Cigar Aficionado

TOP CHURCHILL LA AURORA 1903 CAMEROON CHURCHILL The cigar is no longer made with Cameroon wrapper, but it captures the spirit of Cameroon by using the same seeds planted in Africa, only in Ecuador instead. It’s priced well and performed beautifully. $8.00 DOM. REP. 93 TOP FIGURADO PADRÓN 6000 Padrón’s commemorative series typically takes top billing, but this time, the top Padrón came from the core line, tying with the Romeo y Julieta Cupidos from Cuba and The Edge Corojo Torpedo by Rocky Patel. $11.20 NICARAGUA 93 TOP PETIT CORONA COHIBA SIGLO I Two small smokes from two of Cuba’s most recognizable brands bested the category in a tie—the Cohiba Siglo I and the Montecristo No. 5, a cigar that’s consistently been in production since World War II. £31.40 CUBA 93 TOP GRANDE DÍAS DE GLORIA BRAZIL GORDO Días de Gloria was A.J. Fernandez’s…

With no apologies to a certain football team from Dallas, America has a new team of cowboys that it adores—the ones from the hit Paramount show “Yellowstone,” which has become one of the country’s most popular programs. We love it too, and can’t wait for its return to television on November 10. We’re especially happy to have the actor who plays one of our favorite characters on our cover. You might not know the name Cole Hauser, but you know his “Yellowstone” character Rip. He’s the right-hand man to ranch owner John Dutton (played by Kevin Costner). He’s the tough guy on the show who beats the living daylights out of anyone threatening the Montana ranch or his family. Rip is the kind of guy you want on your side: He’s…

Dear Marvin, I received my latest copy of Cigar Aficionado the same day I finished Daniel Okrent’s 2010 book, Last Call, which is a particularly well-written and well-researched history of Prohibition—its causes, consequences and lessons. Okrent concludes his fine work by asserting, “In almost every respect imaginable, Prohibition was a failure. It encouraged criminality and institutionalized hypocrisy. It deprived the government of revenue, stripped the gears of the political system, and imposed profound limitations on individual rights. It fostered a culture of bribery, blackmail and official corruption.” The parallels between Prohibition and your excellent op-ed “The Lunacy of Anti-Smoking Regulations” [Editors’ Note, July/August 2024] are as numerous as they are ominous, and if taken to the extreme—outright Prohibition—would result in the same consequences Okrent identifies. One of the pleasures of being an adult…

MacGyver’s multipurpose contraptions notwithstanding, the simplest pocketknife will hold you in good stead for a number of uses—like cutting a thread, opening a package, peeling fruit and sharpening a pencil. William Henry has a more gentlemanly pursuit in mind for some of its blades: cutting the cap off a cigar. They combine expert workmanship and rare components with a specialized opening in the knife frame that is purpose-built for cigars. “We offer our cigar cutters in a variety of materials like fossil woolly mammoth tooth, hand-forged mokume-gane, desert ironwood, aerospace-grade titanium and wood from barrels used for Pappy Van Winkle Bourbon,” says Christian Davis, the vice president of marketing and brand development at William Henry. “All of these are paired with a hand-forged Damascus steel blade and gemstone adornments on the…

Cowboy boots were born as the simple and utilitarian footwear of the Wild West. By the 1930s, Hollywood promoted them to fancy dress among its Western stars. Nashville made them even fancier. So naturally, it took an Irishman schooled in the United Kingdom’s bespoke fashion industry to reclaim the Golden Age of cowboy boots. Jerry Ryan launched Austin’s Heritage Boots with the dream of making high-quality vintage boots. Inspired by many forgotten designs, he engaged a fifth-generation, family-owned boot factory in Mexico to make them the old way: entirely by hand, using curated, small-batch leathers. “Ours are all single-needle stitched, the tops are one piece, while most are two. And the real mark of a boot is true wooden pegs [in place of the hobnails that typically attach the sole]. It’s how…

It rained the day we picked up our 2024 Aston Martin DB12 Volante test car, a relentless drizzle that made the hills north of New York City into a misty approximation of the English countryside. A shame. “Volante” means “convertible” in Aston Martin’s vocabulary. The folding canvas roof was never uncinched, but that hardly felt like a sacrifice. The DB12 is an elegant, pulsepounding delight no matter the weather. The DB12 is all-new, but like a well-tailored suit, its style is timeless: long, pouncing hood, low roof, short trunk—the proportions that made James Bond’s mid-century DB5 an icon. Aston Martin calls the DB12 a “super-tourer,” one-upping the idea of a grand-touring car. In the old days, sports cars were best enjoyed in short spurts of driving bravado; grand-tourers gave up a…