48:57
Speaker
um So he was like, maybe I should do that in Japan. ah He came up with this idea and met some investors. It took him a while to get the money together and be able to actually go forward with this.
00:49:11
Speaker
um By the late nineties, when he was actually kind of getting this going, Japanese brewing had kind of exploded with micro brews, um, being very gimmicky and very expensive.
00:49:25
Speaker
And he hated that. It was all Yuzu ale and stuff like that. Um, so he got with these partners and finally was able to start bearing 2001. Um, um, um as i said with his focus on emulating the european style um he started in his hometown of i'm sorry to anyone who speaks even on a word of japanese because i'm going to butcher some of these words moroica moroica um sounds russian but it's uh in the awate prefecture of japan prefecture is kind of like a state in japan it is true i get this i as a soviet i understand morioka yeah
00:50:06
Speaker
historical but but Uh, and he was focusing on the styles of German beers that he loved. Um, as they were putting together the funding, getting ready to actually move forward with this plan.
00:50:19
Speaker
Takeshi found out that there was a brewery in Germany that was about to go out of business. And he secured a deal to buy all of their brewing equipment, which they had had for over a hundred years.
00:50:31
Speaker
Um, so he got this entire, setup of german brewing equipment direct directly from germany have been going for over 100 years um and he founded baron in 2001 they became one of the leading japanese breweries focusing on the german style uh they've won a bunch of awards they won two times they won a very interesting name award it sounds very japanese an award called They were the winner of Japanese best craft beer brewery we want to share with the world.
00:51:06
Speaker
That's a long name to put on a plaque. That's a full name. But, ah you know, that's that's pretty cool. Over the years, Baron has continued to focus on German brewing techniques.
00:51:17
Speaker
ah They hold two beer festivals a year. They have... ah In the article that I read, it said they had ah experimented with Cool Ship Brewing.
00:51:29
Speaker
um That must have been before. They actually collaborated with Mickler to release a Cool Ship Brewed Beer. um And they also have started making ciders and wines as well.
00:51:40
Speaker
um They... and It seems like a very cool brewery. They've got a but a bunch of very cool beers um that I wish I could find. and They had one that has sea salt in it. It sounded right up my alley. It's supposed to be a taste of the sea ah kind of thing.
00:51:56
Speaker
um What I have from them tonight is possibly their most German beer, ah which is Beren Schwartz. Black Beren.
00:52:07
Speaker
ah This is their ah they're black ale. they black ale or dark beer, rather. Kind of the way to... to Kind of the word for it.
00:52:19
Speaker
I love that they have... You're not going to be able to read it. It says, 100 years beer. By brewing equipment and recipe 100 years ago.
00:52:31
Speaker
Kind of broken English. But... Dude, for a second... Can you see that? No. For a second, I thought like, oh shit, this is very old. The bottled on date is 24-04-10. And I was like, did I buy 15-year-old beer?
00:52:50
Speaker
But no, brewed in 2024. So it is yeah ah eight months old. um Which actually for a beer like this is not a bad thing. No, I think it's a great deal.
00:53:02
Speaker
We can take a look at it here. It's Schwarz. but That is Schwarziest all-heiled. It's got the Schwarz, man. ah Wow. That's just straight up black and it smells awesome.
00:53:16
Speaker
Like it smells like a proper German dark beer um with a little bit of like a smokiness, I think. um But maybe that's in my head. I'll know more after I taste it. is that the So the smokiness, is that?
00:53:31
Speaker
Yes, I actually taste it. Sorry, I was going to ask you if that was on the nose or on the the palate. But I'm curious if that whatever you're getting on the nose of a transfers to the palate. And if it does, I would like to discuss a little bit.
00:53:45
Speaker
little bit of And we we are actually within their Best Buy date because it says best before one year from the day a bottle. Oh, good. Okay. That's um Anyway, very, very cool steaming brewery.
00:53:57
Speaker
A bunch of cool beers that I wish I could find, but all that they had was this one at the store I was at. um That's the unfortunate thing about tasting Japanese beer is like you can find a great beer, but you can also find a beer from a brewery that makes way more interesting beer at home, but they don't...
00:54:13
Speaker
exported at all. It's like, unless you're going to Japan, you're never trying any of that stuff. It's so hard, man. Yeah. i i Whatever I can get, I'm so thankful for it. And anytime I see any U.S. breweries doing anything kind of Japanese-style,
00:54:28
Speaker
ah using any kind of funky yeast. I always, I try to buy a bottle, even if I don't like it, I just want to experience it. just want to kind of get an idea of of where their heads are at as brewers and how they're trying to approach the, the American consumers. Cause the pal, our palates are different.
00:54:46
Speaker
generally speaking, not not singling anyone out. In general, very different palette than someone in a very different country overseas. yeah um so it's really fascinating as as someone who loves brewing beer and ah just like Roth Koffner is obsessed with with water and the the profiles and the things that get into the beer.
00:55:07
Speaker
Similarly, I'm all about that. I'm so fascinated by, well, why would you use this particular ingredient versus that ingredient or this kind of yeast versus that yeast beyond the fact that maybe that's all you can access.
00:55:18
Speaker
But if you can access anything else, why do you just use that? There's a story behind it. And we see the same thing with tobacco. absolutely You know, every episode, I try to bring it back into the tobacco world when we talk about things.
00:55:32
Speaker
There's so many corollaries. When we talk about beer and wine and spirits and things, so production, there's so many corollaries. It makes sense that so many people that love cigars also love ah making or consuming spirits and wines and coffee and non-alcoholic things.
Cultural Exploration of Tastes
00:55:50
Speaker
We, I think as cigar smokers are very fortunate in that we, we'd like to explore our palate in a way that most people, they just kind of come home and they go, well, it's Tuesday. I'm going eat this thing. And then Wednesday, I'm going eat that thing. And then just kind of consume things, but they don't really sit down to think about in the way that a cigar smoker does.
00:56:08
Speaker
Yeah, I've often thought about that, how, um I mean, a lot of cigar smokers don't even have that mindset. They just, they like a cigar. They like the experience they may not realize it, but they were actually experiencing it, which is really very cool. But people like you and me, like, I want to taste things that are bad and experimental and so weird that I can't even like them.
00:56:32
Speaker
Like, I want to taste that stuff. Those beers that, like, that one had a couple weeks ago that was, like, the creamy pineapple Dole Whip thing. And it was, like, I don't know if I've ever tasted a beer like that since then. I did have ah the raspberry vanilla version of the same thing, which was buck wild.
00:56:53
Speaker
Like, it tasted like a blue slushie mixed with a milkshake. But beer. It still tasted like beer and it still had like that sourness. It was wild. um But I want to taste that stuff. Like I just want to experience what what weird shit people are doing.
00:57:11
Speaker
And some of it is amazing. same applies to cigars. I just want to try everything. And if you're using a different technique that changes the flavor, I want to learn about that and I want to taste it.
00:57:22
Speaker
ah But I guess that's why that's why we do it. but Why we're doing this right now and why we've done it for the last however many years. Well, that's like, you know, when we were in Vegas, I dragged you to that mezcal bar, man, and we sat down and we did a flight and it was such a cool experience sit down and you have grasshopper salt and you can go, well, what the fuck? Why would you put grasshoppers in salt? why How does that, what does that do? What does that actually mean for the tequilas, the mezcals that you drink?
00:57:49
Speaker
It makes it it just it completes the story. That's the biggest thing. You're experiencing a story like you can go and you get booze anywhere. Booze or booze, right? um When you sit down, and you taste something and your your goal is to taste things rather than to get hammered or whatever else.
00:58:07
Speaker
um you really get down into the weeds of what that's about. And the environment that you're you're in really impressions upon you in a lot of different ways. The music, the people around you, the the person that's sitting next you chatting with, um which makes, again, to go back to cigars, of course,
00:58:24
Speaker
lot of people smoke cigars at home and they'll spend most of their week sitting at home smoking cigars, not talking to anybody else, just on their phones, doing whatever, fine. But then you sit down in a cigar shop and you sit down with someone else that's smoking and your mind is blown because your perspective opens up.
00:58:41
Speaker
And you go, man, I've been smoking this one, whatever it is, Perdomo or something else, doesn't matter. You've been smoking this one cigar your entire life. And now you've sat down next to someone that has given you perspective on a different brand or kind of tobacco or a different Vitola or whatever else.
00:58:57
Speaker
And you go, okay, that's cool. I want to try that. That's interesting. let me Let me try that next time. that's so That's what it's about. Absolutely. All right. barry Tell us about your ah your final pairing today.
00:59:12
Speaker
I did a ah slight nod. Let me make sure my spares are not going out.
00:59:18
Speaker
Oh, all right. Interesting to see how this is going to go. Because I've been sipping on for a little bit. ah This really pretty battle. don't know. Oh, yeah. This is the one you sent out. I'm going to really be able to tell.
00:59:33
Speaker
there's Let's see if I get the lighting just right. Probably not. Kind of. Anyway. This is the Darumbus Mescal. which is a concept. It's a brand concept. It's not a single distillery, just to be clear.
00:59:48
Speaker
So Mezcal nerds and tequila nerds out there, this is not one distillery. This is a what's considered a brand concept or um an umbrella company, if you will.
00:59:59
Speaker
ah They started in the early 2010s, and they wanted to kind of go out into Mexico and and find distilleries that were doing cool Mezcals and interesting things. And now, to be clear, what they're doing is they're curating, they're not blending.
01:00:15
Speaker
There are blenders out there that do mezcal blends, and that's fine, that's great. Malbien is a good example of a another company that does just single distillery yeah single family, single origin, if you will, within various Mexican states that produce mezcal.
01:00:33
Speaker
There are not many. There are a couple of you know very big ones. This particular one is ah Where is it from? Potosi, I think.
01:00:43
Speaker
so San Luis Potosi. I'm probably butchering the name. My apologies. i I'm not with that. sure it's close enough. But yeah, San Luis Potosi is kind of like the...
01:00:55
Speaker
Middle East of Mexico. It's in the middle of Mexico toward the east, if that makes sense.
Pairing Success: Darumbus Mezcal
01:01:02
Speaker
The Potosi nod is from kind of these Bolivian, very rich Bolivian folk that at some point had some influence in the area and so this is a nod to them but when they finally became a proper Mexican state.
01:01:17
Speaker
And these cats, like many mescal... I can't even say it. Mescalarias. mesalleia That's a hard word, dude. Fix it, Tripp. You gotta fix it. I can't speak the words. Mezcaleria.
01:01:29
Speaker
Thank you, Papi. I think that's how you say it. You brought me in the zone. I'm in zone. Mezcaleria. um They're really interesting because they're doing local stuff. And again, that's the whole point of these families. They're doing Mezcals.
01:01:41
Speaker
They're not doing it to sell and to make money. It's... it's Uncle, whatever, Uncle Bob that makes stuff and he's really good at it. And every time we go to a party Uncle Bob's house, he always has his homemade stuff, right? That's what it is.
01:01:52
Speaker
That's where it was grown from. Deeply cultural. It wasn't a business thing. um And in this case, wild cultivated agave.
01:02:04
Speaker
well, sorry, wild or cultivated agave, I should say. Either they pick it wild or they cultivate it on a specific farm for agave. um Very often, it's cooked with river, stone, and mesquite. So you're getting that natural flavor of the stone, the natural flavor of of the the wood, almost no filtration.
01:02:23
Speaker
some Some do filter, but in this case, they don't really. This particular expression that I have is not filtered. And even on the bottle, it's kind of cool. They say... they use above ground stone and ah they used wild yeast. So the wild yeast and the rock, it's the rock that crushes. So when the horse goes around and and crushes all of that agave, whatever the yeast is on the stone is there.
01:02:48
Speaker
And that gets imparted before it goes into the the vessel for fermentation, which is kind of fun. Man, I love mezcal. Just the funkiness of it and the history of it is fascinating.
01:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, man. It's just really interesting and so cool. And it's, again, it's one of those things that it's so specific to the family. So this particular one is really interesting because they mentioned a Filipino style.
01:03:15
Speaker
What was it? Filipino style? Yeah. Hold on. It was in my notes. I'll tell you right now. It was a Filipino style still. interesting. Which is written the first time I've ever heard of anything and like, what is a Filipino style still?
01:03:28
Speaker
It says on the bottle, copper pot still. But I think when they say Filipino style, it's a copper pot still that's a slightly different shape to get a different kind of extraction from... Well, a different kind of final distillate from what the base is.
01:03:47
Speaker
So again, kind of cool. it's It's one of those things like some guy went out, found this thing. He decided... I'm going to botch together a bunch of different parts and pieces and we're going to keep doing it. And it it makes sense after a while.
01:04:01
Speaker
And that's the kind of the wild west of Mezcal that I really love. We talk about the wild west of Canadian whiskey. Oh, yeah. Sometimes not in a good way, right? We say they're ungovernable.
01:04:14
Speaker
They have no rules around their whiskey. Their whiskey is just whatever you get is what you get. Yep. Mezcal is certainly much more refined in that regard and that it has more rules.
01:04:25
Speaker
There's certainly more oversight. But in terms of the production style, there's so many different variations, which is really cool. Yeah, I agree. And I love that, man.
01:04:36
Speaker
um Before I talk about my my last pairing and how it tastes, ah what do you think of this cigar? Where are you with this cigar right now?
01:04:48
Speaker
She's going out on me again. Because I talk too much.
Evolving Taste of Macanudo Emissary France
01:04:52
Speaker
I've kind of warmed up to it. The spice has really started increasing for me in the last few minutes. Same. Same. I've noticed that as well.
01:04:59
Speaker
Yeah. It's still got kind of that same earthy. um The sweetness has dropped a little bit, but it's not gone.
01:05:10
Speaker
It's definitely still there. One of the core flavors. You mentioned Cedary earlier, early on, and I definitely am getting a lot of that Cedar now. um Any other thoughts before we move on?
01:05:25
Speaker
We'll talk about it again at the end, so don't worry too much. i mean I'm enjoying the cigar. I think the cedar has ramped up significantly to the point where it's... Where we talked about... Oh, God, the word I always forget. The one word then with the one English word I always forget.
01:05:39
Speaker
The one. That one you always forget. Tannic. Okay. Because I remember it in Russian, and I forget the word in English. And so ah that tannic quality, that bite that you get from cedar...
01:05:51
Speaker
really dry cedar when you put it in your mouth and chew on a piece of cedar or like ah on a spill or on a, if you have a cedar toothpick or something like that, it's very much there. It's very dry, but actually I really like it in the final third.
01:06:08
Speaker
Um, yeah, me too. I'm liking it. Uh, all right. So Baron brewing. I wanted to talk before I talk about what I'm tasting in this. Can I read you their list of some of their beers?
01:06:19
Speaker
Oh, yeah. They have a traditional Czech Pilsner. They have a lemon rattler. They have a rye beer, a Maybach, a Kulsch. They have their own Oktoberfest beer.
01:06:32
Speaker
The Japanese company. Yeah. Wow. Okay. They have a Weizenbach. They have an Alt. They have a couple of flavored Rottlers. They have that Ihetov Sea one that I was talking about, a salty lager.
01:06:46
Speaker
They use this handmade sea salt from the Awate Prefecture. um They have a fresh hop lager. Where are they even getting fresh hops?
01:06:58
Speaker
I guess probably New Zealand, right? like ah Well, New Zealand, or to be fair, probably growing it. Could be. um I mean, they can. I mean, from what I've heard, it doesn't grow well.
01:07:13
Speaker
In, ah well, actually, you know what? That's not true. I think it's just that it's not a big crop. It's not a money crop. That's the thing. Yeah. So if they're using it locally. The can has a picture of a Japanese mountain with a hop floating above it. So it probably has grown there.
01:07:28
Speaker
um They have a series of chocolate stouts. They do a chocolate stout, a milk chocolate stout, an imperial chocolate stout, and an imperial barrel-aged chocolate stout. I'm so surprised because the chocolate thing is not— It's not— Well, in the spirits world of Japan, the little that I know about it it's not prevalent.
01:07:47
Speaker
Not to a degree that warrants having multiple styles of of a thing. That's what I would have thought. um They did, as I mentioned, they had Michler collaboration. That was a Vienna lager that was cool-shipped. what I didn't realize until I read the description here is that that cool ship was part of that brewery equipment acquisition.
01:08:05
Speaker
So that's a hundred year old cool ship that they're using. Um, so they spent the last 20 years trying to figure out a way to use that cool ship. And finally, Mickler came in and helped them, uh, find a recipe for it. So it looks like that's on their seasonals.
01:08:20
Speaker
I don't know if that's annual or not. Um, Dude, I want to go to Japan and go to this brewery right now. It sounds awesome. This brewery sounds killer. um If I ever go to Japan, I'm going to try to work that into the trip.
01:08:34
Speaker
ah Anyway, if you couldn't tell from my kind of ah excitement about all their beers, this is really good.
01:08:46
Speaker
Like, this tastes like a proper German dark beer. Wow. German schwarz. I was talking about that smokiness. It's got it a little bit on the nose and then just a, just a hint on the palate.
01:08:59
Speaker
Um,
01:09:03
Speaker
it's really more like that. Very, very roasty malts. It doesn't have the body of something like a stout, but it has all the roastiness of something like a, like a, uh, a Guinness.
01:09:17
Speaker
Um, but with less body and more bubbles.
01:09:21
Speaker
It's fantastic. And I think I forgot to mention this is 5.5% ABV, just like my ah Korean beer was. um Man, i I'm a little bit upset that I can't just regularly buy this beer.
01:09:35
Speaker
Like, for $8 a bottle or whatever it costs, it's not going to be my daily drinker. um But next time I go, I'm definitely getting more of this because I'm a big fan of this beer.
01:09:47
Speaker
That is high praise. ah and those flavors are working really well with the cigar. um It's really bringing out that, ah like I talked about a minute ago, that cedar, that earthiness.
01:10:01
Speaker
um Yeah, great pairing. How's the Mezcal working with it? can see that working pretty well, or just being a little too funky, maybe. No, I would argue, I think the Mezcal is probably the best pairing.
01:10:14
Speaker
Talking about pairing of the night, maybe a little bit prematurely, but pairing of the night for me is going to be the Mezcal. It's working really well. That funk is is cleaning up some of that intense dryness from the cedar.
01:10:26
Speaker
That bit of spice that's ramped up. And i've I've also been smoking pretty fast, as I usually do. So I'm kind of proper final third. You're not too far ahead of me.
01:10:38
Speaker
Yeah, just a little bit. um i'm I'm enjoying... At this point, I'm enjoying the cigar. And it's again, it's one of those cigars that I find... And i've I've joked about this. This is a I like the cigar after the halfway point.
01:10:53
Speaker
And that's fine. It takes a cigar. Certain tobacco, certain blends will take time to develop flavor. I definitely kind of It's not that weird. Like, there was a little funk to it at the beginning that I couldn't quite figure out.
01:11:06
Speaker
um But it just kind of melded together into a good cigar on the way through. um Man, when you lit this, I thought this might be... one of the few cigars that we just don't like on this show because that happens once in a while.
01:11:22
Speaker
Generally, i try not to select cigars that seem like we might not like them.
Cigar Quality & Pricing Reflections
01:11:27
Speaker
We've had some cigars that are disappointing, but we haven't had a lot of cigars that we're like, wow, that's a bad cigar. ah And luckily, this wasn't one of them.
01:11:35
Speaker
This a pretty good cigar. This is a, you know what, I would say, clearly, this is, personally, for me, this is a what I would consider a walk-around cigar. Walk-around meaning, and light the cigar, smoke on it here and there, I go, I walk around, talk to people, chat, and I'm just focused on other things. It's not about the cigar, necessarily, it's just about chatting with people, hanging out.
01:11:58
Speaker
um It's a good in-between cigar, i its I would call it. I kind of agree with that. it's not It doesn't have the wow factor that the Espana had, which is what i was hoping for. I was surprised. i was very surprised because I i walked into the Espana kind of expecting not to enjoy it, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought.
01:12:17
Speaker
Unless you have no palate or something, or maybe you just don't like that flavor, um it's got this real different flavor that like makes you sit up in your seat and be like, whoa.
01:12:29
Speaker
That's weird. What is that? And then you're thinking about that the whole time. This doesn't have that. This is just a ah good cigar, like a solid cigar. um Well, we'll go back. we'll I'll let you go back through your pairings.
01:12:43
Speaker
Actually, well we should probably just do that as we're talking about this. well What do you think about the price point? I'm not sure a $15 cigar.
01:12:54
Speaker
Man, all right, so I would say two things. First of all, my palate, my personal palate, I'd call it $8.50. General consumer palate. I'd go a little higher than that. I'd call it like $11 or $12. Well, yeah, general I would say general consumer palate, not minding my own whatever idiosyncrasies.
01:13:13
Speaker
I would call it easily an $11, maybe $12 cigar, fine. Totally fine. but totally fine But just my own palate kind of brings it down. And that's, again, not a knock on the cigar. It's just my own preference and the the flavors that I prefer. And otherwise, I would say construction has been fantastic from a cigar standpoint.
01:13:34
Speaker
From a construction standpoint, it has been awesome. That's what I was going to say about the $8 price point. To me, the $8 price point is where construction is not a given. Construction is going to be a little, you know, sometimes you get a great cigar. Sometimes you get a okay cigar. Sometimes you get a good cigar.
01:13:51
Speaker
Once a while you get a bad cigar. um Above the $12 mark is where I expect almost everyone to be good. Above $15 is where I expect like it should be great every single time. I should have yeah perfect construction every time or you shouldn't be charging that much for the cigar.
01:14:09
Speaker
um Yeah. Yeah. I dig this cigar. Um, I would, don't know. Like you said, like around the $10 or $12 mark is where I'd be comfortable buying these once in a while.
01:14:26
Speaker
It's not a, the Espana to me is a go try this cigar right now cigar. Like the next time you see this cigar, buy two so you can experience it and and see what it does for your palate.
01:14:38
Speaker
This one is like, you know, It's pretty good. if If you have a chance, maybe try one out. But it's not something that you should be actively hunting for. Yeah. Make sense? Agreed. and And certainly in the Emissary line, you have options.
01:14:55
Speaker
So I would say this is probably a good second option if you've tried other things. Yeah, if you've already tried the Espana, try this one out.
01:15:05
Speaker
um Either way, I'm still impressed that this is a Manganudo. This is still one of the better Macanudas I've had the last few years. I feel like um I know people loved the... What was the Black,
Macanudo's Evolution & Industry Trends
01:15:20
Speaker
White, Red one? What was that series called?
01:15:24
Speaker
The Macanuda Black, White, Red. They had like the Black, the White, and the Orange. Not the coffee infused. No, these were before that. Inspirato. The Inspirato series.
01:15:34
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I didn't really love those. I felt like those tasted cheaper than they were. um These, I think, are, you know, ah these are kind of the quality that you expect from a Macanudo.
01:15:51
Speaker
And with the price point you expect from a Macanudo, right? Like Macanudos aren't generally cheap cigars, um but this one at least has the quality that I think is big step up from the, what was the other one called?
01:16:05
Speaker
I just forgot it. I just said it. No, the Inspirato. Inspirato, yeah. Inspirato is kind of a weird veer off for Macanudo. I feel like this has the soul of those like classic Macanudos, but with somebody a little more full-bodied in mind a lot of people think of macanudo as a company that only makes very boring very mild cigars which are good for what they are there but you know a lot of people these days don't want a mild cigar so they just kind of pass up macanudo and i i do think this fits in the macanudo portfolio that's what i'm trying to say
01:16:44
Speaker
I think there is value with Macanudo for everybody more than anything. And going back to wrestling on the laurels of really where Macanudo came from. And certainly the reason why they're still around today is because the early days of Macanudo, they built a fan base.
01:16:59
Speaker
Yeah. They had a profile. They had something distinct. The palates have changed fine. The palates are leaning more toward the, we're going back to that phase of like really complex, but also very strong tobaccos.
01:17:13
Speaker
things that Macanudo has been playing with here and there cautiously, which is, I think, ah a good choice because these things cost money. you can't When you make a project, you cannot afford to mess up.
01:17:26
Speaker
And so I think they're cautiously kind of treading into that new territory, and I'm happy to see that. I think it's going to bring a new level of consumer to them eventually, and the price point is reasonable. I'd say it's certainly where we are today with a lot of cigars.
01:17:42
Speaker
this is a standard price point now. Yeah, I agree. With that said, I'm going to give you, before we get into our final segment, I got one last one for you. Wait, what's your pairing of the night?
01:17:55
Speaker
Oh, the, uh, the mezcal. Okay. Mine, um, in case you couldn't guess, is the Schwartz. Like, schwar it's, it's just such a good beer.
01:18:06
Speaker
Um, and like, it just works so well with a cigar. Anyway, on to your joke. Mm-hmm. Make me, or at least breathe firmly out my nose. Yes, sir.
01:18:16
Speaker
You're going to breathe. i don't know if it's from the top end or the bottom end, are you're going to breathe. um German goes on holiday to France. When he reaches the border, the border guard takes his paperwork to make sure he's legit.
01:18:34
Speaker
The border guard asks him, occupation? German says, no, no just visiting.
01:18:42
Speaker
You
01:18:45
Speaker
you know, I wasn't expecting Nazi, but I should have expected Nazi. Well, I bet you did not see that coming.
01:18:55
Speaker
That was a good one. That was a good one. ah ah All right. It is time for
Movie Chat: Jaws & Related Fears
01:19:01
Speaker
one for the road. The part where we talk about something that we watched recently or or experienced or listened to or read or ah Anything else?
01:19:13
Speaker
Consumed in some way. Consumed in some way. ah
01:19:19
Speaker
Man, I feel like I always have two lately. But how about I do one, then you do one, then I do my other one. All right. Yeah. So my first one is I, ah for anybody who doesn't know, Friday, Friday,
01:19:37
Speaker
was the 50th anniversary of the release of Jaws. Yes. And of course, I had to watch it again. Better than um so i I watched it. I smoked in Escasos, Catuaje Escasos.
01:19:51
Speaker
I can't remember the name, the Churchill. T, the H.
01:19:57
Speaker
um don't remember which one it is. um Anyway.
01:20:02
Speaker
And I had a Great Notion beer called... ah
01:20:09
Speaker
God, I can see it, but I can't read it from here. It's at an angle. I saw the picture. Triple Dank Shark. That's what it was called. um It was their Triple Hazy IPA, ah which was better than most triples I've had. A lot of triples I feel like go way too heavy on the malt.
01:20:26
Speaker
and way too boozy. This one was a nice 10%, but with all that happiness that you want from a, from a ah triple IPA. And it was, man, but of Jaws still holds up. It is still just such a banger of a movie.
01:20:45
Speaker
um I watched it with my dad as I do most movies because we love horror. My mom actually heard that we were going watch it and I was like, well, we're smoking cigars. So we're way out in the garage. And she watched part of it by herself and then got too scared when Richard Dreyfuss got in the water.
01:21:02
Speaker
um So she had to finish watching it the next day. The nighttime scene is really freaky. As a diver, I can tell you, I and will never do night dives. Ever. I will never night dive. Is it because of that scene or just... Yeah, it's yeah it's absolutely because of that.
01:21:14
Speaker
I will never night dive. That and the movie Beast. Oh, yeah. Terrify the shit out of me. Yeah, Jaws, man... What a movie. It's so good.
01:21:25
Speaker
And it's so like, it's so well directed, well acted. It's wild how the final act wraps up. They swim away. And then there's like maybe 30 or 45 seconds of credits.
01:21:40
Speaker
Like there's almost no credits in that movie, which I had never really noticed before. Cause I think the last time I saw it was probably 10 years ago.
01:21:51
Speaker
My parents said the last time they saw it was when they saw it in the theater. Wow. Which is nuts. um Are you familiar with the lake thing? What lake thing?
01:22:04
Speaker
So that there's a thing in, at least in Jersey that I know of, that in the summertime, they'll, the certain lakes, certain big lakes will have a they'll get an inflatable ah screen.
01:22:17
Speaker
and if oh set it up on the water so you get inner tubes and you have people the pay to get in and you kind of float on the water and generally this is like at the end of the day when the sun is setting and they'll float on the water and you'll watch the movie floating on an inner tube in the dark and it is intense I've never done it I would be shit scared to do it ah that would be pretty pretty creepy yeah But it would be a lot scarier if you were in the ocean.
01:22:49
Speaker
I mean... Well, I have a rule, so thanks to Jaws. Speaking of Jaws, Jaws is the reason why I will never enter a pool where no one else is swimming. If it's an empty pool, I will not go in.
01:23:01
Speaker
Because there might be a shark in there, right? well Yes. Yes. that's It makes no sense, but that is my fear. Dude, Jaws, when I was a kid, it also makes no sense. But when I was a kid, Jaws scared me so much that I remember...
01:23:14
Speaker
Like if I was in a, in like the, the community pool, we had a community pool in our neighborhood when I was a kid. If I was in the community pool and I swam underwater, I,
01:23:27
Speaker
Like if I looked the long way on the pool, I would see that you can't see the wall. And all I would see in my head was a great white shark swimming out of the haze in the water.
01:23:39
Speaker
And I was like, I know it's not going to happen because there's a hundred people in this pool right now. But the fact that I can't see that, that wall means there might be a shark just hanging out over in that. quiet I can see you having been on, on several dives with sharks.
01:23:55
Speaker
ah and in a tank full of sharks as well, where you can't yeah see the other end of the tank, where I've experienced that exact thing of like, i there's nothing there, and then, oh shit. And then there is something there. See, yeah that would be the end of going in any water for me.
01:24:10
Speaker
I would never shower again. If the shark, in my case, it was a giant nurse shark that was coming, and they have... Sharks have very bad vision, and nurse sharks are fucking massive, and they have awful vision, and they don't go fast. They just kind of, like, coast. They just cruise, yeah.
01:24:27
Speaker
And so they will literally cruise until they bump into you. They get scared. They thrash real quick to get away, and then you get whacked in the head. ah i would hate So it's one of those things. um It's not...
01:24:41
Speaker
I learned that the hard way. As much as I love Jaws, ah Jaws isn't the reason for it, but I hate being near wild creatures of any type.
01:24:52
Speaker
I hate it. Like, I don't want to be in... I was in a zoo one time. It was actually a zoo that I read got shut down for bunch of animal violations. But they had a bunch of, like, emus and shit that would walk around and could, like, walk right up to you be what's up, dog?
01:25:09
Speaker
And I was like, mm-mm. I'm out. yeah You know, I was going to say that that one zoo that all they had was a dog. It was a shih tzu.
01:25:22
Speaker
But yes, we have we a place called Funny Farm that has a bunch of rescue farm animals and large animals and things. And they have emu that walk around. And there's one that i it knows me. I guarantee the amount times we've been there, it knows me. it seeks me out.
01:25:36
Speaker
It comes up and up to my face and it just stands upstairs. And it's that that look, man. It's that the cassowary dinosaur face look. soulless. those Those dark beady eyes. dark black like a doe's eyes.
01:25:53
Speaker
It's like that. And I go, this fucking bird is taller than me and it's got a talent. I'm walking away slowly. Animals don't... I don't like like big animals. They freak me out. Like
Action Films: Jackie Chan & Scott Adkins
01:26:07
Speaker
horses I'm okay with because they're pretty tame but like wild animals.
01:26:12
Speaker
Dr. Christopher Ria has a different feeling about it. but You know the opposite of Christopher Reeve, right? Christopher Walken.
01:26:23
Speaker
Sorry, that was inappropriate. but i Man, that was that was a dark one, but I liked it. ah All right, what is your one for the red? Did I have one? I did have one.
01:26:34
Speaker
Oh, man. I'm going to bring it back to 1996 because i I saw this in theaters as a young kid. I went to the theaters and it was really exciting because at that point I hadn't really been to a movie theater. I hadn't really experienced anything. And I had watched. I grew up watching a lot of 70s and eighty s kung fu movies and action movies, right? eighty s action, early 90s action.
01:26:59
Speaker
And, man, this movie, 1996, you might recall it, Jackie Chan's First Strike. Do you remember this movie? I don't know that I've ever seen First Train. so this was a this was like the next series in a saga called Police Story.
01:27:14
Speaker
Police Story started in the old Hong Kong days and was like originally an overseas thing. I have seen the a couple of the Police Story movies. Okay, yeah. So this is like the fourth Police Story, if you will, but it was like a big American blockbuster version of Police Story.
01:27:29
Speaker
Finally ah came to the U.S. in like, it was like January of 96. And and Man, that movie, it had so much going on. there were He was in a scuba tank with sharks and he was fighting.
01:27:43
Speaker
He was in the Ukrainian mountains with a snowboard chase. He had that classic fight scene with the ladders. Everybody remembers the ladders. It was like a warehouse. Oh, it's that one. and stuff where yeah climbs up the ladder and the ladder falls over and Yeah, and he jumps through the ladder and he you know beats up a bunch of guys. I think toward the end of the film, that one had a ah hovercraft as well.
01:28:07
Speaker
And so he was doing stunts on the hovercraft. Okay, I think I vaguely remember this movie. so Yeah, he almost died a bunch of times in that film. I mean, like if you're not almost dying, you're not Jackie Chan, right?
01:28:20
Speaker
But like Annie Wu was in it, which is is really cool. There are so many big names in this. Bill Tong and Annie Wu, if you love that action from from the in the old Hong Kong days, these are the people that really kind of made it and made it mainstream and accessible to us in the West and kind of fun. And, and we right, because they they took like the old, if you watch old, old, old hunk Kung Fu movies pre-Hong Kong, if you watch those old Kung Fu movies, they're very dry.
01:28:52
Speaker
They're very classic like Chinese novellas. And then you look at Hong Kong, and Hong Kong goes, we're going to do this like blockbuster thing. It's gonna be great. You're going to love it. Don't worry. It's going to be fine.
01:29:03
Speaker
And Sam O'Young and all these cats got it together, and Sam O'Young was directing a lot of those films. And you know they they came in and did a bunch of cool stuff. so that That's a movie, to me, it's near and dear.
01:29:13
Speaker
I watch it every couple of months just for that, like that but little bit of nostalgia from when I was a kid. Nice. That's awesome. Man, i was I have another one, but then I have another thing I want to talk to about.
01:29:28
Speaker
I'll talk about the other thing first. you Scott Adkins is? um I know the name from somewhere. He is a modern... He's the closest thing we have to a modern kung fu actor.
01:29:43
Speaker
I think. Scott Adkins, yeah? So he played ah the the big fat guy in John Wick 4. with like the silver teeth that was kind that was in the club.
01:29:55
Speaker
He's actually ripped. He's not a big fat guy. Um, I'm trying to remember. He is not a big fat guy. He's his a ripped dude. um But he is like the king of video on demand action.
01:30:10
Speaker
Oh, he was in Black Mask. Okay. Yes, he was in Black Mask. Cool. Check out some of his movies that he stars in because he is like every movie he makes is a love letter to classic action.
01:30:23
Speaker
um He takes on these movies that are directed by a lot of times their first time directing action, but they're ah basically movies where they just got a stuntman to direct a movie and write a movie.
01:30:37
Speaker
And but it's it's just a movie for stuntmen. It's awesome. soldier The dude is awesome. um Watches more recent stuff. Accident Man.
01:30:49
Speaker
ah
01:30:52
Speaker
Max Cloud. mom me look through the list a little bit. Oh, Avengement. Avengement was a good one. they're all They're all just like very silly ah excuses for action.
01:31:06
Speaker
Accident Man, Hitman's Holiday. Dude, Accident Man, both of them are really good. but's In a hilarious, very stupid way. He's a hitman who just makes accidents happen and it it's hilarious.
01:31:20
Speaker
That's good great. His movies are cool. Yeah. Anyway, that's not my second one for the road. My second one for the road, I brought it up a couple weeks ago, but it is now available to watch for everybody if you have an HBO Max subscription called Sinners.
01:31:38
Speaker
This is currently running in the running for my... movie of the year is a michael b jordan yeah michael b jordan playing twins he plays both of them obviously ah one of the things that i thought he did really well was give each of them their own personality so like when they're on screen you can tell which one it is by the way they talk the way they move the way they they but just the way they interact with people um which was really cool that's awesome but uh
01:32:10
Speaker
If you've seen more than 10 seconds of any trailer, you will know this movie is basically nineteen twenty s version of From Dusk Till Dawn.
01:32:22
Speaker
ah It's the two brothers. they were They lived in this small town in Louisiana. They left for a while and worked in Chicago as gangsters.
01:32:34
Speaker
They come back and everybody in town knows they are gangsters by career. like career And they're going to start up a little juke joint. They just want to kind of retire and start this juke joint up and have fun.
01:32:49
Speaker
And suddenly vampires show up at the door and then it is just absolute mayhem.
01:32:56
Speaker
But what you may not know is that this is part musical, part horror movie, part like historical, not historical, but period piece drama.
01:33:09
Speaker
It's really interesting because like the first 50 minutes or so have no major action, no vampires. Vampires just suddenly show up about halfway through the movie and then she gets crazy.
01:33:26
Speaker
It is my favorite movie out so far this year, think. One of those things where like I always have favorite movie of the year, but sometimes I got to wait until December to really decide what my favorite is.
01:33:38
Speaker
It may be one from January, but, ah you know, for now, this is what I'm calling my favorite of the year. Sinners starring Michael B. Jordan. The music's awesome.
01:33:50
Speaker
The movie's awesome. The action's awesome. ah Highly, highly recommend it. Check it out. All right.
Perfect Pairings & Episode Closure
01:33:59
Speaker
I guess that brings us to the end.
01:34:02
Speaker
um Dennis, any other closing comments?
01:34:07
Speaker
I have a lot of comments. I think, um listen, this cigar is not one necessarily to pass up. It's just one of those things that, ah yeah, I would recommend pick some pairings, as we talked about.
01:34:21
Speaker
i That's actually a good point. I think this cigar... Playing ahead a little bit. I think this cigar may be better as a pairing than it is on its own. i mean, I guess many cigars are, but this cigar has, like, that that big gap.
01:34:34
Speaker
have it with a dark beer or a mezcal or something with a little bit of earth to it. And I think you'll be, you'll be pretty happy with your pairing. Or even a mineral water, something with them. Extra minerality might help bring out some, some clarity in the scar.
01:34:48
Speaker
Certainly the bubbles I think would help if you, if you don't drink alcohol, go bubbles. Very true. All right, guys, I guess that brings us to the end ah Thanks for watching.
01:35:00
Speaker
Thanks for listening. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple or any of the other podcast catchers redistributed, we appreciate you. Give us a follow or whatever. I never say that, but give us a follow. Give us a review or whatever.
01:35:13
Speaker
um Trying to get them numbers up. Pump those numbers up, baby. Send us your hate mail. whatever Or send us hate mail. I'm happy to happy to check out your hate mail. We can read it on the show live. Send us your feelings.
01:35:26
Speaker
I will say, i was looking at our stats today, and we have not a lot, but since I changed podcast format, we have two downloads each from Germany and Australia.
01:35:37
Speaker
That's pretty cool. i think I think Australia is probably Dave Burke from Cigar Jukebox. Yeah. We big in Bulgaria for a little bit. Yeah. I don't know who's in Germany. I have no idea.
01:35:49
Speaker
so I'm curious how those numbers are going to change because we just I just switched platforms like a week ago. So those are these are numbers for a week. I don't know if they're they worth reading looking at even. But yeah.
01:36:03
Speaker
That's about it. Dennis hit him with the catchphrase. We will get out of here and see you next week. Oh, I forgot to mention next week. We are smoking triple nickel from be so horny.
01:36:15
Speaker
Fuck. Uh, the five, five, five, um, the new release of the visa horny. What was his original Vitola called? The uncle Ben, uncle Luke, something like that.
01:36:27
Speaker
Maybe Ben. don't recall. I mean, uncle Ben is from star Wars. Uh,
01:36:34
Speaker
Oh, don that's not from Star Wars. It's Uncle... I forget the name. Anyway. Ben's San Francisco treat, man.
01:36:43
Speaker
Come on.
01:36:46
Speaker
Anyway, thank you everybody for watching and listening. And remember, we wanted to drink better, but we wanted to drink less. Uncle Luke!