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Cigar Paradise in Nicaragua!
by Neil Noffsinger, Contributing Editor of cigarweekly.com
Neil, Nancy, Mike McCoy and others, traveled to the Perdomo factory
and fields of Esteli, Nicaragua in January 2011.
Mike’s Cigar Room was named the 2011 Best Place to Buy a Cigar in the Courier/Villager's Best of Montgomery County poll for 2011.
Some people might argue that there are more than just three primary tobacco growing nations (outside of Cuba, that is). Still, I think most of us could agree that the tobacco regions generally recognized today as key ones (once again, not including Cuba) would be those located in the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Nicaragua. More photos and story....
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Read “Local Flavors,” Mike McCoy’s on-line interview with Cigar Weekly.
 Local cigar business keeps on smoking
By KIM MORGAN CHRONICLE CORRESPONDENT
Nov. 2, 2009, 4:18PM
Handmade cigars seems to be big business around Montgomery County with one store owner in business for several years now, a new one boasting the county's largest humidor on Texas 242, and yet another new one along the Waterway where folks can put up their feet, have a smoke and a drink before calling it a day.
Once a cigar smoker, always a cigar smoker, said Willis resident Mike McCoy.
“I had my first one when my daughter was born in 1977,” Mike said. “It was cheap and a piece of crap. But I still liked it.”
Mike and his wife Nancy are owners of Mike's Cigar Room, 8000 Texas 242, Suite 119 in Conroe.
They opened last month, but up until recently, they owned a cigar store on Main Street in Houston, which they are in the process of selling to their daughter and son-in-law, Sarah and Brad Tirey.
Nancy said the new business features the largest walk-in humidor in Montgomery County, at more than 570-square feet. It's consistently gauged to ensure 70 percent humidity and 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
The way cigars are made and stored is crucial to how they taste.
Cigar tobacconists are similar to wine connoisseurs, putting a lot of thought into where the goods are grown, when it's harvested and how it becomes the final product.
In the world of tobacco, Nancy said, all the best hand-made cigars come from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua or the Honduras.
“That's where they grow the best tobacco, but it's also where the best cigar families went after (Fidel) Castro took office in the 60s and ousted them from Cuba,” Nancy said. “The big-name cigar families had to flee and start their business over. Although everyone wants Cuban cigars, because the government says you can't have them, the quality in the other brands is higher. Cuban cigars don't burn or draw that well.”
Again similar to wine, cigars are mild, medium or full-bodied.
First-timers ought to try something mild, Nancy said, so as not to be overwhelmed.
“The idea is to enjoy the cigar,” Nancy said.
People are not supposed to inhale cigar smoke, Mike said.
Instead, you savor the flavor in your mouth.
“You don't have taste buds in your lungs,” Mike said. “So why would you inhale a cigar?”
But first you have to get it lit.
Sterling Ridge resident Michael Wilson didn't even know how to do that when he attempted his first cigar when he was a senior in college.
“I've got this match, and I'm sucking on this thing, and it is not working,” Wilson said. “I didn't know you had to cut the end off. I finally just said ‘oh, look here.' I bit the end of it, and from there, it was fantastic.”
Good thing Wilson figured it out, because these days, he's a professional tobacconist.
Wilson, also a commercial airline pilot for Continental, is owner of the recently-opened Rio24 Cigars and Premier Bar, 24 Waterway Avenue.
He said they have almost 400 different cigars in the humidor.
“Some of them are only sold here and one other place in the world,” Wilson said.
In addition to the retail side of things, Rio24 has a liquor license and leather seats.
While the legal drinking age is 21, Rio24 seems to draw in a slightly older crowd, more like 25 and older, Wilson said.
“In The Woodlands, people work hard,” Wilson said. “After a day or week of work, they need a place to go that's not loud, not the 21-year-old crowd slamming back pitchers of beer.”
Women smoke too, Wilson said. He estimates nearly 15 percent of his customers are women, who tend to lean towards the flavored cigars.
There are quite a lot to choose from, like Honey, Irish Cream, Java, and Vanilla Bourbon.
Mike Gager, owner of Woodlands Fine Cigars, 582 Sawdust, said tobacco has always been a medicinal herb, used to promote relaxation, relieve anxiety and even reduce hunger.
But only if it's coming in the form of pure, hand-made cigars.
“If you smoke something made by a machine, they're generally not pure tobacco,” Gager said. “There's a lot of junk out there.”
Typically, cigars purchased in drug stores, grocery stores and corner stores are not hand-made, Gager said.
Cigars are not addictive the way cigarettes are, Gager said.
“You don't see people lighting a new cigar with the end of another, or huddled in doorways to have a quick smoke, or stomping the butts out on the ground,” Gager said. “I have never known a cigar smoker who couldn't put them down and walk away from it for a week.”
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Not just a Cigar Room
By Nancy Flake
Updated: 10.16.09
Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar – at least in the famous words of Sigmund Freud. But a cigar shop is a friendly gathering place of civil, political discourse.
That’s what Mike’s Cigar Room, which opened two weeks ago at 8000 Texas 242, Suite 119, in Conroe, represents – not only to its owners but to the store’s first customer, Mike Bialka, who lives in downtown Houston. Bialka, a pilot, had shopped at Mike and Nancy McCoy’s original cigar store, which opened 25 years ago, and followed them to their new location.
“It’s a phenomenal cigar store, with a great humidor,” Bialka said. “Mike and Nancy are really neat people.”
A third of the store’s 1,575 square feet is devoted to the largest walk-in cigar humidor in Montgomery County, a cool, fragrant home to 900 types of cigars, Nancy McCoy said.
The store sells many of the world’s finest cigar brands and blends, including Patron and Arturo Fuente. Sometime in November, the store will become the only Montgomery County source for the prestigious Davidoff White Label cigars, Nancy McCoy said.
The store will have its first of several grand-opening events from noon to 3 p.m. today. The first 50 people to arrive will receive either a free Ashton or La Aroma de Cuba cigar.
Each of the grand-opening events will involve “something free,” she said.
Mike McCoy got into the cigar business because “I got laid off too many times in the oil business,” he said. “I was a restaurant manager, but I didn’t like that. I went to work for Pipe Pub (a now-defunct chain of cigar and pipe shops) and stayed there three years.”
After leaving Pipe Pub, Mike McCoy opened his original cigar store in downtown Houston. The McCoys recently sold the store to their daughter and son-in-law so they could be closer to their Willis-area home.
“Mike has been driving downtown for the last 25 years, and we always wanted a larger store in the suburbs,” Nancy McCoy, an attorney, said. “We had a customer, one of the best-known appellate lawyers in the state, who abruptly died at the age of 58. Mike said, ‘I’ve always wanted to do this; let’s do this.’
“There’s no one in the business I know who knows more than Mike does.”
Even in just the store’s first two weeks, customers have noted the size of the humidor.
“I’ve already had people say, ‘This is the biggest humidor I’ve ever seen,’” she said.
Customers can rent space in the humidor to store their personal cigar stock for $100 a year, Nancy McCoy said.
But it’s a combination of cigars and companionship that keep Bialka coming to Mike’s Cigar Room.
“People who come in are from all walks of life, kind of like the old barber shops,” he said. “You get everybody from day laborers to CEOs. There’s a lot of spirited discussion.
“I just enjoy the whole atmosphere.”
Customers can relax with their choice of cigar in one of the store’s several leather chairs and watch a high-definition TV.
The atmosphere, Nancy McCoy said, is one where “people are happy, relaxed and collegial.
“Cigar smokers have a bond, a kinship.”
The store is not just a business for the McCoys.
“We do this for the fun of it,” Mike McCoy said. “It’s a fun business.”
To learn more about Mike’s Cigar Room, visit www.mikescigarroom.com or call (936) 271-0900).
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