Episode 23 | Gurkha Sampler Cigar #3 | Hot Tea

Yo yo yo yo yo. We are back for another episode of the Sticks and Stones podcast. I'm your host Angelo and this is day three, cigar number three in the Girka cigar sampler pack. There was six cigars in here. We've already reviewed the Beast and the Marquez. So, let's see what we have left. And this this episode, I am drinking hot tea. As I said in the beginning of this, we are going to try a new cigar with a different beverage for each cigar. Okay. So, we have the castle hall, we have the rogue, we have the chatau de prey, and we have the girka evil manufacturers evil, I don't know. Okay, being that I don't want to smoke something that says evil on my first cigar of the day, we are going to go with the Chateau de Py. Uh, I'm trying to see what this is. Is this is the cigar I will be smoking for this episode. All right, let's let's get into it. All right. Going to go back to my tried and true. Going to give this a snippy snippy snippy snippy. Just as a beginner tip, you really don't want to go below the shoulder of your cigar. So, you really don't want to go like below here because then the cigar starts to fray and gets out of control and there's nothing you can do about it at that point. Let's see. Going to roll it around the flame. As always, I do my best to try not to get super close to that flame. That way, it cooks the whole thing. One thing I am noticing here is weird blue marks. So, the one thing I can tell right away is the draw is very different from the other two that I've had. This is a little tougher draw. Sometimes you got to just have a hot cup of tea. It says the K Hanosha and Company Century of Tradition. This has got to be a collaboration. says 1887. Not sure. Again, I'm not vastly familiar with the Girkaline. This is more mild, that's for sure. H. I'm gonna smoke this down some more because I'm I'm honestly I don't know how I feel about this thing. You know, I wish that cigar events were more widely advertised. I know the cigar world is a big world and it's a very popular subject. It's a very popular conversation to have, but they're very hard to find. These events, these events are very hard to find. Whether they're networking events, whether they're cigars and bourbon or cigars and scotch or cigars and coffee, whatever it may be, they're not widely advertised. Not really sure why. I know there's a couple of clubs here in my local area that have some events, but you know, other than the to the to the trade PCA big show that's happening in New Orleans this year, that one is widely advertised or marketed. But I think there should be a circuit of local like community cigar events. Cigars and coffee, cigars and cars, cigars and bourbon, scotch, you know, whatever. I think that there should there should be more events and marketed widely because this is such a broad category. So many people enjoy cigars that it should be shared amongst way more people. I've also found that just trying to grow my network, trying to plug into different places and industries and whatnot, other than I mean Eventbrite is probably the biggest. Finding a good networking event is difficult. It's not it's not an easy task. Quick story. I was doom scrolling on Instagram and even though you're doom scrolling, you can always be productive. I'll just say that. So, an advertisement popped up for a networking event that was coming to my local area put on by Stellar I think Stellar Events or something. Hold on. Now I I had done an event previously with these guys and I had done an event and it wasn't great. It wasn't great. They didn't even have any representatives come to the event. U BA it was basically a [ __ ] show. They trying to see. So this was a Houston engineering energy and infrastructure networking event. Now, I had gone to an event that the same group, the same um organizer put on the week prior, and it wasn't great. They didn't send a representative to the lounge. It was like a bar lounge. They didn't send a representative there to like represent themselves. It was Stellar Socials USA. Stellar Socials USA put this event on the previous event. Stellar Socials did not send anyone there to represent them, explain how, you know, the event was going to work. No information, no details whatsoever. The the bar was was nice. It was a trendy little bar. what they advertised was not what it actually was. It was supposed to be an event for investors, builders, contractors, interior design, stuff like that. I met one architect. I met one quasi builder. Like it was basically a a fake it till you make it kind of event, which is fine. It's cool. There was not one investor there. There was not one interior design person. There was a handful of people. And I paid for the tickets for that event. So then fast forward to February the 27th, Stellar Socials puts out another event at another trendy, swanky little place downtown close to downtown. Okay, cool. Cool. I buy the tickets again, show up to this event, get to somebody, an employee that works at the bar, and they tell me that I'm the fourth person there to ask about this event that night. And they she, the bartender, had no clue of what was going on. So then she calls the owner of the establishment and the owner says, "Yeah, there was an event scheduled for 700 p.m. but haven't heard from them and I think they may have canled." You know, ask the person, meaning me, "Check your tickets. Check any updates to see if the organizer updated anyone." I look, nothing. I've got no email. I've got nothing. And there's no one there other than patrons of the bar. So, my guess is, and I showed up about 30 minutes late. It's supposed to start at 7:00. I got there at 7:30. I don't really like to get to a networking event right when it starts. Um, I like to show up a little bit fashionably late. So, my guess is that four other people showed up for this event, saw that no one was there, and left. They bounced. No one got any notifications that the event was cancelled. My guess is Stellar Socials USA didn't sell enough tickets that they were anticipating they were going to sell and they just booked it out of there. Didn't tell anybody. No notifications, nothing. Couple of people ended up showing up just scrolling in even later and they were upset. You know, they were, you know, really upset. I'm going to get my money back. I'm going to call these people. I'm going to email them. I'm going to text them. Whatever. The way I see it, it it doesn't matter what you paid for those tickets. We all paid to be there. Doesn't matter what you paid. It was a well lesson learned. Don't ever go to a Stellar Socials USA event ever. They're not managed well. They're not produced well. They It was a horrible experience. Not once, but twice. So any event that I see with them on the internet, on social media, on Eventbrite, whatever, definitely not doing that again. You know, it's really difficult to find a good networking event. Honestly, the best ones that I found so far are the ones that friends or colleagues or associates bring me to, like invite me to, and we just go together. Those those are like the best from from you know and I'm and I'm still I'm still figuring it out. So we shall see. But I think the cigars event thing I think there should be like a conglomeration. There should be like one networking or one marketing head if if you will. I think there should be like one organization, one company that somebody starts or opens or starts to run that is specifically for cigar events across the country and down to like communities, right? So have have a representative or have a a team of marketing/salespeople that handle territories and your territory is you know whatever the the West Coast or even if you wanted to go as detailed as you know multiple salespeople for larger states like California, Texas, Florida and everybody has a territory and you do nothing but market cigar events because you can have so many cigars events for so many different things like races. You could have cigar events at aviation things. You can have cigar events at real estate things. You can have cigar events at construction things. I mean, there's so many industries. There's so many people who have shown interest in the cigar world that you could literally create a national cigar marketing and events company and I think do really, really well at it. Because let's face it, anybody in this world, in the cigar world, has let's not call it disposable income, but they have enough cash to throw at something that they enjoy, which is not cheap, right? So, a a good I mean, you can get a decent cigar for two bucks, but you know, let's let's call a spade a spade. the the majority of a good cigar is six bucks plus, right? Six, eight, 10, 12, 15, 20, 27, 30. You know, the cigars out there that are going for, you know, 40, $50, $60 now over 100. So I would venture to say if you put on an event that was produced and executed at a precision level with the highest quality of drinks, cocktails, orves or food venues and attendees. I think people would pay and I think they would pay a good amount of money to go to an event like that, you know, because you know it's going to be at a nice place. You know, you're going to have topshelf stuff and you know you're going to meet topshelf people whether that be, you know, you're just you're looking for business, you're looking for like-minded people, new friends, build relationship. I mean, whatever it is, I think somebody would pay that kind of money to go to a good event where they know they're going to have good sticks there. They're going to have good food, good drink, good people. That's just my two cents. I mean, this this Chateau de Pra is mild. It's pretty mild. I'm not going to lie. It's um it's got that creamy, but I, you know, I'm going to be honest. This is not something that I don't know how much this cigar is, but this is not something that I would go searching for. It's not something that I would, you know, pay top dollar for. I mean, I bought this sample pack, six cigars for like less than 30 bucks. Traditionally, Romani people, my clan does fruit in RT. There's others that do the milk and stuff, but we do fruit, so that's that's what I'm chewing on. I think I got apples in here. So, I've got some I've got some plans to look at for construction, some construction projects. I've got a couple of those that I've got to look at today and doing some more prospecting, working on some of the websites and stuff like that. Obviously, podcasting. Uh we're going to shoot some more videos, some more content for a couple of the other channels. Yeah, you know, pretty busy. I have to I want to address one thing that's happening in, you know, pop culture right now. Everybody is like losing their minds on the Jim Carrey thing. And admittedly, I am a conspiracy theorist. Um, and I and I'll I'll say this over and over again, not to the to the psychosis level, not not to an extent where I'm staying up for 48 hours straight or 72 hours straight trying to track down a specific thing or story or tale or whatever. But I wholeheartedly believe not to believe everything you see or hear or are told. There are ulterior motives in every which direction. Just don't take it at face value. and Jim Carrey back as far as 11 years ago. And I've been going down this rabbit hole and I really I don't want to give any opinions or positions, any absolute positions or viewpoints without going through all of the material first. But, you know, just on a first glance, the man, everyone thought that he went off the rails as far back as like 11 years ago. As we are seeing in our in our current current day, there's a lot of weird stuff that's been happening in the entertainment industry since the beginning of the entertainment industry. Music, movies, TV, you know, there's all sorts of like pedophilia and predatorism, if that's a word, predatory people in those industries. But I think it goes a lot deeper than that. and Jim Carrey kind of faded out of the limelight and started talking against the entertainment industry as far back as 11 years ago. Started to grow his beard out really really long and was looking disheveled and stuff like that and then started talking about spirituality and Christian the Christian faith and was getting into some really really deep stuff. and then now recently reappears in France, accepts an award and does not look anything like Jim Carrey that we all know and love. You know, some people love him, some people hate him. They'll watch his movies, they won't watch his movies. I think the guy was hilarious. He did a bunch of movies like, you know, Ace Venttor Pet Detective one and two I thought were I mean there's oneliners in there that I use Tilt to I think the guy was a comedic legend, but shows up at this award event acting very, very weird. Doesn't look anything like the Jim Carrey that we all grew up watching and it's got the whole world on fire basically. And there's a whole bunch of other stuff going on which I'm not even going to get into. But like I said, I don't have a viewpoint, an opinion or anything on it right now. I I I want to look through the information and read some stuff and, you know, do all that sort of thing. But it's weird, guys. It's weird. Shit's weird. Shit's getting really really weird. You know, they're saying they're saying that there's technology out there that, you know, can clone people and they're saying that there's people out there that are not who we think they are. And, you know, they're not here anymore. And I mean, it's it's weird. And like what the purpose of all this is, I don't know. I don't know if we'll ever know. It's just scary place. We're living in a really scary place. I mean, this is not something that we had to deal with when I was a kid growing up. But it's something that we definitely all have to deal with now. So pretty weird. I don't know, man. I mean, I I still think this cigar is a good cigar. I mean, it's not the greatest that I've ever had. I think it makes for a good morning stick for sure. Let me let me see a little bit more about this stick. Let's go on the Google machine. Shadow deep purple. Okay. So, I don't see anything on the Girka website, but the AI Google AI says the Girka Chateau Dev is a limited edition mid to mediumbodied premium cigar produced in the Dominican Republic at PDR Cigars. I'm sorry, mild to medium. It's a mild to mediumbodied cigar. I agree with that. It features an Ecuadorian de Dave Florado wrapper. I don't know, I probably butchered that. Dominican ol binder and Dominican filler. So, it looks to be it's Ecuadorian and Dominican throughout. Known for a creamy, toasty flavor profile with notes of cedar and vanilla. Cedar I definitely get the vanilla, not really. The cigar is offered in three sizes. The Bishop, which is 10 bucks. the Rook, which is 10 bucks. And King of Warriors, I do like that name. That's pretty cool. $11. And was released in 2018 in limited quantities, 300 boxes per size. Key details for Girka Chateau Depiles: Creamy and smooth with notes of oak, cedar, hay, and vanilla. Now, a friend of mine explained to me in toasting notes that when you say hey, it doesn't mean like you've eaten hay before. It means it's you're using all of your sense, all of your five cents. You know, you're using smell, touch, taste to imagine if you're smelling hay, like that's what hay would taste like. Uh, so it's more of a taste bud nasal, you know, smell connection. So if if I'm lying to you, I was lied to. Rappers, Ecuadorian binders, Dominican fillers, Dominican. It's giving the sizes. The cigars are known for their ornate high-end packaging, often featuring dome-shaped boxes. According to Halfheel, yeah, I mean, that's not something like Yeah, the packaging, the the band is cool. I'm sure the box is really cool, but to be best known for your packaging, I don't think that's like the greatest thing in the world. Cedar definitely vanilla. I don't get any vanilla whatsoever. And I got to tell you guys, for this price point, I definitely would not be looking for this cigar. And they don't even make it in the VO that I really like. They the ring gauge, the biggest ring gauge they have is 52. So yeah, not my thing. I have been meeting with a lot of people lately and I have I've come up with I've come up with the the point of view that I just I like I like working with people that I like working with and I know I bounce around a whole bunch, but you know that's kind of that's my personality. I believe I have undiagnosed ADHD. So like you know I'm bouncing all over it's 100% like squirrel like that's that's me. Um, but I met with someone yesterday that I met at a networking event. Wonderful person. And you know, we were just talking about it's so different when you're working and referring business to and among friends. It's a completely different thing. It's a completely different vibe. It's people that you know and trust. And I've I've been this way for a very long time, but I never actually articulated it. Never actually put it into words. I only refer my clients if they're looking for a service or product. I only refer products and services that I know and trust that I use myself. um or people that I am well connected to or connected with and I think that's what most of the world should do. I don't think that as a service provider you know I provide a a multitude of services from real estate to construction to consulting to finance to you know a whole bunch of things. If I'm going to refer a client to a product or a service, you shouldn't just be flinging out their referrals or recommendations willy-nilly just because, you know, you get you get points or you get, you know, a referral fee or a kickback or whatever. I think that you're doing your clients, your friends, your family a disservice. Whoever you're offering the referral to or the the recommendation to, you should stand behind it. You should have faith and confidence that whatever you're referring, whether it's a product or a service, that it is going to bring that person value. It's going to bring them the result that they're looking for, the goal, the result that they're looking for. And I've just never articulated it before, but it's so true. If I'm going to refer something out, I'm going to refer to someone that I know that I trust, that I know the work quality is where it should be. And I'm a little bit of a perfectionist. So, if something doesn't look right, if it's not built right, if it's not said right, produced right, um, created right, I won't refer it. And it takes relationship building in order to know that. You have to know those people for a while. You have to know the ins and outs, the good, the bad, because it's not all good. It's not all going to be rainbows and and sunshine and butterflies. There are going to be problems. It's how the problems are resolved is what makes the difference on am I going to refer you or not. Yeah, that's my that's my two cents on that. But as far as the cigar world is concerned, I think uh I think as a community of cigar smokers, we should all work on a a calendar of events across the country that we can all go to, enjoy, network, show up, have a good time, smoke some good stuff, drink some good stuff, maybe eat some good stuff, and it and all be cohesive. I don't think that, you know, most of these cigar lounges, cigar clubs, cigar stores, all the owners know each other. I I don't think that there's, as far as I know, there isn't animosity or, you know, there there is some sort of competition. But, I mean, if you're far paced out enough, you're not really competing, you're not, you know, infringing on each other's territories. I think we should all be have open communication. I think we should all collaborate and create these events where we can all get something out of it. And I just think that my own opinion, I haven't been to many events where that shines through. Well, first of all, a lot of events are done indoors, and you can't do that at a cigar event unless it's at a cigar lounge for obvious reasons. You know, no no event place wants cigar smoke all over their place. Gets everywhere, gets into everything. So, if we could get a network of lounges, outdoor places where they'll they'll allow an event like that, I think it's a great idea. I think someone can jump on that and make that a real thing. I mean, imagine a website where you can go to, and I don't know if this exists or not. I mean, I could be making a complete ass out of myself right now. I don't know if this exists, but if you went to a website where you can drill down to your local area and see what cigar events are are going down in that, you know, month, week, whatever. I think that's pretty cool. I think I think people would really enjoy that. I think they would use that. I think you could generate money and add money. I think it would benefit a lot of people. I mean, that's that's just me. But I hope you guys like the content that we put out here at Six and Stones podcast. Things are going to change. You know, we've got a lot of things happening, a lot of things going on. We're creative enough to where we could pivot and position and do all these different things and a lot more is going to be coming out of this channel from our podcast to our websites. There's multiple websites being launched to our social media from Facebook and Instagram debating on whether doing a Tik Tok or not. Love to collaborate with people. Love to collaborate with people. One of the websites that we're building is kind of like um a form, a place to kind of give me what you're looking for, what you want to be a guest on the podcast or, you know, interviews at at different things and, you know, all that kind of stuff. So, a lot of stuff's going to be happening, a lot of changes for the good, a lot of improvements. So, stay tuned for what we're doing. As far as Girka stick number three, the Chateau dep on it. If someone gave it to you, it's okay. It's not bad. The draw on this one was kind of iffy, but you know, it is what it is. I mean, this is what we're all about. We're out all about trying out new sticks and cigars we love, cigars we don't know, cigars that, you know, we like to pass on. I did a I did a review video on YouTube. It wasn't on the podcast, which, you know, I'm kind of thinking I should have did it on the podcast. The God of Fire was a cigar that I really didn't like. Bought a whole box, didn't like it at all. Revisited it and it was better than I first when I first smoked it. Not for $27. Like this is this is a lot of the stuff that that I do because I do love cigars. I love smoking cigars. I smoke multiple a day. This is what these channels are all about. It's really all about the cigars. It's all about the product. It's all about the Brotherhood of the Leaf. It's all about trying stuff, you know, giving my personal opinions. Again, they're just my personal opinions. So that way, if you're an avid smoker, you got something to relate to. If you're someone looking to get into smoking and we're giving you info and tips and tricks and opinions and reviews on what would be good, what would be bad, you know, all that sort of stuff. So, just doing it for the love of this of this thing and trying to produce really good entertaining content for you guys. So, we're working on it. We're improving. We're doing what we can and loving every step of it. Loving every minute, every minute of this journey, every step of the way. So with that, we're out for this episode and I want to wish you all a blessed day, a blessed week, a blessed life, and stay blessed. And above all else, keep it rolling, baby.