Blog & Cigar News | Mardo Cigars

Hi, and welcome to another episode of Monday's With Mardo's. I'm Gerard, and this week we're going to go over what is the best cigar to look for while traveling abroad? This means traveling outside of the United States. But, before I get going, I need you to click on the subscribe button, click on the bell to be notified every single week of new episodes on Monday's With Mardo's.

Obviously, Cuban cigars is going to be the topic and the biggest highlight for you cigar snobs and cigar smokers. You're going to be like a kid in a candy store. If you're traveling to the Caribbean, anywhere down in South America, beware of a lot of counterfeits. So if you get approached by someone along the beach when you're sunbathing, and he has a box of cigars that has a glass top view, and it's a box of 10 or variety of different Cubans, and it's very well priced, $30 to $40, those are fakes.

You might be telling yourself, "Well, who cares? As long as it's a good cigar, it doesn't bother me." Well, the problem is a lot of these cigars, believe it or not, I have personal experience, have sliced cigars like this that my friends come back from the Caribbean and they tell me "Gerard, look, I got these Cuban cigars, Cohibas, for $50 for 10 of them." Immediately, I get a razor blade, and I break their heart and I slice open the cigar and we dump it. A lot of times we see dust in there, pieces of cotton. One time there was a actual pebble, a rock, inside the filler. Yes, it was actually in there. It basically told me that these guys were just sweeping the floor of the factory and just putting in whatever. You don't want to be smoking that stuff. There was even a piece of drywall. I don't know if it was stucco or drywall. It was just terrible, and that's what you might be buying. It's not necessarily that, okay, it's a fake cigar. It could be a good cigar. It's just the content inside the filler is very bad.

So, where do you want to go to get good Cubans? You definitely want to go to a Habanos store. Habanos is a corporation, and they certify all their retail stores, and they have a big Habanos sticker on the glass front door or the actual glass front of the storefront, and that will let you know, it's an authorized Habanos dealer.

But if you are looking for Cuban cigars, definitely look for retail stores. One of the biggest thing that I would want to do is I want to get some limited stuff. That stuff's going to be always hard to find, and I know many of you know how to get a lot of Cuban cigars abroad without even having to travel. You can just basically go to your computer, find some of these legit cigar websites that do ship Cuban cigars within the United States. But a lot of times they don't have those limited editions. So if you're in Spain, you're going to have regional cigars only made for the region of Spain. If you're in Germany or if you're in Andorra, or if you're in England, London, so many different places are going to have all their regional limited, special Cuban cigars.

That is the extent of my knowledge on Cuban cigars. Other than that, I do know that Drew Estate does do some special Liga Privadas for the Chinese market, so if you happen to be in China, if you want to get your hands on Year of the Ox or Year of the Tiger, you can definitely get those in China.

Other than that, let me know in the comments what you guys can have some input on some of our viewers. Maybe you can guide them in the right direction to get some of those special cigars that they always want. The forbidden fruit. I'll see you guys next week. Remember to follow us on Instagram, like us on Facebook, and remember to tell your friends to subscribe to our YouTube channel. See ya.