I sat down with Shane Ireland to give you an introduction to Caldwell's Eastern Standard Silk Road, our latest Smokingpipes-exclusive cigar, now available on-site.

[Andy Wike]: Caldwell's Eastern Standard Silk Road. Long time coming, man.

[Shane Ireland]: Long time coming. And I'm really honored that Robert and his crew decided that it was time to bring this one back as an exclusive for Smokingpipes. I have a little bit of a story about this.

So Eastern Standard is a longtime favorite blend of mine. My personal favorite cigar on the planet is the Eastern Standard Cakewalk. That's what I grab most of the time when I'm relaxing and enjoying a cigar on my own — not work related, just about enjoyment.

[AW]: Cream Crush is my go-to.

[SI]: It's a great smoke. Between Cream Crush and Cakewalk is a hard call to make, but the Cakewalk edges it out just a little bit for me personally.

How Silk Road Came Back

After all these years of smoking a ton of Eastern Standard in a bunch of different sizes, this last Christmas, right here in Low Country Pipe & Cigar, a group of us came back to hang out and have a smoke after the company Christmas party. My boy Zach Harpold, who has been with Caldwell for many years and is still a Territory Sales Representative for Laudisi, had one of the original releases of the Silk Road from back in 2014, 2015 — the first limited-edition blend Caldwell ever produced. He had one squirreled away, and gave it to me at Christmas time.

We sat here and smoked it, and I was just blown away by how well it aged — not just the Eastern Standard blend in general, but specifically that format. All of us here at Smokingpipes are fans of Lanceros. After that experience, I went to Rob and said, "Hey man, we should bring this back." He was gracious enough to bring it back as an exclusive for Smokingpipes. This has been something all of us have anticipated for quite some time.

As much as the aged ones are fantastic, Robbie himself actually prefers how they smoke fresh — really fresh — and they smoke incredibly right out of the factory. Of course there's a little bit of aging time, but other than that, these have no age on them, and they're performing incredibly.

[AW]: Eastern Standard's probably my favorite blend of all time, but in the Lancero format, everything's just concentrated. If a Cream Crush is like an Americano, this is an espresso. It's just so strong.

Tasting Notes: A Concentrated Expression

[SI]: That hybrid wrapper — when you have that much of a percentage of the wrapper relative to the blend, you really get the wrapper character front and center. That hybrid wrapper, man, the Connecticut Arapiraca, it's a special tobacco. It has such a natural aromatic quality to it.

[AW]: And then of course you still have all the other aged tobaccos in there — the Criollo '98, the aged Dominican Corojo. It's more punchy in flavor, but I think you get more of the Nicaraguan Habano in some of the larger ring gauges. There's just something so special about this much wrapper leaf. It's so good.

[SI]: I think — first of all, you hear this a lot, but it's true — crafting a Lancero well is extremely difficult to do. You hear a lot of companies talk about how there's only a couple of rollers they authorize to make Lanceros, because it's super easy to overfill them, super easy for them to be rolled tight and plugged, and not burn evenly. But at TWV, Tabacalera William Ventura, these esoteric vitolas are kind of their specialty, and the people who roll these cigars in these more difficult-to-make sizes do such a good job. You get such a consistent experience and draw. They are smoking perfectly.

Like I said, the aromatic quality of this cigar is mind-blowing to me. It's perfumey. It has so much going on. We say this about a lot of pipe tobaccos, but there's almost an incense-like quality to this. I definitely get floral notes as well, and I really attribute a lot of that to the wrapper. It's such a complex, interesting component. Even in the sidestream, I get a little bit of sweetness and nuttiness. It's got a lot of body but it's still mild-to-medium in strength, which is the perfect sweet spot for me these days.

I think every Eastern Standard vitola smokes a little bit differently, and all of them are equally good, but there's something about the Lancero format that's magic in this blend.

[AW]: Yeah, I think this is probably the boldest flavor-wise of any of the vitolas in the Eastern Standard lineup, yet it's still somehow just as balanced. That's what I really love about cigars in general — you can have such a fantastic blend, but every vitola is a different expression of that blend archetype. So when you're figuring out what cigars you like, don't just stop with one vitola. You have to try a bunch and see what resonates and registers with your specific palate in a way that just clicks.

Built to Age, Built to Explore

[SI]: And if there's a blend you're a big fan of — like Eastern Standard — let's say you normally smoke the Cakewalk like myself, every now and then I'll get a Corretto, and it'll blow me away, the different experience that a different format and vitola can give you. There's something that ties it all together and makes it familiar and comforting — the base blend itself — but playing with those proportions and sizes can be a nice change of pace if you normally smoke one size.

We say this about a lot of pipe tobacco, and I know from personal experience that this blend has long legs. Based on what it's like smoking the ones that are more than 10 years old from the original release — these are going to age beautifully. But they really are special right out of the factory too, and really good right now. I think I'm going to struggle personally not to just smoke through my allocation and not save any for the future. But I'm going to do my best, because something about this blend just ages incredibly well. In this format, it's magic after five, ten years.

[AW]: Yeah, it's super good. It's pretty limited, too. If you do want to try it, we only made 240 boxes.

[SI]: Really small run.

[AW]: A really small run. 10-count boxes. 240 boxes, very limited. It's just a super cool little special project for Smokingpipes, and even Robert is like, "This is still, after 11, 12 years, one of the best cigars we've ever made." And that still rings true today as it did with their first limited launch of 2014, 2015.

[SI]: He's a big fan of the size, too. Robert's a Lancero guy. He loves small ring gauges, and he'll smoke a Lancero like this for hours — a real slow smoker. And yeah, like I said, I'm really honored that we were able to bring it back for Smokingpipes. The limited nature, the difficulty producing a blend like this in this size, in this vitola, even from the masters at TWV — it's a special cigar, and there's not too many of them. We promise not to smoke them all ourselves, even though it's tempting. If there was ever a private reserve blend made just for the crew here at Laudisi to smoke, it would be this — I think we'd unanimously agree that this is what we would want to produce.

[AW]: 100%. So make sure to try them if you can. Eastern's such a great blend. It's about traditions that are earned, not inherited, and I think that's really meaningful as we launch this new Lancero for Smokingpipes.

[SI]: Thanks, Robert. Thanks to the Caldwell crew. Thanks to TWV. I'm excited to keep smoking these, and hopefully to be able to save a couple for the future.

[AW]: Check out Caldwell's Eastern Standard Silk Road at Smokingpipes, and let us know what you think.