It is College Basketball Fans’ favorite time of the year. CigarsDirect.com is once again holding its annual NCAA Tournament Bracket contest. See the details below to find out how to sign up and get entered. The prizes are amazing as always. These guys know how to do a contest and this is always one of the biggest of the year.  Here’s what you could win…

Prizes:

Place     Product
1st          2009 Opus X Fuente Charity Box – 22 Count
2nd        Opus X Fuente Fuente
3rd         Anejo No. 77 “The Shark”
4th         Padron 1926 Serie No. 35 Maduro
5th         2009 Don Carlos Edicion de Aniversario Box
6th         Ashton Aged Maduro No.30
7th         La Flor Dominicana Ligero Salomones
8th         Hemingway Short Story Box
9th         Partagas Sabrosos
10th       La Flor Dominicana Mysterio
11th       Opus X 1992 Rare Estate Reserve Robusto Tin
12th       Ashton Variety Sampler

Click on over to CigarsDirect.com to get all the details and to sign up.

It is time once again for the best College Basketball Bracket contest on the web. CigarsDirect.com is once again holding its annual NCAA Tournament Bracket contest. See the details below to find out how to sign up and get entered. The prizes are amazing as always. These guys know how to do a contest and this is always one of the biggest of the year.

This year’s prizes are AMAZING! Take a look…

1^st Place 2008 Opus X Charity Box – 22 Count…retail value: $999.95
2^nd Place is a sealed box of Opus X Robusto…retail value of $839.55
3^rd Place a sealed box of Hemingway Between The Lines… retail value of $799.95
4^th Place a sealed box of Arturo Fuente Anejo #77 “Shark”…retail value of $575.95
5^th Place a sealed box of Padron 1964 Anny Torpedo Natural…retail value of $319.95
6^th Place a sealed box of 2006 God Of Fire Robusto Tubo…retail value of $184.75
7^th Place a sealed box of Hemingway Short Story…retail value of $139.99
8^th Place a sealed 1992 Rare Estate Opus X Robusto Tin…retail value of $94.95
9^th Place a sealed box of Padon 1926 Serie Sampler Maduro…retail value of $74.95
10^th Place a $50 Gift Certificate toward any purchase on Cigarsdirect.com…retail value of $50.00

They need at least 100 players to make the contest valid and give everyone a shot at these cigars, so be sure to sign up and fill out a bracket. Entry is Free and you can fill out up to two brackets, so you’ll have two chances to win. The most important date to mark on your calendar is March 15th which is selection Sunday. Once the field is released you’ll be able to fill out your brackets. Get all the details for the contest including how to sign-up by visiting CigarsDirect.com’s March Madness Page by clicking HERE.

I also recommend signing up for their mailing list. Just enter your email address into the field on the top right of the any page at CigarsDirect.com.  Besides getting email alerts on the Contest, you’ll get alerts on awesome sales and specials on cigars.

Good Luck!

As an App State grad I couldn’t be prouder of my school’s football team. The Appalachain State Mountaineers just made history tonight by winning their 3rd, that’s right… 1, 2, 3 … 3rd National Championship in a row in football. They played a great game against the University of Delaware and thanks to a somewhat unusual good game from the defense, they allowed 30 something points in each of the previous playodff games, App State dominated the game and won by an impressive score of 49-21. Three Championships in a row has never been done before at this level (FCS, formerly 1-AA) of college football.

RESPECT YOSEF!!!!

My Alma mater tries to win its third National Championship in football this Friday. It is the highest level of college football in which you can win a legit national championship. Appalachian State plays Division I football in the FCS subdivision (formerly 1-AA). The BCS (1-A) isn’t a real championship. It is a beauty pageant where computers tell people who to vote for to decide a winner.

Any way… No one has ever won three national championships in a row at this level of college football so this will be history in the making. The Delaware Fighting Blue Hens (Hens? Is this an all girl school?) are in for a genuine @$$whooping. The Mountaineers are having chicken for Dinner Friday night in Chattanooga. I tried as hard as I could to get tickets, but it just proved to be too expensive. All the students bought up the tickets which are all $20 face value. They were selling for upwards of $150 to $200 a ticket on the auction sites. In the end it was just to expensive so I’ll have to cancel my hotel reservation and make plans to watch it at home. Disappointing for sure but I am still excited to see the game.

Go App!!!!!!!!!!!

Country: USA
Wrapper: Nicaraguan Corojo
Filler: Nicaraguan
Size: Figuardo 9.125″x55 ring

So I’m probably building myself a bit of a reputation for being a Tatuaje “Homer” and I won’t deny it. They are fantastic cigars and even the cheapest of the line, the white banded P series is pretty darn good for a mixed filler yard ‘gar. Tatuajes have been dominating my smoking rotation as of late which is why they also have been dominating my recent reviews as well. So keeping with that theme here is yet another Tatuaje review. This time I put an RC233 to flame.

I spent the better part of Saturday reorganizing my new garage. I had two reasons for doing so. Number one, I needed to make room to move even more junk from storage to my garage, and number two it was time to get the man room setup. The garage is my room, the “man room” if you will. It is a great place of refuge from the chaos that goes on inside the house with a wife, two small children, a dog, and a bird. So I needed to clean up the garage and get my new (but old) 42 inch rear projection TV and sitting area setup in the garage. After all it was opening day of the college football season and if ever there was a deadline to have your man room ready, that would be the day. By the afternoon everything was set and I was chilling out watching football. Fast forward to the end of the greatest football game of all time as my alma mater, Appalachian State University (2-time defending 1-AA National Champions) put the beat-down on big bad Blue in the Big House!!!! I was jumping through the roof! I’m still riding that high today. I wanted to smoke the biggest darn stogie in my possession to celebrate. None bigger than the RC233.

So off to the humidor I go and I pull out the 9+ inch foil wrapped perfecto. This is a good looking beast of a cigar. The size of it is a little intimidating and I know I’m settling in for 2 two and half hours or more with this bad boy. I explained the name of the Tatuaje RC’s a bit in my post about the RC184, but for a quick recap, the RC stands for “Retro Cuban” and the 233 represents the cigars length in millimeters. The RCs are limited in production making them kind of tough to find so when you come across one grab it if you ever intend to try them. Given the heft of the RC184 I expected its bigger brother to feel even heavier in the hand but was surprised that it didn’t. It seemed a little light for its size to me. A google image search located this handy picture showing the two RC’s side by side.

The head clipped nicely with my Palio. Like most perfectos getting it lit was a bit tricky. You need to get the burn up past the taper at the foot before the draw opens up enough to keep from popping a blood vessel while taking a draw. Once I got it going the draw was good but a little on the light side. I don’t know what Pepin does to his cigars that gives almost every one of them that trademark pepper right at the start but it was present on this cigar as well. Once I got a little over an inch or so into it the cigar mellowed dramatically. This is the mildest Tatuaje I have smoked so far and I’ve smoked many of them. The flavors were predominately coffee and cedar. I kept hoping for more flavors to develop or for the cigar to change things up a bit, but alas it did not. I have to admit I was a little disappointed. The flavors were quite good on this medium bodied smoke, but the cigar was a bit one dimensional. That’s not good for a cigar that boasts such a long length. There was still almost four inches left on the cigar when I found myself losing interest in it. I had gotten all I was going to get out of it and there was still about 45 minutes of smoking left on it. I persevered through the rest of the smoke but began paying far more attention to the football game then I did the cigar. It was a good cigar with superb construction, a good even burn , and good(albeit one dimensional) flavors but far too long and far too expensive for the experience it delivers. This is the 1st time I’ve found myself disappointed with a Tatuaje. I was especially surprised by this since the RC184 was an absolutely stellar cigar. Maybe it was a fluke, maybe not. I have two more in the humi and I’ll give it another shot the next time I’m in the mood for a two and a half hour smoke.

Rating – B