Winter time is cold time.  Cold time is tough time on cigar humidors!

During winter, cold air knocks down the internal humidity reading of cigar humidors.  Some, glass tops come to mind, more than others.  So what to do?  You just need to work a little harder to maintain proper humidity levels inside your humidor.

If you have a humidor with a passive humidity device, usually the humidifiers that come standard with the humidors, you will have to refill those more often and you can help out the passive device with a couple of other products.  One being the Boveda Humidity Packs, they come in various Relative Humidity (RH) settings and you just toss them into your humidor for a additional boost of humidity.  Be sure to consult the chart to determine how many you will need for your size humidor.   Another solution would be the Cigar Caddy Crystal Gels Just open the top and place in your humidor for a additional boost of humidity.  When the gels shrink by half,  add some distilled water to re-generate them and watch them grow!  When the weather warms up and your humidity readings begin to normalize, you can take out these wintertime helpers.

If you have a electronic humidification device, such as the Hydra or Hydra Commercial Grade Humidification systems, you should be turning the setting up.  You may need to increase the setting from the factory set 70RH to 75RH or so to get proper humidification levels.  Play around with the settings until you get the internal readings you need for your cigars.

Thanks Everyone!

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Our Labor Day Weekend sale is in full force now through Monday September 6th!  Items on our Labor Day Sale page have been marked down between 15-20% off our already low prices for this weekend!  Can’t find what you want on our Labor Day Sale page?  No problem, just use our September discount coupon code of SEPT2010 and you will save 10% on your order!

Now for the fine print: Labor Day Sale is good through Monday, September 6th.  Coupon codes not valid on Commercial Humidors or items marked as on sale.  Coupon codes cannot be used in conjunction with any Labor Day Sale product.

Thanks everyone!

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In the letter, the two students start out by writing, “Peach, mango, and chocolate are not just some of our favorite ice cream flavors. Rather, they are the new generation of smokers’ favorite cigar flavors. Who are these smokers? More likely than not, they are kids.”

No proof is offered, no surveys, no facts, not even a report on the number of tobacco sales to minors in the state. Just a statement to be taken as true. In support of a Maryland bill to ban flavored cigars – taking the Federal ban on flavored cigarettes a step further – the letter states:

SB 973 aims to counter the growing number of minors who purchase cigars that have candy-like flavors, such as cookie dough, chocolate chip and pink lip gloss. These cigars cost as little as 80 cents, an easy purchase for a child to make with his weekly allowance. Can you imagine an adult lighting up a grape-flavored Phillies Blunt, sold in a bright purple plastic tube resembling a candy package? Adults primarily smoke premium cigars, which are exempt from this bill.

Didn’t we just read about how adult women are enjoying flavored cigars in South Africa? And, of course, Blank and Siegel are blissfully – or is it purposefully – unaware that machine-made cigars outsell premium cigars in the U.S. by nearly 6-to-1! Adults smoke machine-made cigars at the rate of more than 1.7 billion a year in the U.S., compared to about 284 million premium cigars in 2009. But you wouldn’t know it from the letter.

The truth is that these two women are now simply cogs in the anti-tobacco machine which is trying to obtain tobacco prohibition in the U.S. slowly but surely. To them, the truth is inconvenient . . . or perhaps just irrelevant.

Courtesy CigarEncyclopedia.com

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Sept. 21 (Bloomberg) — Legislation to end a ban on Americans traveling to Cuba has enough support in the U.S. House of Representatives to win approval by year-end, said Representative Sam Farr, a California Democrat.

The bill to let U.S. citizens resume travel to the Caribbean island except in times of war or cases in which they face imminent danger has 181 votes in the House and needs 218 to pass, said Farr, a co-sponsor of the legislation. The plan is backed by travel groups such as the United States Tour Operators Association and the National Tour Association and human rights groups such as the Washington Office on Latin America and has been helped by President Barack Obama’s election, he said.

“It is believed we can get to this before the end of the year,” Farr, 68, said in an interview in New York. “We haven’t had a policy about Cuba. We’ve had policies about getting votes in Florida and Obama changed that by getting those votes.”

The U.S. ended restrictions on Sept. 3 on Cuban-Americans travel and money transfers to relatives in Cuba. The new rules also allow U.S. telecommunications companies to provide service in Cuba for mobile telephone, satellite radio and television. Exceptions to the 1962 trade embargo on communist Cuba include $500 million per year in agricultural exports, Farr said.

“If you are a potato, you can get to Cuba very easily,” he said. “But if you are a person, you can’t, and that is our problem.”

Pressure

Obama is under pressure from Latin American leaders to end the trade embargo to help improve relations in the region. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will ask Obama to end the embargo during the United Nations General Assembly this week, spokesman Marcelo Baumbach said Sept. 17.

Obama announced in April he would lift travel limits for Cuban-Americans visiting family in Cuba. At the same time, Representatives Lincoln Diaz-Balart and Mario Diaz-Balart, both Florida Republicans, issued a statement that the president had made “unilateral concessions to the dictatorship” that would “embolden it to further isolate, imprison and brutalize pro- democracy activists.”

Cuba’s former President Fidel Castro, who handed power to his brother Raul Castro last year, called on Obama to completely lift the trade embargo.

White House officials have said there are no plans to lift the embargo. At the same time, the administration is undertaking a full review of policy toward Cuba with the goal of advancing “the cause of freedom” in the country less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the coast of Florida, Daniel Restrepo, a special assistant to Obama, said in April.

March Proposal

A group of House and Senate lawmakers proposed in March ending restrictions to allow all U.S. citizens and residents to travel to Cuba. Farr said the legislation, known as the “Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act,” also has enough votes to clear the Senate, where Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, and Republican Senator Michael Enzi of Wyoming introduced the legislation.

“There’s a lot more openness in the Congress,” Geoff Thale, program director in the Washington Office on Latin America, said in an interview in New York. “Support is building. The travel industry and business community are not just formally in support but actively engaged. That’s why I think we’re going to see a difference.”

Senator Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who is of Cuban descent and sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, has vowed to fight the easing of travel restrictions.

Philip Peters, a vice president and Cuba expert at the Lexington Institute, a public policy research group in Arlington, Virginia, said proponents of the bill may succeed in winning congressional approval as public opinion grows among Americans that U.S. rules on Cuba aren’t in line with much of the country’s foreign policy.

‘Good Shot’

“They’ve got a good shot,” Peters said in an interview. “Certainly right now they’re in striking distance and they’ve got plenty of time left in the session.”

Ending the travel ban may lead as many as 1 million Americans to visit the island every year, Lisa Simon, president of the National Tour Association, known as NTA, said in an interview. It would also help push forward talks on human rights issues, Thale said.

“We’ve had a policy for 50 years of isolating Cuba and it hasn’t done anything about the human rights situation,” Thale said. “I don’t think there is some magic solution. I don’t think ending the travel ban will cause Fidel to say let’s have elections, let’s release all the political prisoners tomorrow. What it will do is open the process of dialogue.”

Obama’s administration has been showing a “gradual relaxation and diplomatic opening” toward Cuba, Thale said. He cited the government’s decision to reinitiate talks on migration and direct mail, and also to put down the billboard operated by the U.S. government outside its special interests section in Havana, which he said often displayed anti-Cuba messages.

To contact the reporter on this story: Fabiola Moura in New York at fdemoura@bloomberg.netJoshua Goodman in Rio de Janeiro at jgoodman19@bloomberg.net;

Richardson spoke outside Havana while visiting Ernest Hemingway’s former home, where he donated a replica of a telephone used by Hemingway to curators on behalf of his state. He said all U.S. citizens should be able to visit such cultural gems.

“I think enhancing cultural and artistic and educational ties is a prelude to diplomatic and commercial ties. It always happens that way,” Richardson told The Associated Press.

“I’m for enhanced tourism travel for Americans.” Richardson said that travel should go beyond the so-called people-to-people educational and cultural contacts promoted by the Bill Clinton administration.

Richardson insisted he is not in Cuba on Washington’s behalf and is not bringing any message from the U.S. government. But he is meeting with senior Cuban officials, including a scheduled encounter Thursday with Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and a Monday meeting with Ricardo Alarcon, president of parliament.

So far, everyone has brought up the U.S. embargo and other aspects of U.S. policy, Richardson said, without elaborating.

“I’m not an envoy of the (Obama) administration. I’m carrying no message. I’m here as a governor seeking agricultural trade,” he said.

“Obviously I do plan to submit my impressions to the administration after I conclude,” he said. “I will do that as a citizen and as a governor. They’re my impressions alone.”

As a congressman, Richardson secured the release of three Cuban political prisoners during talks with then-President Fidel Castro in Havana in 1996. As U.N. ambassador in 1997, he held talks on terrorism with then-Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina.

Richardson supported Obama’s declaration during last year’s U.S. presidential campaign that he would be open to meeting current President Raul Castro without preconditions. The governor also has opposed lifting the U.S. embargo, while advocating negotiations with Cuba to promote human rights.

The Obama administration has relaxed restrictions on Cuban Americans’ travel and money transfers to family on the island. Most U.S. citizens cannot visit _ technically, the U.S. Treasury Department bars them from spending money in Cuba _ in tandem with the U.S. embargo imposed in 1962 to weaken Cuba’s Communist government.

The U.S. and Cuba also are resuming talks on migration and direct mail, but they have sparred over a U.S. suggestion that Havana release its political prisoners. Cuba insists that any dialogue have no preconditions.

Richardson and state Cabinet officials are promoting exports of New Mexico beef, corn, wheat, potatoes and apples. Despite the embargo, U.S. states can sell agricultural and certain other products to Cuba, though sales on credit are prohibited.

To promote cultural ties, New Mexico will inaugurate an exhibition of Cuban modern art next week.

Courtesy Associated Press International

Not being able to host the Tobacco Expo and International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association convention cost us Las Vegans some $41,000,000 in lost revenue to the city.

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The gas-rich Gulf state is set to become the first Arab country to invest in Cuba’s booming tourism sector, after representatives inked the deal in Havana.

The 450-room upscale hotel complex is to be built in the south of the island and is expected to be completed by 2015.

While Cuba already receives millions of visitors from Europe, Latin America and Canada each year, officials hope improving ties with the United States will soon spell an influx of American tourists.

U.S. citizens have effectively been barred from traveling to Cuba for nearly a half century.

In 2008 the communist island received 2.3 tourists.

 Courtesy AFP

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The measure would essentially allow smoking in locations where only adults are present and would specifically allow conventions and trade shows which deal with tobacco products to allow smoking inside the exhibition halls.

The measure now goes to the Assembly for consideration, but there is some optimism that the bill will be adopted. The voter-approved smoking ban from 2006 included exemptions for gambling floors of casinos and retail tobacconists, but eliminated the possibility of smoking at events like the Tobacco Plus Expo held at the Las Vegas Convention Center or the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association convention and trade show held at the Sands Exposition Center. That could change.

Nevada law prohibits changes by legislation in voter-adopted measures for three years, so even if the measure passes in the new several weeks, it could not be effective until December of this year.

The major impact of the bill will be a provision which allows indoor smoking in bars which serve food and at which only adults are allowed. If passed, bars which allow minors into a smoking area could face fines of up to $2,000 per day.

Courtesy CigarCylopedia

Many people are still in the dark on what cigar manufacturers are going to do with this tax. While many in the industry are telling us that most are having price increases on their cigars and passing the tax on to the consumers. With our prices going up every day, I can truly understand their positions. I cannot speak for other companies, but I felt it was very important to speak to you directly on Tabacalera Perdomo’s stance.

Here it is:

1. We will absorb (eat) all the SCHIP tax on over 70 percent of our portfolio (Yes, you read that correctly).

2. On all Perdomo Reserve 10th Anniversary, we will eat the entire SCHIP tax (Yes, you read this correctly also).

3. On Perdomo Reserve 10th Anniversary, we will also be having a Price Decrease (Again you read this right). We are dropping our prices on all our Perdomo Reserve 10th Anniversary by $25.00 to $37.00 per box at retail!!!

4. [On] Perdomo2, Perdomo Habano and Perdomo Lot 23, we will just pass on the tax. Believe me, the prices are still fantastic on these great and popular cigars.

If we don’t then I will have to start walking the street with a tin cup in my hand asking for money.

You might ask yourself “Has Nick gone Crazy?!” Well friends, I am doing this because in my heart I don’t think we can afford to raise prices. Matter of fact in the last 16 years in this business I have raised my prices only once and that was a nickel. I also believe in these tough times, going against the tide and eating most of this tax and in some cases dropping our prices on a very popular brand shows our true commitment and good will to each of you, our loyal customers. As most of you know, we don’t spend much money on magazine advertisements. We spend our hard earned money on grass-roots efforts in events and shows. That’s where I and my staff have met tens of thousands of you. We spend our money in growing the finest Cuban-seed tobaccos. As you can clearly see, our priorities are our customers. And by the grace of God, we have grown this small family-run company yearly, where even my mom still works. You are all to thank for this. Our retailers and consumers have spread the word on Perdomo throughout the years and this is our payback to the industry that I dearly love. In these tough times, we are all taking it on the chin.

I truly believe that I have made the right decision and we also believe that we will continue growing our company and continue growing the Perdomo name by offering great cigars at even greater prices.

Again from the entire Perdomo team here in the United States and in Nicaragua, we want to thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Nick Perdomo
President
Tabacalera Perdomo S.A.

Thank you Nick!

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Our take, a good first step!

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