I was all set to write about something else for this column, but suddenly my plans changed. It’s like that great scene in the movie Casablanca where the oh-so-pious Victor Laszlo talks about his destiny of saving the world to Rick. Moments later, the police arrive, bust down the door of Rick’s Café Americain and arrest him. While the police drag Laszlo away, he looks at Rick pleadingly.
“It seems destiny has taken a hand,” Ricks says sarcastically.
Destiny took a hand yesterday when an old friend who’d just returned from the Dominican Republic texted me: “I’m back and I brought fine cigars and excellent rum with me. Come on over.”
Few pastimes are as enjoyable as enjoying a well-made cigar with an old friend while sipping rich, dark, sweet Caribbean rum. The rum he was sharing was undoubtedly that. It was among the best I’ve ever had. Holding the glass close to my nose after he poured the seductive smoky-gold liquid, I closed my eyes and breathed deeply.
The scent was heavenly, a blend of intoxicating fragrances I’ve experienced in the Caribbean. Savouring the first sip fired up my imagination. I’m no rum connoisseur, but I was sure I could taste pineapple, coconut, chocolate, and maybe even a hint of ginger.
“This rum is excellent,” I tell my friend, who’s also savouring his first sip. He smiles and nods in agreement as he unwraps one of the high-end cigars he brought back and passes it to me. He’s even got a unique cigar tool that doesn’t clip the cigar but punches a small hole in it, giving a perfect draw. As we light up, he tells me about his tour of the cigar factory he visited in The Dominican, where expert cigar rollers handcraft every cigar.
“They take their jobs seriously,” he tells me as we toast our first ceremonial rum and cigar session of the season. Judging from the quality of the experience smoking this cigar, I tell him that’s obvious.
Taking another sip, I watch the cigar smoke curl into the air and am transported in my imagination to an experience 20 years before in the Antigua outback during a four-wheel drive tour of an abandoned 400-year-old sugar plantation.
It was an informal tour, pretty relaxed, and my host suggested we sit on the plantation’s front porch, and have lunch, which she said, included sampling a few varieties of Antiguan rum.
“Are you okay with that?” she said, smiling.
“You bet I am,” I replied, hardly able to believe my good fortune. Drinking excellent rum on the front porch of an abandoned 400-year-old sugar plantation in Antigua. Are you kidding me? So there we sat, picnicking on local fare, gazing out over the Caribbean and sampling several of Antigua’s finest rums. Talk about living large!
Watching the bougainvillea flowers surrounding the porch swaying in the breeze, and a sailboat far out on the horizon, I started thinking about Ernest Hemingway and his masterpiece, The Old Man and the Sea. Then I started thinking about Cuba and how much I wished I had a cigar. There’s something about rum and cigars. Born of the soil and each a distillation of the Caribbean spirit, they complement each other as old friends complement each other.
Taking another sip of rum, I imagine that Hemingway’s protagonist, Santiago, the aging and experienced fisherman who went eighty-four days without catching a fish, is on that sailboat on the horizon. “Everything about him was old,” Hemingway wrote, “except his eyes, and they were the same colour as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”
Cheerful and undefeated are powerful words that Hemingway would have chosen carefully, I think, as my imagination carries me away from the bougainvillea flowers swaying in the breeze, and the sailboat far out on the horizon, to the present.
So there we sat, two old friends living large, smoking fine cigars and drinking excellent rum. Savouring another sip, I was sure I could taste pineapple, coconut, chocolate, and maybe even a hint of ginger.
