Table of contents for May/June 2024 in Cigar Aficionado

You can reach the Bürgenstock Resort Lake Lucerne by taking a boat and a funicular that climbs 1,500 feet from the shore of the Swiss lake to the top of the Bürgenberg mountain ridge. It’s well worth the transfers. Completed in 2017, the flagship “contemporary” Bürgenstock Hotel & Alpine Spa is one of two hotel concepts that span four buildings on the 148-acre property. It takes full advantage of its setting from the infinity swimming pool suspended above the lake to the Lakeview Bar and adjacent cigar lounge. The resort offers 10 restaurants, bars and lounges, plus the stunning and massive Alpine Spa, in addition to Waldhotel Health & Wellbeing with Alpine valley vistas right out of Heidi. For active pursuits, there’s a nine-hole golf course, tennis, swimming pools, horseback…

Because there’s no hotel in Cuba as iconic as the Nacional, no visit to Havana is complete without walking through its Spanish Eclectic lobby and into the scenic courtyard. If you’re a cigar lover, you head to its La Casa del Habano, located downstairs, then find a spot outside under the beautiful arches and light up. For many, coming to the Nacional is a non-negotiable ritual with every visit to Cuba. But if you’ve grown a bit tired of the routine, the Nacional now has a hidden cigar lounge upstairs away from all the tourists. Rather than going outside with everyone else when you enter the hotel, instead turn left and continue to the end. There, you’ll find a small staircase that takes you up to a spacious and well-stocked…

Even with an aggressive driver, the trip from Havana to Pinar del Río takes around two hours. But the congestion of the city quickly gives way to open spaces. Flanked by palm trees, rice paddies and pastures, the rough highway has few cars. Travelers dot the roadside, some hoping for a ride, others simply walking. Workers here and there chop slowly at tall grass with machetes, and you see the occasional farmer holding a block of homemade cheese, eager for a sale. The farther you drive, the more rustic the conditions, until asphalt turns to dirt as the car reaches San Juan y Martínez, one of Cuba’s best tobacco towns. Out here, with spotty cell service, one cannot rely on GPS. “De donde Máximo?” a visitor asks. That one name…

It was dinnertime on a warm, Sunday evening in Jupiter, Florida, and the crowd happily moved inside to escape the heat, welcoming the refreshing cool air. Marvin R. Shanken, editor and publisher of Cigar Aficionado magazine, stood up to address the gathering. It was the pairings dinner before the 2024 Els for Autism Pro-Am, the 16th time this event has been held. “We have 19 teams playing tomorrow, with 17 male pros who have won 14 majors,” Shanken said. He looked toward the head table and smiled, his eyes meeting a very special guest, PGA legend Jack Nicklaus. “I’m not including Jack in this because Jack blows everyone away, with 18 majors. How many PGA wins do you have Jack?” “I forgot,” Nicklaus quipped, drawing hearty laughter from the crowd.…

ProCigar wrapped up its 16th festival this year in the Dominican Republic and raised more than half a million dollars on the final night for charity. The festival is an annual cigar-centric event where every major Dominican cigarmaker welcomes enthusiasts from around the world to showcase their factories and tobacco fields. It’s a casual affair that’s part vacation, part celebration and part education, as all the tours demonstrate the entire production process from seed to cigar. But the festival is also a way for smokers to have a deeper connection with the Dominican cigars they smoke throughout the year. Normally, the fields and factories are not open to the public, making this festival a particularly attractive destination, especially for those who want to know more about the ins and outs…

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Thinking about a midsize luxury SUV? It makes common sense to check out the 2024 Lincoln Nautilus. More precisely, make that “uncommon scents.” For the 2024 model, Nautilus gets a big makeover including a new powertrain line-up, the BlueCruise hands-free driving system and “Lincoln Rejuvenate,” which turns the Nautilus into an aromatic Zen spa on wheels. The pillar-to-pillar display catches the eye first. This panoramic, 48-inch screen is at the back of the instrument panel. The usual gauges are directly in front of the driver. To the right are three zones with an assortment of widgets. You could chose, say, one detailing what is on the audio system, another displaying the latest weather and a third showing the fuel economy of my test vehicle’s hybrid drivetrain. A separate, 11.1-inch touchscreen…

Whitewater rafting is stunning natural beauty and Zen-like serenity, punctuated by bursts of speed, intense drops and near vertical climbs, when you feel the rush of Mother Nature flexing her muscles. The key is picking the right destinations and the right guides. Many of the top destinations are in coveted vacation areas. And while more than 99 percent of visitors to the Grand Canyon peer down jealously from the rim, you can actually be in it, riding a wet, thrilling roller coaster–without the harness. Foaming rapids are rated in six classes of difficulty. Class I is easily navigated by novices. Class II and III evoke “oohs and aahs,” while Class IV is more “Holy S***!,” requiring technical maneuvering. Class V, “Rapids with major obstacles that are difficult to avoid,” is…

You’ve finally arrived in Cuba and your pockets are stuffed with pesos. One thing and one thing only is on your mind: cigars. And you’re ready to spend some serious coin. You can hardly contain your excitement as you approach the nearest La Casa del Habano shop. Which cigars are you going to buy? How many boxes? Montecristo No. 2? Cohiba Siglo VI? The possibilities make you pick up your pace, but when you walk through the door and B-line straight for the walk-in humidor, you find8230; a lot of empty shelves. And a lot of petit coronas. Some of the Cohibas you manage to spot are approaching $100 per cigar. Confusion and panic start to bubble up from your gut. What’s happening here? CIGAR AFICIONADO visited every Casa del…

Night had fallen in San Luís, Cuba, on September 27, 2022. Tobacco farmer Hirochi Robaina knew a hurricane was coming, but hurricanes are part of living in Cuba, especially Pinar del Río. In this westernmost area of the country, home to Cuba’s finest tobacco lands, storms are frequent. Robaina did what he always did—he moved his wife and young daughter away from the farm and prepared to hunker down under his ranchón, a tall structure where he has hosted friends and family for meals and cigars for decades. He wasn’t worried. “Through my whole life, I have been through every hurricane. I prepare a few cigars to smoke, have a bottle of rum, have a seat and wait,” he says. After a while, he realized this was not just any…

The 2024 Ferrari Daytona SP3 is a breathtaking car. Its body is a masterwork of evocative swoops and curves. The 829-horsepower, V-12 beast with a 211-mph top speed is a fitting homage to the three Ferraris that swept the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1967. This machine commands at least $2.2 million, more than 45 times the price of the average new car. But paying is the easy part. One does not simply walk into a Ferrari dealership and buy a brand-new car. To own the Daytona SP3—or any of the company’s ultra-exclusive models—you’ll have to convince the legendary Italian automaker that you’re worthy. Whenever Ferrari hatches a new ultra-limited-edition vehicle, it’s exclusively offered to the folks at the top of a clandestine list of clients who have spent tens…

The beauty of Cuba enthralls cigar smokers, so scenes from this storied island and images of its flag make for natural embellishments for cigar accessories. Whether it’s a lighter, a cutter, an ashtray or a cigar case, several high-end companies have you covered. Elie Bleu, the renowned French humidor maker, has a wide array of Cuba-themed accessories. Its Casa Cubana cutter, in white, ($250, bottom left) has a black blade, with images of a man walking in Havana smoking a cigar on one side, a classic car on the other. Pressing the gold satin trigger releases the blade vertically in a smooth action. The J-14 Jet Flame lighter ($560, center) is decorated with the Cuban flag in understated elegance, with a chrome trigger and black around the perimeter. It’s thick…

Most cigar aficionados dream of smoking a cigar in Cuba. It’s the birthplace of the handmade cigar industry, the country that gave us Cohiba and Montecristo, Romeo y Julieta, Partagás, Punch and so many more famous and superb brands. It’s a country of stunning beauty and considerable mystery, one teeming with energy and music. It’s also a place of inherent sadness, shackled by a six-decades-old embargo and one where its 11 million citizens live without the freedoms and comforts so many of us take for granted. The editors of Cigar Aficionado have been traveling to Cuba for the entire history of the magazine, and we know it well. In fact, it was a visit by editor and publisher Marvin R. Shanken in 1991 that inspired him to create this magazine.…

If you were among the millions of travelers who visited Cuba each year before the pandemic, you may have saved some of the Cuban money with which you paid for cigars, restaurant bills and just about everything on your journey to that country. Not only are they now worthless, buying things in Cuba today is far more confusing than before. Cuba used to have two currencies. Cuban citizens used regular Cuban pesos, and tourists used Cuban convertible pesos, known as CUCs. Each CUC—equal to a U.S. dollar—was worth 25 regular pesos. In January 2021, CUCs were replaced by regular Cuban pesos, known as the CUP. (CUCs could be exchanged for pesos at the time.) And the values fluctuated. Unlike dollars, pounds, euro or yen, Cuban money doesn’t trade on standard…

Thirty years ago, in the summer of 1994, CIGAR AFICIONADO magazine published a milestone piece that drew record attention to the publication. It was a Q&A between Cuban president Fidel Castro and Marvin R. Shanken, editor and publisher of CIGAR AFICIONADO. Shanken interviewed Castro that February at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana, the culmination of more than two years of effort. Castro died in 2016 at the age of 90. What follows are excerpts from his encounter with Shanken, one of few interviews Castro ever granted to an American journalist. ON CIGARS SHANKEN: How important are cigars to Cuba? CASTRO: It is one of our most important export items. It is also one of our main sources of revenue. It is also an important factor for us in…

Cigars and whiskey go together like oysters and Champagne, Stilton and Port or peanut butter and chocolate. Big Smoke Meets WhiskyFest, held April 6 at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Tampa, Florida, brought these wonderful worlds together in a celebration like no other. The show sold out in advance, and when the doors opened for VIP hour, guests from all around the United States—some as far away as Alaska—and Canada began sipping and smoking. It was the first Big Smoke ever held in Tampa, which is known as Cigar City, for some 500 million handmade cigars a year were once produced here. The night before the event, two of Tampa’s cigar companies welcomed the participating cigarmakers to their city by hosting a dinner at J.C. Newman Cigar…

95 LA PALINA SENATOR (CIRCA 1920) I wasn’t sure what to expect when I lit up this little figurado, a La Palina rolled well before the outbreak of World War II. Bill Paley, who owns the brand, told me it was at least 100 years old, and it was almost certainly made with some Cuban tobacco but without the use of a cigar mold. The first puff gave me a light sweetness reminiscent of baked goods, with perhaps a touch of cinnamon, along with a persistent flinty flavor. After an inch or so, the cigar took on some orange peel notes, then it somehow found another gear, increasing in power and revealing some pepper. What a wonderful trip to the past. —David Savona 96 H. UPMANN MAGNUM 56 EDICIÓN LIMITADA 2015(2015) A…