Cigarros con cafe

Saturday morning and the sun is shining, a gentle sea breeze caresses the kowhai leaves, and distant yachts slice their way effortlessly through shimmering waters on the horizon. Ah yes, time for coffee on the deck... and while I'm at it, why not pull out a cigar?

As a fellow prisoner of our modern age, the spectre of guilt overwhelms me at the thought of such an unproductive pass time. What of domestic duties? Or of preparation for future events - building up peers and relationships - self-improvement through cultivation of skill - turning a buck in a costly world...? Our contemporary curse, the plague that is the pandora's box of Lifestyle Options, assails me. Tick tick tock goes the clock, relentlessly driving the slaves who must account for its atomically-defined nanoseconds. I attempt to still my guilt by pulling out a laptop to mark some annoying essays. The battery fails. Time slows to the pace of the incandescent cylinder pressed between my forefingers. With every draw, the pillar of ash grows. Every once in a while, it falls to the ground. Its rich and creamy emanations soothe the mind. Peace and satisfaction prevail. Self-absorbed man of contemplation, or Doer and Achiever of many things- who is of the undead, and who is of the living? The cat stretches out, oblivious, on a warm paving stone. I am reminded of a book by Proust, A la recherche du temps perdu, of which - irony of ironies - I had only ever speed-read extracts for school. I think this is a fortunate thing. In any case...

Blessed be the cigar that affords us momentary exile from the world of options.

I confess that despite the knowledge that real prestige lies with the after-dinner cigars, the large puros that match refined drinks like whisky and generally provide greater complexity and evolution of flavour, most often the smoking urge comes on me for daytime smokes, generally late morning with coffee. Sometimes I want one before coffee, often after coffee, and every now and again i'll actually have one with coffee - like today. Some kind of biscuit and dark chocolate are also de rigueur for that blend of flavours made in heaven.
[if you must know, my fave biscuit is McVitie digestive with a dark chocolate like Scarborough Sinless; if i have them, i will go for roasted almonds instead of the biscuit; and on the rare occasions when we have any in the house, i might go for a timtam.]

As for the cigars, well you have tasted for yourselves the diminutive Cohiba Club cigarillos - the quick fix option - the Hoyo de Monterrey du Maire in the small range, and larger half-corona vitolas like the Trinidad Reyes, Cohiba Maduro5 Secretos, at a push the San Cristobal El Principe; and on the rare holiday occasions I can stomach a biggy in the day, a Montecristo no4 or even larger, a Hoyo des Dieux. Others that I can't get hold of anymore are the El Rey Del Mundo Demi-Tasse, or Gloria Cubana no4. They all have in common a medium body, more woody or cocoa type flavour, and all have a hint of sweetness. Cigars that have more to do with leather, earth, spice or a fruity twang I exclude as I'm not a coffee-or-chocolate-with-fruit kind of person. I save those ones for alcoholic partners. But that's just me.

What kind of cigarros con cafe experience floats your boat? I'm interested.