Christmas cigars

Like every Christmas, I went home and spent some time with my family, eating and drinking loads, opening presents, etc, etc... but what would Christmas be without good cigars? :)

Thankfully, my parents put together a great area outside their house with a nice and cozy area to enjoy some great puros, a personal "smoking lounge" well protected from the wind and therefore great to smoke (for me - not sure that was the intended use :))!

On Christmas day, after an amazing lunch, I therefore enjoyed a nice Partagas P1 (see my review here) with my brother; I somewhat felt that wasn't enough for such a special day and therefore I doubled-up with a Montecristo Maravilla. While smoking, I got a little bit carried away with the Christmas spirit and therefore I took also a picture of the nativity representation my sister Francesca had prepared in the "lounge" :) 

As you can see, I had with me all you need for a great smoke starting from my inseparable travel cigar caddy, a cutter, some matches and in this case a nice bottle of port - my brother Marco was recently in Portugal and brought back some bottles of this Portuguese internationally famous export...

And here is the Montecristo Maravilla, a limited edition issued in 2005 for the fifth release of the Habanos Collection "Book" series and the 70th anniversary of the Montecristo Brand, an amazing double-robusto size 55 ring gage for 182 mm.

This was definitively an outstanding smoke. A very classic Montecristo flavour, with lots of spice, tons of smoke and a great aroma from pretty much the beginning till the very end, one of those cigars that you wish you could smoke more often but are unfortunately not so easy to find, since they were produced in a somewhat limited number (well, in theory only 500 copies of the book containing 20 cigars each where made, or 10,000 cigars in total; in practice I think a few more of those cigars were made available for my own luck...)