Best Seafood and Cigar Pairings
Seafood is easy on the palate. It’s the antithesis of a hearty filet mignon but equally epicurean. And, there are excellent cigars to smoke after a seafood entrée. Smoke a cigar with delicate but flavorful nuances the next time you’re dabbing your mouth with a napkin after your favorite seafood dish. Here are four essential cigar and seafood pairings to consider.
Lobster & Ashton Cabinet Selection
For seafood lovers, lobster is king. Its tender, juicy texture bathes the palate with loads of sumptuous flavor. Lobster is the ultimate stage for buttery dipping sauces and glazes. Supporting ingredients like garlic, herbs, paprika, thyme, rosemary, and lemon come to life when they coat luscious forkfuls of the prized crustacean. Whether your favorite preparation is broiled, boiled, baked, or grilled, lobster oozes with naturally delicious taste.
Ashton Cabinet Selection offers the pinnacle of refinement in a cigar that delivers maximum taste and smoothness. A shimmering blond Connecticut Shade wrapper leaf embraces a luscious interior of premium Dominican binder and filler tobaccos blended by world-renowned cigar-maker Carlito Fuente. Luxurious notes of cedar, cashews, almonds, and honey harbor a touch of signature Dominican spices before a silky medium-bodied finish is revealed. The 94-rated masterpiece is handmade in a complete collection of traditional sizes.
Oysters & San Cristobal Elegancia
Oysters can be sweet and briny with plump, springy textures. Classic condiments like cocktail sauce, horseradish, lemon, and Tabasco add sharp dimension when you’re slurping down a plateful of fresh oysters. Finishing flavors of melon, cucumber, and copper characterize the clean and easygoing taste of oysters. Sip a toasty glass of Chardonnay while you dine.
Award-winning cigar-maker Jose ‘Pepin’ Garcia blends vintage Nicaraguan long-fillers beneath a golden Connecticut-seed wrapper grown in Ecuador to create San Cristobal Elegancia. Notes of smoked almonds, white pepper, cashews, and leather culminate in a creamy, mild to medium-bodied profile. The top-selling cigar is available in six popular shapes that display a smoky and satin-like finish as the perfect follow-up to the salty, citrusy taste of oysters.
Sushi & Arturo Fuente Chateau Natural
Sushi is a chewy and delicious excuse to practice your chopsticks skills. If your mouth waters when you click them together to pick up your California roll, you need to stick a cigar in your pocket for after dinner. The best sushi brings together many bright and savory flavors with raw, or sometimes grilled, slices of salmon, tuna, eel, shrimp, and octopus. Classic sushi rolls combine ingredients like avocado, cucumber, asparagus, carrots, chili, and bean sprouts with vinegared rice. Dipping your rolls in soy sauce or wasabi galvanizes the palate with salty and zesty taste.
A cigar that is creamy, balanced, and rich is best after sushi. Arturo Fuente Chateau in a Natural wrapper is a worthy choice. Velvety notes of almonds, coffee with cream, cedar, and spices precede an alluring finish in several well-known shapes. Soft and silky aromas accompany the cigar’s pleasant impression. The blend is drawn from premium Dominican binder and filler tobaccos and a well-aged Connecticut Shade wrapper leaf. Its classic flavor has made it a bestseller for decades, and it’s a delightful cigar to pair with a refreshing sip of sake.
Crabs & Perdomo 10th Anniversary Champagne
Who isn’t overwhelmed by a seasonal craving for crabs? Crab fanatics will argue whether Maryland, Carolina, or Louisiana crabs are best, but the biggest differences between them boils down to how they’re prepared. Some like them boiled fresh in salt water, others steam them and coat them with a heavy dose of Old Bay Seasoning. The buttery and sweet taste of crabs becomes bracing with the proprietary and tangy mix of spices present in Old Bay when you smash your crabs open with a mallet. An ice-cold pitcher of beer is mandatory to wash them down.
Perdomo 10th Anniversary Champagne is a perfect cigar to smoke after eating crabs. Its medium-bodied profile of white pepper, leather, wood, and nuts is a natural fit when you’re smoking over a picnic table on a warm sunny day. An Ecuador Connecticut wrapper marries a creamy and peppery core of Nicaraguan long-filler tobaccos procured from select Perdomo estates. Hints of wheat and molasses emerge before the cigar is done. You can smoke it in an array of slightly larger, well-made ring gauges, too.
