A Visit To Dalay Cigars – The Alec Bradley Road Tour

A week after driving to Switzerland it was back on the road.

This time staying basically in the neighbourhood as it was an hour’s drive down to Saarbrücken, right on the French-Luxembourg border.

I had been in contact with Michael from Dalay Cigars,
the trusted and very knowledgeable sidekick to Salih Dalay, the owner, on the genial videos they produce.

He had invited me to taste the new house cigar, the Dalay Limitada Capa Rosada 2014, and I wanted to taste it right there “in da house”.

The chance arose when Gottfried told me he was meeting up with Thorsten and George during their stop of the Alec Bradley road tour at Dalay’s. store

So off we drove, pleasant day, lots of late summer sunshine and it was perfect to enjoy the city’s French influenced flair and atmosphere, especialy around the corner from Salih’s store in the old quarter.

I love the old building where the store is located with its varied access and the terrace flying a large scale CA cover motif.
Funnily I had met Salih various times over the last 10 years at CCC events in Wiesbaden’s Nassauer Hof Hotel and Schloss Vollrads where he supplied cigars and expertise, but had never visited his store.
Rumour has it that his store will become Germany’s newest La Casa Del Habano pretty soon – deservedly so if true.

We had hardly unpacked when Thorsten and George arrived. Thorsten is a good friend and doesn’t need to be introduced. George is the very affable, intelligent and witty New York born, Miami based Sales VP for Alec Bradley. Having Cuban roots we had an immediate connection in culture and language and a common interest in good cigars.

I hardly had lighted the Dalay Rosado offered by Michael when Salih was kind enough to take us to his favourite steak joint in the old part for a very tasty piece of excellent meat. Great start to the coming long evening of cigars, conversations and meeting up with good fellow smokers.

The gathering began at 7 pm and it was a very hands-on affair, nothing formal, anyone was free to pick not just the cigars but also the brains of the assembled experts and Salih, George, Thorsten, Gottfried, Michael, Viktor and Zoranc ertainly were attentive and shared all their knowledge and experience with anyone having questions until way past midnight.

The Dalay Capa Rosada ( Michael knows I am not much into reviewing cigars ) had two well defined versions/parts to my palate – the one before dinner and the one after dinner.

Two different animals.

It is certainly not an “aperitif” cigar, the large size and the strength offers itself for better purposes. Before dinner the cigar was dry on my tastebuds, woody and rather on the heavy/stronger side but not unpleasant at all.
After dinner I smoked the remaining half and the aromas of the six tobacco leaves used came into full presence, it was full-bodied but very accessible, truly a mouth-filling cigar.
Construction and burn were excellent and it surprised me to find a Dominican cigar on the stronger side of the spectrum.

Talking about spectrum – the range of smokers at Dalay was truly amazing. Let me call them the “Dalai Lama followers” ….

I met Marc and Claude, very interesting fellow cigar smokers from a Luxembourg cigar club,  and we shared our experiences and stories ranging from everything like cigars, venues, clubs, cameras, airplanes, trains and meeting up next time for a joint herf at the pharmacy. Great guys that I look forward to smoke with again !

Holding court in an outside corner table was Günter with a group of friends – him being a local great and funny character ( though his stories were at least XXX rated and would have been censored  in a porn magazine ) who had just arrived back from Australia – check his souvenir in the picture section ).
He sure brought life into the party and we had us some fun exchanging funny places and experiences.

Melanie, a lady in his group turned out to be Germany’s reigning hunter queen – and I mean serious real big calibre hunting like wild boars and deer.
Extremely interesting and dedicated into hunting and all the details plus having her own hunt nearby. Respect due.

Never a dull moment, lots of fun, good cigars, interesting people, good drinks brought on with a lovely smile by Angela, late summer mild temps – what else can you ask for ??

Well, you can ask to continue the fun as soon as possible, right ? Right !
Which is what we did next day after a few hours of sleep.

We met at RW’s in the village for a breakfast brunch and lunch – basically a long affair from 11 am to 4 pm, we had the place to ourselves and being another sunny and pleasant day we decided to do it al fresco.

Thorsten and George arrived late from Saarbrücken as predicted and it was a repeat from the day before, just different in that it was a smaller group and more conversation based.

I declined to have the Texas Lancero, a monster at 7×70 ring size. Certainly a Lancero should look different than this obscene baseball bat, but again : chacon a son ragout – to each his stew.

I’ve been told everything is big in Texas, even the bullshit … 🙂

Thorsten gave me a more fitting cigar to try out, the small new Mundial which I liked very much, a peppery, spicy tasty little Figurado, an absolutely fine cigar to my taste.

So another great week-end of good friends and good cigars.

Life’s good.

Nino