Cigar Symphony
Babbin, Jed
BY JED BABBIN "Cigar Symphony" WINSTON CHURCHILL SAID, "Smoking cigars is like falling in love; first you are attracted to its shape; you stay for its flavor; and you must always remember never, never let the flame...
...It's enough for them that they have a consistent—usually awful—taste, uniform size and weight, and above all are produced cheaply by the tens of thousands without a human's touch...
...Jed Babbin, an American Spectator contributing editor, is the author of Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe Are Worse Than You Think 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2005 Now hear your favorite words Hi Grandma, Hi Grandpa...
...Garmirian told me, "I said to Henky, I remember a few years ago when I said that I felt awkward because, maybe, you thought I was crazy...
...Everyone who deeply enjoys a good cigar knows why Churchill's analogy to love is perfect and why his rule of choice is perfectly wrong...
...In Garmirian's The Gourmet Guide to Cigars, he quotes Kelner as saying, "A complete curing is realized in curing barns where the starch in the leaves is converted into fructose and sugar products which ultimately convert into alcohol thus bringing about the process of fermentation...
...For other smokers, Hendrick and Paul offer other cigars...
...Like Kelner, he seemed destined for his career in cigars, having grown up under a cigar connoisseur for a father...
...Tobacco is grown and harvested, sure...
...ww, annular...
...He emigrated to the United States from Lebanon after studying in London...
...Of Dutch ancestry, Keiner grew up in the Dominican Republic and has been working in and studying the manufacture of cigars since he graduated from college...
...And yes, Virginia, that includesthe expert who takes the tobaccos grown, aged, and fermented under Kelner's exacting standards and blends them to the desired strength and taste...
...It's summer, and though Loudoun County's rolling, grassy hills aren't the Appalachian Mountains, when I light up I will taste Copland's "Appalachian Spring...
...But we have a feeling that once you start hearing more clearly on the phone that you will be quite attached to your new phone as you talk to your friends and family all day...
...FEEL your callers voice...
...The product designers didn't stop there...
...Garmirian is an academic, and expert in international relations...
...Wagner—because of his personality, character, and the era that he had to live in Germany, as well as his deep anarchist conviction of his youth—his music was influenced as revolutionary and nationalist...
...Is your favorite CD Borodin or Rossini...
...PAUL GARMIRLAN IS A RENAISSANCE MAN...
...I'm Paul 36 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2005 wi.R...
...I asked Mr...
...NE TTEN[)rive W Burnsville, 14101 Silloue, t Miherossnnesota rive 55337., Dept...
...Garmirian takes pride in his cigars, but only a small part of the credit for their taste...
...He's told me again and again, "It's 90 percent Henky and Eladio and 10 percent me...
...How do you satisfy the customer who wants a Wagnerian cigar...
...What's the difference between that one and the cigar for someone who wants to smoke a Tchaikovsky...
...To order by mail, please call for details...
...We did not want to just accept this fact, so we worked with the brilliant scientists at Opentech USA who designed the MirafoneTM...
...But there's much more...
...His father was a cigar aficionado...
...Together, Kelner and Garmirian make my favorite cigars...
...Paul is a guitarist of 50 years, and thinks in musical terms...
...The Mirafone includes a visible and an extra loud audible ringer so you can hear and see the phone ring...
...It could be summarized as a strong music that wastorture to the critic's ear...
...Grant said he only knew two songs: one was Yankee Doodle, and the other wasn't...
...I bought a few and, about a week later, a few more...
...Five years later, Garmirian again visited Kelner's Dominican Republic office to discuss new cigar blends...
...Do you have an inkling of what your mood might be...
...Kelner's growing the tobacco, aging and fermenting it, is engineering and science...
...The Mirafone's patented DirectVibeTM pulsator actually delivers pulsating vibrations through the bones near your ears to improve speech and sound recognition...
...Before tobacco becomes a PG cigar, it has been cured, fermented, and aged for four years or more...
...He said, "I was sitting in his office and I was trying to communicate the fact that the particular blend had a high-pitched tone and I compared it to a piccolo...
...Hearing is all about the brain's recognition of vibrations, but for many of us, speaking on the phone has become a burden instead of a joy...
...Mirafone's DirectVibe pulsator delivers sound waves and vibrations through bone conduction...
...He—a little tongue-in-cheek—said no, Paul, we have adopted your music theory on the blending of cigars...
...Garmirian wondered how his explanation was received...
...The PGs had an oaky, nutlike flavor...
...cigar [with which] to meditate...
...It would be cigar for one kind of smoker...
...Therefore his music was soothing, harmonious, and spiritual, which compared to a cigar would be a smooth and harmonious cigar, with the complexity of a genius but without attacking the senses...
...They don't just make cigars, they compose them lovingly, arranging sizes, shapes, and tastes for different smokers in just the same way a composer arranges his music for orchestras and bands...
...The two are to cigars what Rachmaninoff and Aaron Copland are to music...
...from Catholic University, where he used to teach...
...Paul's nose—what little talent it didn't inherit—was trained by decades of smelling the best cigars in the world...
...Soon, I was smoking little else, other than another cryptically labeled cigar, the "Avo Uvezian...
...BY JED BABBIN INSTON CHURCHILL SAID, "Smoking cigars is like falling in love...
...The best cigar for an afternoon aboard the tractor mowing grass isn't usually the right one to accompany a brandy after dinner...
...The Avo, a bit stronger, covered my more restive moods...
...Fermented...
...When you buy that PG cigar, it will be comprised of tobaccos that can be up to five years old...
...My taste varies with the time of day, what I'm doing, and even my mood...
...His admonition that "a woman is just a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke" is of no use to modern man...
...Well our product research team has found a way to use new direct vibration technology so you can now hear conversations even if you live with mild to severe hearing loss...
...Now we are back to wines...
...Yet another type of cigar is appropriate for a shooting event or a long drive...
...He met Avo Uvezian and, through him, Hendrick Kelner...
...Mass-produced cigars are one thing...
...ABOUT TEN YEARS AGO I came across a cigar brand that was new to me...
...Kelner is the maker of the world-famous Davidoff cigars as well as the Avo, Griffin, and PG Cigars...
...He tasted champagne, caviar, and while a youth found himself fascinated with AtT JULY/AUGUST 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 37 JED BABBIN the tantalizing smell of cigars in the box...
...It wasn't my phone that was failing, it was my ears...
...As you'd expect of an academic, Paul decided to research and write a book about cigars...
...The PGs and Avos became a consistent habit, broken only by a few Cuban cigars that, ah, somehow fell into my hands...
...Paul Garmirian—like his pal Avo Uvezian—is of Armenian ancestry...
...These pulsations are delivered directly to the brain and to the speech recognition center...
...I said we needed more bass...
...When the first edition of his Gourmet Guide to Cigars came out in 1990, the industry greeted it warmly...
...The phone also works like a conventional phone if some in your house can still hear a pin drop...
...You'll be able to hear your caller's voice clearly...
...This technology is far ahead of the simple amplifiers in some of today's phones...
...Just apply the dime sized pulsator located on the headset against your head and you will be chatting away with the kids, grandkids, or your dear friends...
...Do you know what you will be doing when you smoke it...
...Then, at a cigar dinner at the Lansdowne Resort about six years ago, a gent with a broad smile came up, stuck out his hand to shake mine, and said, "Hi...
...As I have learned from two grand masters of the cigar-making art, creating a great cigar is less like making a fine wine than composing a beautiful symphony...
...Making a great cigar, I guessed, was probably like making a great wine...
...Wait a minute, you say...
...Think about your music and apply it to your cigar...
...He speaks six languages, plays classical guitar, and has a Ph.D...
...Because there are so many variations of taste, thecigar maker's task is a complex one...
...He said, "Of two cigars pick the longest and the strongest...
...From the time Paul could walk, he was around people who smoked fine Cuban cigars...
...Try this terrific new phone for 30 days for only $79.90 and if you are not thrilled, send it back for a full refund of the purchase price...
...S&H 1-800-222-3957 Promotional Code MIR108-01 Please mention this when you call...
...Full-flavored but not overbearing, they seemed to meet almost every need...
...Or, as I can attest, with which to write...
...Twain said he'd decline an invitation to Heaven if he couldn't smoke cigars there, but never shared his method of judging cigars...
...And that's when a theory of music was brought to the world of cigars...
...The premium cigars, those aimed at the discriminating consumer and the true connoisseur, are a much more complex task...
...Only Churchill left us instruction on how to choose a cigar...
...Tomorrow, as I climb on the seat of my big tractor for a three-hour mowing session, I'll have a big stick in my pocket...
...The passionate Wagnerians are in ecstasies with his melodies and then exhausted, fatigued of their own pleasure...
...Mirafone Features: • Visual ringer lights when the phone rings • Redial • Hold • Flash • Hands-free dialing • Large keypad for dialing ease • Also functions as a conventional phone • Mirafone instructional video included When I hear a friendly voice on the phone, I get good vibrations, but lately I have had a hard time hearing conversations that used to be crystal clear to me...
...During Bill Clinton's tenure, a larger, stronger cigar, or two or three, were necessary companions while writing a column about the villainy of the week...
...But aged...
...SEM or 2 Payments of 839...
...It was a Dominican cigar and the label said "Paul Garmirian...
...As he explains, about 80 percent of taste is smell...
...DON'T THINK ABOUT GENERAL GRANT when you go out to buy your next smoke...
...Kelner, who makes cigars for every taste, how that theory is applied at the extremes...
...For example, Kelner said, "Tchaikovsky [was] a different personality...
...The PG Celebration is the music of America, and big enough to last through five acres of mowing...
...The remaining 10 percent is Paul's art...
...and you must always remember never, never let the flame go out...
...And to make a great cigar, it needs to be grown carefully, harvested at the precise moment of maturation, and cured before it is, literally, fermented...
...I told him that I thought that I write the music and they perform it to perfection, and [Kelner] told me, 'No, you don't write music, you write symphonies...
...Choosing a cigar is an intensely personal matter...
...Mirafone—$79...
...Kelner said: "Wagner and Tchaikovsky are very different and they would be two completely different cigars...
...My tastes tend to Ahmad Jamal on the piano, or Tchaikovsky, or Aaron Copland...
...He smoked the strongest cigars imaginable, but when old enough to try one I quickly learned that some cigars are too heavy, bitter, or even intoxicating...
...In that meeting, Kelner turned to Eladio Diaz and said the particular blend needed "less alto and more bass...
...As Paul told me, his taste—his palate for cigar flavors—is partly nature (his daughter has it) and partly nurture...
...Events—propelled by the almost instantaneous friendship between Kelner and Garmirian—led to the launch of the PG cigar brand later that same year...
...As far as that goes, it's right...
...In 1991, Paul was sitting in Kelner's office, talking to him and Eladio Diaz, the chief blender of cigars at TD...
...Hendrick Kelner is an engineer by profession...
...A Wagner cigar would be a strong cigar, of intense flavor, stimulating, exciting, that the smoker becomes exhausted and then enjoying later its aftertaste...
...And it is compatible with hearing aids...
...Tobacco, according to both Kelner and Garmirian, is—like grapes—better in some years than others...
...If you think in those terms, and carefully absorb the scent of the unlit cigar, you'll make the right choice...
...NC1V plume technology improve oil the human ear am/ helps those with mild to .severe heariik,,, loss...
...The National Institute of Health says that one third to one half of us will experience some hearing loss as we age...
...What kind of tobacco seed is used, the soil in which it is grown, how it is aged, and the skill of the cigar roller—the person who actually forms the leaves into the cigar—must, I assumed, be essential to the cigar maker's art...
...M1R108-01 Visit us online at www.NextTen.com 1E1...
...Henky"—Hendrick Kelner—is one of the leading tobacco growers and makers of premium cigars in the world...
...And the large keypad is so easy to read...
...Thanks to Paul, Kelner, president of Tabacos Docan S (TD) have learned a bit about cigars...
...The fermentation and aging remove the tobacco's naturally bitter oils, ammonia, and other chemicals that would produce the wrong flavors...
...Copland, Mancini, or the Rolling Stones...
...It would be a good...
...Mark Twain, Ulysses S. Grant, and Churchill are perhaps history's three most famous cigar smokers...
...Popular Science even awarded this life improving technology the "Best of What's New Award...
...My father followed Churchill's rule...
...We'll probably never know, but quantity probably weighed more heavily than quality to Grant's taste...
...Influenced by the death of his mother when he was a boy, a fragile personality that avoided physical contact with the opposite sex, he idealized the woman, creating pure, feminine characters in his works (Tatiana, Maria, Liza, Juana de Arco...
Vol. 38 • July 2005 • No. 6
