By Daniel T. | March 23, 2012

Well it’s here, the last day of our amazing Casas Fumando 3 Year Anniversary Contest! We had some amazing entries from yesterday’s contest, everything from touching and sensitive to hilariously funny. Now today we have some more wonderful prizes for our great readers from a great sponsor of ours, Smoke Inn.

Smoke Inn was started by Abe “Ming” Dababneh back in 1996 and has quickly grown to 9 locations in South Florida. They have an excellent selection of cigars and all of them at excellent prices. Along with that, they maintain some great staff that are very helpful and informative. They offer some great events and even a You Tube channel with some interesting info.

Not long ago, Smoke Inn decided to take a chapter from the “Craft Brewing” world and began producing a selection of Micro-Blend cigars. Now these aren’t just some regular house blend cigar, these are serious premium cigars made by some top cigar companies. Smoke Inn enlisted the help of Padron, My Father Cigars, and Tatuaje to create 3 unique blends for the sole distribution by Smoke Inn. We even have the reviews posted of the Padron 1964 SI-15 cigar and the My Father Cigars El Hijo.

Now Smoke Inn has been kind enough to offer up a wonderful prize pack to give away to one lucky winner. The prize includes:

• A FULL BOX of My Father Cigars El Hijo Smoke Inn Exclusive Cigars

 

• An SI Survival Pack including a Torch Lighter, a 10-count Cigar Vault Travel Humidor, a Cigar Cutter, and a Smoke Inn Baseball Cap

 

Now that’s a pretty sweet prize pack and if you read the review of this cigar he basically said “This is a damn good cigar” and that should sum it up well! haha. So how do you win this sweet prize?

Well, yesterday’s contest turned up some amazing and sentimental moments relating to cigars so we’re going the opposite today with a little more light-hearted theme. Again, all you have to do is submit a comment below. You need to tell us who you like better, Tony or me?! And tell us Why!! (*hint* *hint* I’m picking the winner so choose wisely 😛 ) Winner will be chosen on Monday

EDIT: (by Tony:) To keep this fair, keep in mind that I AM IN CHARGE of getting the winner’s info over to Abe at smoke inn.  ;p  (*hint* *hint*)

Now onto the honorable mentions from Contest Day #8 – Joya de Nicaragua

As I mentioned, we had some truly awesome and heartfelt entries from yesterdays comment and a big thank you goes out to everyone who participated. If you didn’t realize the comraderie and fellowship that comes with the cigar world, just read over yesterday’s comments and it easily shines through. This is what we love about this world! So let’s see some honorable mentions:

Honorable Mention 1 – Tom
I’ve had so many great cigar moments over the years, it’s hard to pick just one. Speaking with Benji Menendez during an event a few years ago when he was General Cigars ambassador was one, but I think my best moment us with my brother. You see we had lost our mom in 2000, and at Christmas of 2001 we were sitting at his house just talking and reflecting on all the things we’d won, and lost, the year before. I’d brought a couple of I think Monties with me for the night and I shared one with him. We talked like we’d never talked before. We took our time, We laughed, and yes, we cried a little too.
We talked for hours. Everyone else there knew it was a special moment for us and left us alone. When the cigars went out, we said something to each other we’d let slip for a long time…Me “I love you”…Him “I love you too, little brother” I don’t think we’ve ever been closer.
Nothing since has been a special as that night.
Fantastic story Paul, very heartfelt. Thanks for sharing!

Honorable Mention 2 – MCCBarry
I have two… Sharing for the hell of it, once again I want to declare myself ineligible.
The first I was about 12 or 13 and my family went to a Bar Mitzvah for some cousin or something. While we we seated they served cigars to the gentlemen, and I asked my dad if I could try it. He was all for it, but my mom would have none of that. Well we went to the bathroom as a rouse to step outside. It was here my dad handed me the cigar and said, don’t tell your mother. Well, I lit the cigar up and proceeded to turn green. I still swear to this day whoever created the movie shrek was at the affair and got the idea from seeing me.
The second involved a Arturo Fuente. I had just picked up business partner up from the airport where he returned from a quick overseas trip. The best part of new job is I don’t have to pick him up at 5:00am anymore from the airport. After I dropped him off it was about 6:30am and it was a comfortable 65 degrees outside. So I headed to the beach and lit up my Work of Art Maduro. About an inch into it, the taste reminded me of cinnamon and apples, but to go a step further the aroma took me back to my dad and how he used to make these treats after dinner for himself. Now mind you my dad had been deceased for about 10 years and he hadn’t made a baked apple for about 10 years before that. I sat back, looked up at the sky and smiled as I knew my dad was smiling down on me.
Two great stories Paul. Showing us the lighter side and more serious side of the cigar world!

Honorable Mention 3 – Czerbe
Easy one for me. My wife was 7-1/2 months Pregnant and she was working one Saturday afternoon, I was at a buddies house Smoking an Onyx cigar nothing good just a yard gar but it was one that was given to me as a gift so I figured I would smoke it. My cell phone goes off and its my wifes Boss telling me I need to pick up my wife and take her to the Hospital her water had broke. So I dropped my cigar in the Ash Tray and ran to the car flying over to her job and took her straight to the Hospital where she was on bed rest and I.V.s for 5 days until she gave birth to our son. Now since he was 7 and a half weeks early he had to spend 11 days in the NICU (some of the worst days of our lives) well through his stay at the hospital my buddy came to the house and brought over the cigar which I was half way done with when I left to pick up my wife. He said “thought you might want to finish this later” now normally I would never pick up a cigar that was sitting in an ash tray for days and re-light it. But I thought to myself I will finish this when my son comes home. So I put it in a Zip Lock bag and put it in the Humi. 11 Days after my sons birth he came home from the Hospital, after my Wife and Son got settled I went to the Humi grabbed that half smoked stick and took the dog out for a long walk. It was possibly the worst tasting cigar I ever had after that long laps from smoking times. But I’ll tell you what it was the best cigar I ever smoked knowing my Son and wife were healthy and home safe. Its been a full 13 months now since his birth and I have had many great sticks in that time but none gave me that feeling like that Onyx did that day…czerbe
Another great heartfelt story. Very glad to hear the whole family is doing well. I’m sure that Onyx will be remembered for a long time, no matter how crappy it might have been!

Honorable Mention 4 – Neil
My best cigar moment was also my saddest. My father has been in failing health for a couple years. At the end of 2010 I bought a box of the My Father Limited Edition 2010 thinking I would put them away until the time came to share them with my brother in memory of my father.
Two months later I lost one of my closest friends, Tracy, to cancer. He was 12 years older than me and gave me a lot of great advice on how to raise my children and be a good husband. Right after he died I was with his brother, wife, and son. As I listen to Tracy’s son tell story after story of what his dad had taught him, I realized Tracy had taught me many of the same things. I had already kind of thought of him as a brother, but I realized during that time I spent with his son how much he had also fathered me.
In honor of Tracy I opened the box of My Father 2010s and had the first one out of the box in memory of him. I thought of what a great friend he was. I thought about all I had learned from him. I thought about how he shaped me as a father, how he fathered me, and how blessed I was that my Heavenly Father put him in my life.

 

Here’s the winner from Contest Day #8 – Joya de Nicaragua

So now onto the lucky winner of a tasty box of Joya de Nicaragua Antano 1970’s. Drumroll please…

The Winner is Paul Tyler

Although I have been smoking cigars for a while, I have really only gotten into exploring and understanding the industry within the last year. In researching on the Internet, I came across a great cigar review website where one of the reviewers happened to live near me. I thought it would be great to reach out to him to learn more about the industry and what the local scene was like. He has been a great resource for me. One of his insights was to check out a cigar shop in the city that had a nice guy running the place and good prices. I went down to check him out on a cool Wednesday night in February and found this quaint little shop with a nice little selection of cigars. In the middle of the shop (taking up almost half the space was a grand piano). The owner was extremely friendly and together we picked out a La Aurora 107 to smoke. He was so proud to show off a new heater he bought so he invited me out onto his front patio for a smoke…the temps were close to the freezing mark but that heater was pumping off some good heat to keep us warm. As we lit up and started into our cigars, the conversation flowed and I came to find the shop owner to be a wonderfully kind and interesting man. As we were sitting there, people would sporadically approach the store, give a wave to the owner and go inside to grab a cigar…some stayed inside to smoke and others came back out to join us…all huddling around this new heater. I asked the owner what was going on…who were all these people? He mentioned that he had started a Wednesday night smoking group and these were his regular crowd. Soon a bottle of rye appeared and then another…again, we all grabbed small plastic cups and gave ourselves a healthy pour to help enhance the warmth we were getting from the heater. The group was excited to see a newcomer to the night and were unbelievably welcoming to me and ensured my glass was always topped up and that I was made to feel like one of them. After a while I looked over at the owner and he was sitting back with a huge smile on his face…I turned to him and said, “You are in your happy place, aren’t you?”…and he just laughed and said “Yup”. I said, “This is really what cigar smoking is all about…bringing people together with a common passion and just enjoying each other’s company and sharing in the beauty of the leaf.” And he just nodded his head and smiled, “This is what I have always imagined my store to be about and represent”. At the end of the night and after a few cigars and a bunch of rye, we headed back into the store where the owner entertained us with a few songs on the piano…he was a former jazz pianist who did the club scene in his youth. It was a magical night that I have repeated a few times since…each time just as special as the last but I will always remember that first one…and that it was a La Aurora 107. You hear it all the time from the industry people in the social media universe and from people like the guys running this site…that it is a great industry with great people…I am fortunate that I have gotten to experience it first hand.

Awesome story Paul, a true show of the camaraderie that comes along with this wonderful hobby! Congrats!

Congrats to Paul, please email your name, and address to “[email protected]”. Thanks again for every one who entered! Keep the entries coming!