As for the cigar, I am pairing the Gavi Di Gavi wine with a Cuban Crafters’ Cubano Claro Julieta. The reviews of the Cubano Claro have all been fabulous, including a 4 cigar rating by the Stogie Guys, a well respected cigar review blog and 93 points by Smoke Magazine, the only magazine that I trust for ratings. One of the panelists who rated the cigar for Smoke Magazine even gave it an unheard of 95 while claiming it’s “A very elegant cigar that can be smoked any time of day. Smooth finish that I did not feel a need to wash away.” The first thing that you will notice with the Cubano cigar is the beautiful Desflorado wrapper. It comes from the Corona of the tobacco plant, the highest leaves in the tree. They tend to get more sun than the others and have more nicotine. Since the tobacco is shade-grown, the leaves will get reddish without the big protruding veins usually found in these types of leaves. Cubano Claro is handmade by Cuban Crafters Cigars and is packed in a vintage humidor style box. The cigar box comes with a humidifier and a humidor. I noticed that the hygrometer is made in Germany. It’s got to be old as I can’t recall seeing hygrometers made in Germany as the cost is presently too high. I would say that this box has at least 20 years on it. Supposedly it came from a large cigar maker that had them put away and never used. He traded the boxes for tobacco that he needed.

Back to the Gavi Di Gavi. It’s made to be served well chilled, so make sure that you drink it at the right temperature. The aromas are enticing and include peach and melon. It also has roasted nuts and raw almonds. At first the wine is fruity with light pineapple notes. The acidity is good, not too powerful. I can tell from the start that it will not affect the taste of the cigar. Citrus tends to impact your taste buds and will generally give any cigar a light bitter taste. In other words, stay away from citrus tasting wines when smoking. This wine is creamy, with berries and plums. Delightful for a Gavi Di Gavi. After a few sips, it’s time to light up the Cubano Claro cigar.

The burn is nice and the taste starts very smooth. From the start you taste the sweet spices. The medium bodied smoke has toasted nuts and cream. A perfect combination for the wine. I’m done with the first glass of wine and immediately pull the bottle out of the refrigerator to pour another. That first glass of wine went by too quickly. That’s usually a very good sign. The cigar is now transforming to deep complex tastes. It’s definitely getting stronger yet it’s still smooth. The transformation brings in coffee with cream, white chocolate and a butter like feeling on the tongue. The sweet spices are still around, with mild notes of nutmeg and a little cedar. All the tastes intermingle, making this a very enjoyable smoke that doesn’t get boring. The fruit and cream of the wine add to the experience.

The Cubano Claro’s taste intensifies past the half-way mark yet stays extremely smooth. It’s now full-bodied with more white chocolate than before. It’s just not as sweet as when I first started smoking it, yet still has sweet notes. The wine’s creamy fruit enhances the taste of the cigar, yet I can now sense a little lemon in the back. That concerns me, yet it hasn’t affected the cigar’s taste that much. I do sense a light dry ceder taste in the background that I had not sensed before. This could be the result of the wine, but the wine’s creamy and fruity taste overshadows it.

I’m down to the last quarter of the cigar. Definitely a full-bodied smoke by now. The coffee with cream, surrounded by layers of white chocolate, makes this a memorable moment. The wine’s creamy fruit tastes coats the tongue and adds to the pleasure. Definitely a good wine and cigar pair that I highly recommend. Both the wine and the cigar individually are a wonderful experience, but together add to each other. Do them together.

Rolf Binder Winery makes some of the best Australian wines. The Rolf Binder Hales 2003 is one of their serious Shiraz wines. I can’t think of better Shiraz than that coming from the Barossa Valley of Australia, and this one is an outstanding example. Rolf Binder Hales Shiraz has a powerful berry aroma out of the bottle. You can almost touch the fruit with your nose. You also smell the flowers and alcohol hiding behind the berries.

The cigar is lit and the wine glass is allowing the oxygen to penetrate the wine as I swirl it around. A little sip gets me ready for the wine’s flavors. As I smoke the cigar a few minutes pass and even though I know that I should let the wine air for a longer period of time, I can’t help it and start drinking. The rich blueberry taste comes through right from the start. It’s thick with sweet undertones of cream, blackberries and flowers. I can still taste touches of alcohol under the flavors but that’s probably my fault for not allowing the wine to air-out longer. It opens up as time goes by and the wine settles. Smokey flavors start to appear in the background, along with more pronounced flower notes.

The Shiraz is extremely smooth and the flavors keep building. You feel the wine getting thicker by the minute. It matches the J.L. Salazar Maduro Churchill I’m smoking as though they were made for each other. The rich smoke from the Salazar Maduro, combined with the interludes of Hales Shiraz, play with one another. They both have a floral background that allows one to flow to the other as though they came from the same terroir.

The cigar is past its halfway point and the wine coats its residue flavors as it flows past the tongue. I was somewhat concerned that the Shiraz wine may overpower the Maduro cigar, but that concern quickly vanishes. They were made for each other.

It’s almost an hour and by this time I’m sharing the red wine with Jose, another wine and cigar lover. My bragging about how the wine complements the cigar, and visa versa, leads him to light one up. His description of the pairing is very similar to mine. Validation is always good. It’s unanimous, this is one of the best cigar and wine match that we’ve ever had.

First the Magito Sauvignon Blanc Rivertrace 2006. It comes from the California’s North Coast and it’s produced with 82% Sauvignon Blanc, 8% Viognier and 10% Verdelho. It’s the first time that I drink a wine with Verdelho that’s not from Spain. You’ll notice that it has a screw cap and not the traditional cork. Don’t let this influence you. Some of the best wines are now with screw caps, especially whites. The wine has crisp citrus and melon aromas that give a preview of what is coming. At first the wine is crisp and mild, with sweet melon that plays with lemon. I was somewhat concerned about smoking the cigar because citrus generally does not mix well with cigars. Citrus has a tendency to make cigars taste a little bitter. It has something to do with the taste buds. I’m hoping that the melon covers it enough to mix well with the cigar. To make sure that I don’t mess up this pairing, I drank a little bit of coffee to clean my palette. No more wine until after I start off the cigar.

Don Kiki White Label is a consistently good mild cigar. While some label it a medium-bodied cigar, I’m accustomed to smoking stronger cigars and therefore find most Connecticut-shade wrapper cigars to be mild.  I have run into 2 or 3 that seemed medium to full bodied, but those were the exceptions. Back to the Don Kiki White Label. It’s from the 2001 Vintage. This means that the filler tobacco is well aged and smooth-smoking. The Double Corona is 6 inches long with a ring gauge of 48. It’s not available in too many places as it has limited distribution. It comes from Cuban Crafters Cigars in Miami. This is Florida’s largest cigar store and it has a cigar factory in the center. You can smoke inside the store while drinking Cuban coffee with your cigar, and watching the Cuban-born cigar makers at work. It makes for an interesting experience.

The cigar started mild and smooth. You immediately taste cedar and nutmeg. After the first few puffs, the cream started taking over. After about an inch or so you start realizing why this cigar is always sold out. It’s delightfully smooth with sweet tobacco notes with vanilla notes and cream. The flavors blend beautifully, and the burn is exceptional. Now the real test, how does it go with the wine.

The first few sips of wine are as previously described. I made sure that the Sauvignon Blanc is cold, as I truly believe that white wine is meant to be drunk cold. Now I take a few puffs. The flavor is somewhat different than before. The cedar is more pronounced. I drink some more wine and finish the first cup while I take a few puffs. The cigar’s cream seems to bring out the sweeter fruit flavors of the wine. I’m almost one-third way down with the cigar. The flavors are intensifying. It plays well with the melon taste but I am starting to sense the citrus as an afterthought.

The wine in the mouth is fantastic by now. As I puff the cigar I do not feel the citrus affect, but after puffing out and swallowing, I feel the light bitterness caused by the citrus. It’s an acceptable level as the cedar and cream of the cigar overshadow it. Between the fruit and citrus of the wine and the cedar and cream of the cigar you have the bitter swallows. It’s sort of pleasure and pain, one making the other even better. But then again I may have been biased because of my past experiences with citrus drinks and cigar smoking.

My final recommendation is that while both are delightful individually, together they do not enhance each other. The citrus affect kicks in after the gulp. It’s an acceptable level of crisp bitters but defeats the purpose of drinking wine while smoking a cigar. Enjoy them by themselves, unless you prefer mild bittersweet intermissions.