Wrapper: Ecuadorian Habano
Binder: Nicaraguan
Filler: Nicaraguan & Pennsylvanian
Size: 6 x 46
Strength: Medium
Price: $9.95

Today we take a look at the Patina Habano.
Tyler Jeffery at Havana Lounge and Cigar in West Allis, WI (414-258-8219 ~ Mention me and Tyler will take care of you), gave me some samples. He has bugged me relentlessly to review this cigar so in order not to have him, and his kitty cats, assassinated, I am reviewing this cigar. Also, call Havana on any desire you might have and Tyler will take care of you.
Samples have sat in my humidor, naked, for a few months.

BACKGROUND:
Released: May, 2017
Regular Production ~ Boxes of 16
From the Patina Cigars web site:
“Mombacho Cigars SA and Mo Maali came together and created a new luxury brand called Patina.
When we flew down to Nicaragua to meet with the factories we had an idea of what we were looking for, but not necessarily a specific factory in mind. After we met with Mombacho, it became clear early on that ours and Mombacho’s visions and values were very similar. If you watch the Mombacho X film you hear Claudio discuss how Mombacho is a family, and that’s real, I experienced it myself. We wanted more than a factory that could produce us a cigar, we wanted to be a part of a family, and that sums up the relationship between Patina and Mombacho.”

From Halfwheel.com:
“In the beach town of Granada, Nicaragua there is a cigar factory. It’s one of only a handful outside of the northern town of Estelí and certainly the most recognizable: Casa Favilli.

“It’s offered in two different lines, Connecticut and Habano, both of which use wrappers from Ecuador that sit on top of Nicaraguan and Pennsylvania fillers. That marks the first time Casa Favilli is making a cigar that use something other than just Nicaraguan tobacco.”

SIZES AND PRICING:
Rustic 5 X 52 $8.95
Copper 6 X 46 $9.95
Bronze 6 X 52 $11.95
Oxidation 6 X 56 $12.95

APPEARANCE:
An oily chocolate brown wrapper with some tooth here and there. It feels well-made but I detect a hard spot behind the cigar band. Seams are tight. Veinage is minimal. Beautifully applied triple cap.

SMELL THE GLOVE:
Big floral notes, chocolate, espresso, malt, cedar, baked apple, black pepper, cream, creamed corn, nuttiness, and dried fruit. The cold draw presents flavors of black pepper, chocolate, espresso, malt, chocolate covered raisins, and cedar.

FIRST THIRD:
There is a plug behind the cap so out comes my PerfecDraw cigar poker and with one swish and sashay, the problem is eradicated.

Complexity kicks in immediately with an avalanche of flavors: Black pepper, cinnamon, coffee, malt, dried fruit, almonds, cedar, lemon zest and a rich balance that is friggin great for so early in the cigar adventure.
Strength is a solid medium.

Allowing the cigar to rest this long has made it kick ass. I tried one a couple weeks in and….nada. Now, a whole different story with super character, balance, sophistication, and an all-encompassing richness that completes the story.

This is my first foray into the world of Patina cigars. Man, I’m glad that Tyler is a royal pain in the ass. What a great cigar. Next time I go in, I will look long faced saying I need some more. A little whimpering and whining will work…always does. Being Jewish and married to a German Catholic for 34 years has trained me for just this occasion.

There is only a hint of sweetness. I repeat myself under stress, I repeat myself under stress, I repeat…you get it…the overall balance is just unbelievable. The stick is so well constructed that it burns so slowly, I expect a nice long vacation from reality. Of course, dropping acid before the review helps too…

Candied pecan pops up out of nowhere. So much for the lack of sweetness. A Cuban mustiness appears. It’s light and helpful. Like me…
Smooth as your mama’s ass.

More flavors: prune Danish, almonds and walnuts, yeast infection, green chili, and baking spices.

The deep complexity has been running the show from the get-go. It has become difficult to creatively discern the flavor profile as the blend immediately became a whole universe of its own without being fractionated. It is partly linear and partly wild young katman on the prowl.

I dated a stripper before I met Charlotte. Gorgeous but stupid…but I didn’t care. Sex was great. After a couple months, she tells me she can’t have sex with me for a week. She tells me her herpes is flaring!!!!! WTF? I never contracted herpes but I dropped her like a faulty stripper’s pole. To top it off, she told me while she sat on me. No way faster to go from a massive 3” boner to nothing in .04 seconds flat.

The Patina Habano is an excellent cigar. $9-$13 is about right for this quality.

Strength is maintained at medium. Good morning cigar. I’m having my coffee as I write. The acid is beginning to kick in. I see my dead mother in the drapes. (OK. Snap out of it).
Also perfect for newbies and sophisticated palates alike. I love cigars that span the spectrum for its target consumer base.
It’s a slow cruise. Plenty of moments to just enjoy without tearing its guts apart to deliver the message.

SECOND THIRD:
The candied pecans are mated with a nice touch of savory…charred meat. The green chili amps up. The floral comes and goes. The citrus is the perfect counterpoint.
Construction has been spot on. Nice resistance on the draw, no burn issues, and maintaining its structural integrity.

The flavor mind meld. Everything becomes jumbled into one giant ball of string…outside Valley View, Texas example.

Anyone caught “A Clapton Christmas” on MTVLV? It’s only 30 minutes and he plays acoustically to sell his first Xmas album. He looks soooo old (He is 73). He got some funky short haircut. He has a week’s worth of stubble that really highlights his gizzard neck. Wearing shorts and boat shoes. I guess he knows he is Eric Clapton. Still, some really nice bluesy holiday tunes.

The Patina Habano makes its move. It’s opened the portal to a new dimension…where elves and guinea pigs fight to the death for dominance of the free world.
The complexity and a big sweet spot tells me “…everybody must get stoned.”

The big morph. The big kahuna. The empty tuna can. Finding out you really can’t taste leather in a cigar blend without first licking your wife’s boots. “Moby Dick.” Selena on birth control. Vanilla Fudge.
Yeah, the acid kicked in big time.

There are a few places online to buy this cigar but hard to find. Seems mostly sold by B&M’s according to the Patina Cigars web site. Call Tyler at 414-258-8219. Believe it or not, but my readers call him from Miami to buy cigars. Miami. Fucking hell. Crazy.

Sweetness now derived from dried fruit and a touch of molasses arrives on the scene…giving the blend some oomph. The spiciness ramps up even more. I like it.

Don’t you just love cigar blends that never let go of your spinal cortex and makes you sit up and beg for a Liva Snap? Is your dog getting enough cheese?

Fucking Tyler, man. He was right about this cigar. I wonder if he takes Fingerhut charge cards?
I reach the halfway point at a leisurely 45 minutes. Nice.

The Patina Habano is a keeper. I don’t know about the Connie version. Not a fan of Connecticut blends. But then I’m dissing something I haven’t tasted. I should run for office.

Finally…creaminess appears. There have been wannabe elements but nothing concrete. Now it’s official. It is slimy with buttermilk. Big chunks of cow clot. Ever get a buttermilk clot caught in your throat? Me neither.

Very toasty now. It needed that first half to get here.
The Patina has reached the wow point. Still medium strength. No nicotine.
Halfwheel mentioned flavors of peanuts which I have not sensed. Now I do. Potent.
The mustiness is now front and center and instead of being annoying, it is an enhanced pleasure.

LAST THIRD:
It’s first touch up of the char line is required…no big deal. I like perfection. Except in people.

Are you ready for Christmas? Bah, humbug. I suppose if I married a Jewish girl, I wouldn’t have to go through this marketing campaign. “Oh no…we forgot to get a gift for the milkman. And what about Uncle Chester?” I grew up in a gentile neighborhood and since Hanukkah is on the Jewish calendar which does not align perfectly with the Gregorian calendar, it moves around December. Sometimes before Christmas or sometimes after. I can still remember the trauma of when I was around 10 when Hanukkah came the day after Christmas and I had to stand outside Xmas morning and watch all my friends play with their new toys and I just whimpered. I only whimper now during a coffee enema or just moments before sex.

The blend is super consistent. It is such a good cigar that I decline to get up and pee. So, I use a finished Atkins shake container. The opening is only ¾” but I seem to have no problems. I do wish that Charlotte stop calling me ‘pencil dick’ though.
Imagine the publicity if I changed my blog’s name to “Cigar Reviews by Pencil Dick.”

Where was I?
Godamm the Pusherman. Outstanding cigar. Should you decide to try the Patina Habano, be patient for chrissakes. Wait a couple months. Too much dough to say, “Hey, it sucks.”
I put on my Slim Whitman album.
I love the 6 x 46 size.
Cream. “Strange Brew.” Perfect.
The Patina Habano is a delightful cigar. Never heard of them before Tyler. We had a bet. I lost. I don’t know if I can chase him around the cigar lounge in order to have his baby. I’m just too old for this shit.

RATING: 93

And now for something completely different:

I first published this story a while back. It is an inappropriate anecdote. But you know what? I don’t care and let me tell you why. For some reason, Sonja Kristina of Curved Air became the person who made disbursements of royalties for the 20+ albums they recorded. I have been on several including live albums, studio albums, compilation albums, and a “Best of” series of records.

I’ve been screwed by Kristina for decades and not received what I’m owed. The records still sell. You can go to Amazon or CD Baby or anywhere that albums are sold. The 1975 “Live” album is one of their best sellers.

So, this woman has taken it upon herself to cheat and rob me of my contractual royalties. I got no blowback from the first time I published this story. And believe me when I tell you the band; past and present, all know about these stories. I know people close to the band that have confirmed this.

Sonja Kristina is a crook.

The reason that they don’t do a thing to try and stop me from publishing less than stellar stories about their, and my, behavior from back in the day is that my stories are all 100% true. I would love for the Curved Air system to sue me. I could use the publicity.
I had to fuck that woman to keep my job.

Wham, bam, thank you ma’am. No. Not the sex. My initiation into the legendary Brit band Curved Air. Started in 1968 and still going strong and touring some 20+ albums later. Of course, CA has become the Steppenwolf or Iron Butterfly of English rock. While Sonja Kristina is the core of the band, more musicians have gone through that band than shit goes through a goose.

1974 – The original band got together to make good on a record deal agreement with Decca Records and the path of least resistance was a Live Album.

They hadn’t played together in 2 years. And they had gone through 16 bassists…or something like that…one even disappeared through spontaneous combustion…there was no shortage of previous bassists to choose from for the new European tour.

I was playing in CA violinist and leader Darryl Way’s band at the time when the decision was made to do a one-off Curved Air tour of 8 weeks and record a live album.
Way told me at rehearsal, “Kohn. You will be the bass player.”

Simple as that. I hadn’t even met the original CA members yet and I had the gig.

I learned quickly just how famous they were in Europe. Big time. The band sold out all their concerts for that tour. Arenas and concert halls holding 20,000 or more CA fans.

Sonja was a recovering junkie. And it was put upon me, as the new guy, to watch over her on the tour. I had no idea what it meant at the time. I was just glad to be there. I was 24. A month earlier, I had 5 Pounds Sterling left in my pocket and thought I’d be stranded in England with my girlfriend and her little girl.

We rehearsed for a week in Covent Garden and off we went. This was a group of highly trained classical musicians playing very complex progressive rock. I had to study my ass off for the concert set. We played the exact same songs in the same exact order for the entire tour. Luckily, I didn’t have to learn the entire CA catalog…in case some improvisation on the set list took place.

Management put me in the same hotel room with Sonja for the tour. I was bedazzled.

She was a pig and a junkie. And it became clear, I was to be her babysitter.

In the original production of the musical “Hair” in London, Sonja had a big part. During the nude scene where actors came out holding a giant parachute over themselves, she would run around the inside and jerk on all the guys’ dicks to give them boners so they would look ridiculous when they discarded the parachute for the audience. Yeah.

In those days, Brits…or Europeans in general, didn’t bathe that often. I bathed every day and the band made fun of me. They literally did their bathing on Saturdays…once a week. You can only imagine the smell of the inside of the touring limo. Oy vey.

The first night in our hotel room, she jumped me. She was so skinny from, being a junkie, that her bones made me feel like I was getting beaten up.
My pubic bone became red as a beet as she sat on top of me and pounded away. I would limp for days until I told her to stop doing that.

It’s not that she didn’t bathe…she never cleaned herself between weekly showers. Her quedgie had a high level of stank with gnats flying around it.

Once, early on, I came close to sticking my face down ‘there’ but the smell was so bad that I never got closer than a foot away before my face involuntarily repelled itself.
“What’s wrong, honey? Don’t Jews like eating pussy?”
Afraid to tell her the truth, I just nodded in agreement. Small price to pay for a part in the big show.

I said nothing; worrying about my place in the band. If she started spreading bad shit about me, I could be gone instantly. A stinky woman scorned.

So, for two months, I had to mount that thing about 3-4 times per week. Only broken up by the BJ’s she gave the band while touring in the limo between gigs.
She actually performed that act very nicely. Very nicely.

We stayed in the best hotels. Until the road manager fucked up and stuck us in a bedsitter: No bathroom. Only a sink.

I yelled at her when she got up after sex and mounted the sink and peed into it. I leaped up and turned the spigot on so it at least went down the drain.
I screamed that I had to use that sink. (I refused and used one of the other rooms to clean up.) I never told anyone why.

Towards the end of the tour, she and Stewart Copeland…the drummer in the new Darryl Way band hooked up. Boyfriend and girlfriend. But she continued to fuck me. Neither cared. This was fucking weird.

They were married for a long time but she was his elder and as Stew got older, he grew tired of her. And she got very plus sized.

He was a star now because of his position in The Police and moved on. Turned out he was a real prick towards his two sons. Sonja had custody and every time Stew was scheduled to visit, he called at the last minute, to bail. This infuriated Sonja.
He also stiffed her a lot on child support.

I learned a few months ago from my contacts with management in London that one of the grown boys had serious cancer. Sonja put CA back together a few years ago with only one original member of the band.

The only time that band had any spunk was when I was playing bass or Tony Reeves played bass in the band…and the band has been around since 1968!

So, while they are all over YouTube with the new CA playing live, the band sucks. Everyone is a side man and there have been countless changes to the members of the band. And Sonja just keeps on getting bigger. Francis Monkman (Original keys player) told me they called her Mama Cass.

I had to fuck that woman to keep my job.
Two years later, she was the first one to tell me I was fired from the band…on the phone.
Nice.

Sonja then and….

Sonja now…

And now for something completely different Part 2:

A little ditty about bassist extraordinaire Stanley Clarke.
If you are a jazzer or a bassist..or both…you know this legendary musician.
Back in 1972, he had a major influence on me. He was a young man. He played custom made basses; including piccolo basses.
The man could play 32nd notes in a bar. The rest of us schlubs might be able to play 16th notes if we were coked up.

It was 1978. I lived in the Belmont Heights of Long Beach. A skip and a jump away from the beach and Belmont Shore. The Sunset Strip of Long Beach.

My high school buddy, John Turner, came back from Viet Nam and translated his skills as a corpsman into a lifelong incursion into being a surgical tech.

He told me that Stanley Clarke was at Long Beach Community Hospital having surgery for a hernia. Back then, they didn’t shove you down a long slide 30 minutes after surgery. No. They kept you for a few days.
Turner gave me a call and told me about Clarke. I went bat shit. I asked him a million questions.
Turner said he told Clarke about me and Curved Air.
Then Turner asked if Clarke would call me at home one night. That I would get the kick of my life.
Stanley agreed.

My girlfriend, and soon to be nemesis, sent me on an errand to buy something insignificant at the market.
And you can guess the rest.

Stanley called while I was gone. He spoke to April for a good 20 minutes and she hung up 60 seconds before I came through the door.
She told me what happened and that Stanley was such a nice man.
I fucking lost it.

I called Turner. “Get him back on the phone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
John said he couldn’t impose on Stanley again. I pleaded. I begged.

In the end, I never got to speak with the hugest influence, at the time, on my bass playing.
It was copying Clarke’s style that got me the gig with Curved Air. While the other 30 bassists were copying Chris Squire of Yes, I was playing da funk like Clarke and I nearly got hired on the spot because not a single Englishman knew who Clarke was.
To this day, I look upon that evening as a real low spot in my life.

Categories: CIGAR REVIEWS

Tags: cigar review, cigar reviews by the katmamn, cigars, Patina Habano | Cigar Reviews by the Katman