Dear Cigar Lovers,

Singapore is expensive for cigars.

Even by London standards.

I discovered this at Capitol Cigar & Whisky Lounge by Quaich Bar, where I was looked after by Farz, who has spent 17 years in the industry.

He knew the room, the whisky and the cigars with the ease that only comes from having done something for a very long time.

The lounge itself is beautifully arranged.

Deep chairs sit in small groups, giving you the feeling of having your own corner without ever quite separating you from the room.

Private, but not lonely.

A good cigar lounge should feel like that.

I chose something new.

A La Flor de Cano Elegidos.

I did not expect very much from it.

Perhaps that was part of the pleasure.

There is something seductive about being surprised by something you had already decided would be ordinary.

The first few draws carried heavy leather.

Then something floral appeared beneath it.

Soft at first.

Almost delicate.

As the cigar progressed, spice and wood notes came through, a pleasant surprise.

It moved between those characters without ever feeling confused.

Floral and masculine.

Lightness followed by depth.

I found myself paying much more attention to it than I had intended.

Singapore does its best to remove some of the romance.

Humidors cannot be openly displayed, and the original cigar bands are hidden beneath plain packaging that you have to remove yourself.

It is a curious thing.

You can hide the label.

You can cover the colours.

You can make the box less beautiful.

But once the cigar is lit, none of that matters very much.

What remains is the tobacco itself.

Perhaps we do this too often in life.

We decide what something is before we have properly experienced it.

A person.

A place.

A cigar.

We make a judgement prior to experience.

Sometimes we are right.

Sometimes the thing reveals itself to be much better than the story we had already written for it.

The Elegidos did that.

I expected very little from it.

By the end, I was reluctant to put it down.

Yours truly,
The Cigar Lover

La Flor de Cano traces its history back to 1884, making it one of Cuba’s older cigar names.

The marque took on much of its modern identity in the 1930s under Juan Cano Sainz and his family, who helped establish it as a recognised Havana brand.

The Elegidos is a newer expression of that history.

It is made Totalmente a Mano con Tripa Corta - entirely by hand, but with short-filler tobacco rather than full-length filler leaves.

Its tobacco comes from Vuelta Abajo in Pinar del Río, and Habanos classifies it as medium strength.

A quieter name in the Cuban world.

Clearly sometimes the quieter cigars have more to say.

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Cigar Letters
^{No. 33}