There’ll be a “Smokes and Spirits” night at Bourbons Bistro on Thursday, September 28 at 8:00 p.m., with limited seats available at $40 each.
Join us for an evening of sips and smokes as our own Bluegrass Bourbon Baron Jason Brauner welcomes back bourbon expert and founder of the BourbonBlog.com Tom Fischer. You’ll enjoy a welcome cocktail and cigar, followed by two special Cohiba cigars paired with a guided bourbon tasting led by Jason and Tom.
Price is $40 per person (tax & gratuity included) and includes cigars, bourbon pairing, welcome cocktail, and light appetizers. Reserve your spot on the Bourbons Bistro OpenTable page. You can find this event under the “Experiences” section.
While it may have little to do with cigars and bourbon, once upon a time (2009, to be exact) I devoted a Food & Dining print column to cigar and beer pairings. The essay is reprinted here in its entirety.
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We met at nine
(We met at eight)
I was on time
(No, you were late)
Ah yes! I remember it well
It was a sunny afternoon in Antwerp, mostly rainy, either in spring or fall, and we’d kicked off with lunch at the Elfde Gebod (Eleventh Commandment) cafe, or maybe it was that Portuguese dive down by the docks where the house Port was being dispensed from wooden barrels perched behind the bar, matched with small plates of fried sardines and the saddest fado this side of Lisbon.
But it might have been bacalao. Anyway, I remember it well.
Later that night, my pot of North Sea mussels in dry white wine was superb, unless they’d been steamed in citrusy Belgian Witbier – in which case, of course, they were even better. Endless, graceful “bollekes” of gently assertive, locally brewed De Koninck ale were fabulous, and yet there is a sneaking suspicion that we were on a Westmalle Tripel jag somewhere upstairs at a bar on the other side of the cathedral.
Ah yes! I remember it well, and to be honest, there are times when I get my stories about eating, drinking and traveling confused, but I’m quite positive it was Belgium’s diamond capital, a city filled with food and drink and nightlife, and the specific reason why the memory returns to me now is in my hand, burning ever so slowly, emitting puffy smoke rings – the fruition of a long, patient process of growth, cultivation, harvesting, curing, hand rolling, packing and distribution.
It’s a cigar, and it takes me back to the conclusion of our Antwerp session so very long ago, because I can state with certainty that we closed the day at a famous beer bar called the Kulminator, where Dirk was featuring ten-year-old vintage dark ale called Breughel, brewed by a long defunct brewery (the brand has since been revived), and taken from a forgotten stash found in a friend’s garage.
Miraculously, the process of aging had been very friendly to the beer. Oxidization was light, lending a patina of sherry-like nuttiness to concentrated fruitiness, rather on the order of plums, pecans and toffee. I drank one, ordered another, and lit an authentic Havana, a Romeo y Julieta Churchill, which I’d purchased a few days earlier at a tobacconist’s in Brussels.
At the time, I was sure it was the best cigar I’d ever smoked. Finely conditioned, properly humidified and boasting a clan draw and steady, stately, dead-even ash — both full-bodied and unapologetic in flavor — the sensory qualities of the tobacco were simply overwhelming. Not only that, I had a complex, nuanced beer to go along with the cigar. The match seemed ideal, so what possibly could be wrong about it?
Nothing or everything, depending on one’s perspective.
As one who favors the best that beer can be, and also regularly enjoys accompanying it with a cigar, I must confess that this alliance of beer and tobacco is at some level, great or small, counter-intuitive. Puffing on a cigar changes the way a beer tastes. This is beyond dispute.
Then again, drinking a beer also changes the way a cigar tastes.
Can partaking of a beer and a cigar together change the way both taste, but in a positive way, one that modifies aspects of each and yields a harmonious, hedonistic whole? I respond in the affirmative. Fanatical beer enthusiasm aside, I harbor a passion to derive pleasure from a multiplicity of experiences. Granted, when given the chance to nip at a beer I haven’t tasted, my preference is to avoid cigar smoke, but in the proper time and place, cigars please me. I may be standing outdoors to smoke them; so be it. The rules of engagement change, but cigars aren’t going away.
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Recently I enlisted the skills of my occasional research assistant, Paul Mick, a student who relishes such challenges as sitting lazily all afternoon, armed with cigars and beers, conducting an unscientific sampling and watching the world pass by.
As a primer of sorts, perhaps the simplest and most logical place to begin assessing the range of pairing choices on the tobacco side comes in the form of a cigar’s wrapper, which contributes a large part of the flavor profile and offers visual clues to taste. Wrapper categories range from lighter to darker shades, with subtle, spicy notes common in the light wrappers and cocoa or chocolate hints noticeable as the color nears black.
Albeit imperfectly, these wrapper shades correspond to beer colors as a preliminary basis for pairings. The base malt of all beers is golden, with hues added through the use of specialty malts, which also provide flavors ranging from roast to espresso to wood smoke.
Because color alone doesn’t always accurately presage the strength and character of a beer, it’s important to realize from the outset that lighter styles of beer won’t always fare well even when the cigar is mild, too.
As an example, seeing as a golden-colored beer might be mild and delicately hopped (Kolsch), medium-bodied and phenolic (German Hefeweizen) or strong and malty sweet (Maibock), does it make sense for the Kolsch to seek accommodation even with a yellowish-brown Claro wrapper? I think not. My starting point would be the Hefeweizen, under the reasonable assumption that a touch of clove and fruit might be enhanced by the Claro spiciness.
Proceeding from this admittedly simplified basis, Paul and I chose our cigars and settled back to talk politics, music and history. Here are some of our conclusions.
Assertively hopped beers, including American Pale Ales and English ESBs, seem to excel in the middle of the wrapper color range, especially Colorado (brown). Hoppy beers that lack a firm malt component, like everyday Pilsners, fall by the wayside. Hops also complement a cedar flavor component in cigars, often gleaned from their storage. Unfortunately, Hitachino Classic, a Japanese India Pale Ale aged in cedar barrels, was unavailable for sampling. Wouldn’t that be interesting?
The greater the coffee, cocoa and chocolate content of the wrapper (Maduro and Oscuro), the less utility of the hop and other spicing agents, and the better the match with beers offering the same dark character: Stouts and Porters from the English brewing heritage, and stronger brown Belgians like Dubbel, as well as the country’s new generation of unclassifiable strong, dark and sometimes black specialties.
One of these is Pannepot, a highly regarded strong ale brewed by the Struis Brouwers. On the day of our tasting, Paul noted that his CAO Italia cigar’s coffee and chocolate flavors had mellowed during a period in his humidor. The first few beers he sampled, including a Saison, Bitter and Pumpkin Ale, were not prime matches, but then we poured the Pannepot, and the mood changed. Paul wrote:
“Pannepot leveled the playing field with what I now consider the secret weapon that beers can bring to bear against the more full bodied cigars: residual sugar. By itself, the Pannepot was an absolutely delicious beer, with a hint of sourness up front before its sweeter nature kicked in with heavy flavors of prunes, dates, and other dried fruit. Since these are very oxidized flavors to begin with, they really complemented the similar aspects of the cigar.
“Also, since the cigar itself was not sweet at all, the contrast definitely enhanced the sweet character of the beer. The same can be said about hints of molasses. However, the sweetness did fade relatively quickly to reveal a nice hop background that worked well with the cedar from the humidor.”
A few weeks after our initial discussion, I found that Paul’s notes had inspired me to follow up on another of his observations: Bourbon whisky pairs so well with cigars because both possess woody flavors; the alcohol in the bourbon cleanses the palate; and the corn mash sweetness of the whisky balances the absence of sweetness in the tobacco.
I hurried off to Kaiser’s Tobacco Store in New Albany, then went into the basement to examine my stash, and what emerged was an Onyx cigar with an oily black Maduro wrapper paired with Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout – for the uninitiated, an Imperial Stout with vanilla and coffee overtones aged for a year in a bourbon barrel.
It was power (cigar) versus power (beer), with no clear winner, and a thoroughly enjoyable way to spend an autumn afternoon on the front porch … unless it was the back yard.
I remember it well.
