Germany continues the soon-to-be tradition of hosting two Cigar Smoking World Championship qualifiers. In D\u00fcsseldorf in June, reigning world champion Walter Hauke qualified for the grand final in Split when he won the national championship for the seventh time in a row, but his performance wasn\u2019t very convincing. The new Oliva competition cigar turned out to be harder to manage than he had expected and in the end he smoked for 2 hours 40 minutes and 30 seconds.<\/p>\n
For the regional CSWC qualifier in Eisenach, he had most obviously done his homework.<\/p>\n
When the competition at the G&C Gentlemen\u02cbs Club in Eisenach was held for the first time last year Hauke Walter didn\u2019t even partake. He had already secured his championship title earlier that summer, but this year he probably wanted to prove to himself, if nobody else, that he had more in him.<\/p>\n
Under the organization of Thomas Gei\u00dfler and the Gentlemen\u2019s Club, the competition was held as part of Big Smoke Germany at O\u2019Toole\u2019s Irish Pub.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was more than just a slow smoking contest,\u201d CSWC founder Marko Bilic says. \u201cIt was a two day cigar festival filled with exceptional cigars, premium spirits, gourmet food, and an electric atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every corner of Germany, from Schleswig-Holstein to Bavaria, Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg, and Saarland, was represented in the starting field, as well as Luxembourg, Spain and France. \u00a0Friday night was warm-up night, with an Urtyp cigar paired with three premium rums from Kirsch Whisky, followed by two special Eisemacher rums alongside a Villiger cigar.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cThe room buzzed with conversation and the DJ kept the rhythm ad anticipation for the next day\u2019s competition quietly built,\u201d Bilic describes the atmosphere.<\/p>\n
At the competition table, legends faced off. Three-time world champion Walter, French champion and runner-up in both Eisenach last year and in D\u00fcsseldorf this year, Oliver Steinh\u00e4user, and last year\u2019s Eisenach winner Thomas Reich all sat down together, alongside the rest of the starting field.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the start, the Oliva Mareva burned slowly and evenly, revealing its complexity,\u201d Bilic says. \u201cThe audience knew it could carry someone deep into record-breaking territory if handled with absolute precision.\u201d<\/p>\n
After an hour and a half the field thinned out, but it was obvious Walter had more to give. A lot more.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe chatted lightly between puffs, schooling the table in the fine art of slow smoking,\u201d Bilic continues. \u201cJudge Kevin Clemen sat directly opposite, watching like a hawk as the clock ticked towards history.\u201d<\/p>\n
Slowly he passed one after another three-hour smoker on the top 20 list; Oleg Pedan, Mariusz Kowalczyk, Alexander Shagai, Sergey Galevsky\u2026 but not Anastasia Arsenova. At 3 hours 38 minutes and 16 seconds, Walter\u2019s cigar finally went out, once again proving he\u2019s not going to be giving up that world champion title easily.<\/p>\n
Second place went, like always, to Oliver Steinh\u00e4user, who came in at 2 hours 5 minutes and 52 seconds. With Raich barely making it past an hour, another Thomas claimed third place. Thomas Schlupp reached 1 hour 51 minutes and 2 seconds.<\/p>\n
CSWC in Germany.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":72821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[49,63,44],"tags":[5366],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72820"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72823,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72820\/revisions\/72823"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cigarjournal.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}