A Southern Classic

                                  A Southern Classic

To create this pairing I had to escape to the South of Chile for a couple of days.  It is a beautiful place where my sister lives with her family.  I too used to live around there, when I was working for a wine distributor, taking care of many restaurants.  It is a zone with a lot of people of German descent, which means that the food is very good.  Many of the tourist areas are in the open, I am referring to the “X” region of Chile.  Some people don’t like it because they think it rains too much here, and it is a true challenge when you are trying to find time to smoke a cigar.  I had everything ready for the pairing, just waiting to have a few minutes free, away from my nephews and away from the rain.

It was obvious that, because of time restrictions, I would not have more than 30 minutes, so I needed a short format cigar.  One of the few cigars in my humidor that was fit for this challenge was a Partagás Serie D N°6 (50 Ring x 90 mm).  I have used this cigar in other pairings before, the brand is one of my favorites.

The remoteness of the location also dictated that the pairing would have to be exceedingly simple, devoid of classic bar equipment, so I opted for a Rum Old Fashioned using Havana Club 7 Year Old, from Cuba (at least that is what the label says, which is better than most other Cuban claims by other brands).

Due to the brief smoking time, I also know that I will start the pairing with the cocktail, but half way through the cigar I will need to pair it with the rum neat.

The cigar, which I had kept in my humidor for a couple of years, had an excellent draw during its first third.  The aromas were quintessentially Cuban, I always get a barnyard note that I associate with smoking these cigars.  The question now is, how well will the cigar pair with the cocktail?

The flavors are very straightforward, one of the more dominants is that of orange peel, accompanied by leather and white oak.  While it can be a bit refreshing at first, the intensity of the tobacco wins at the end.

Having easily reached the second third of the cigar, the pairing was begging for something more aggressive from the beverage side, so I switched to the Havana 7 neat.  The subtle caramel notes, with light vanilla and wood matched perfectly with this stage of the cigar: the rum’s caramel notes were transformed by the cigar into burnt caramel.  As good a match as the cocktail was at the beginning, the rum neat was perfect at this stage.

As I’ve written many times before, a pairing is a complete experience, not just two or three ingredients: you have to take into account time and the surroundings.  For me, this was the perfect pairing, performed in a truly beautiful part of my country, a place where everyone would love to age rum and to have a cigar after dinner every night.

Philip Ili Barake

#GR CigarPairing