Oleg Pedan wins Russia’s Qualification Tournament for CSWC

Last Saturday in St. Petersburg, La Gran Fumada Russia, organized by the Horse Power cigar club, saw Oleg Pedan once again taking the title with a smoking time of 2:23:45 for the official competition cigar, a Macanudo Inspirado Mareva. The two other best slow smokers are Alexander Shagai (2:14:31) and Alexander Andriushkevitch (01:49:33). Oleg Pedan is currently the best ranked Russian smoker in the competition, being three minutes short of the current world record held by Darren Cioffi (USA) with a smoking time of 2:50:09.

In the afternoon, Guillaume Tesson, member of Cigar Journal’s team, gave a lecture about France and cigars, while the participants enjoyed a Quai d’Orsay ER France 2015 Robusto Diplomatico. He also signed for the first time the Russian edition of his Petit Larousse des Cigares. At the end of the lecture, two participants (Andrei Malinin (Moscow) and Kaido Raandalu (Tallinn)) won a return ticket St. Petersburg / Paris to attend the Big Smoke Paris on June 24.

The very same morning, 18 participants gathered for a blind tasting of Cuban cigars. Competitors had to recognize three cigars: a Partagas Aristocrats (Petit Cetros), a
Partagas Super Partagas (Cremas) and a Romeo y Julieta Short Churchill (Robustos). The best tasters were: Oleg Pedan, Sergei Galevsky and Cigar Smoking World Championship founder Marko Bilic. Artem Erenburg, former Habanosommelier for Russia in 2010, supervised the tasting.

Up to 75 people competed in each smoking / tasting session and around 100 joined the gala dinner on Saturday night.