The annual entertainment awards season is fully underway in Southern California with the presentation of the Golden Globe Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Monday.

These are not simply one-day affairs where you get dressed and go to dinner. Instead, ancillary events extend three-hour award shows into a week-long program of parties, press conferences and hospitality.

A good example was a two-day program by Best Life magazine on January 11 and 12 at a Hollywood Hills villa which was converted into the “Best Life House,” a private party venue for the magazine, its advertisers and guests from the entertainment industry in advance of the Golden Globes show on January 15.

And the Best Life House had its own official cigar: Montecristo!

From an event-planning standpoint, a house makes much better sense for a Hollywood party than a hotel or a restaurant. Unlike those commercial establishments, homes are private spaces and you and the guests can smoke, drink, eat and dance to your heart’s content, subject only to the feelings of your neighbors. Some estates are big enough that even that is not a worry.

So Altadis U.S.A. was more than happy to supply Montecristo and Montecristo White cigars for the house.

Taking the theme a little further, Altadis USA’s Playboy by Don Diego line will be featured at the place where it was launched in 1996: the Playboy Mansion in Beverly Hills. It’s all part of the first Playboy Poker Camp (stop snickering) running from January 17-21, primarily at the giant Morongo Casino Resort & Spa in Cabazon, California, just outside of Palm Springs, California.

The four-day program incorporates poker, poker stars such as World Series of Poker champion Layne Flack, nightly tournaments with prize purses of $100,000, Playboy Playmates and plenty of Playboy cigars. The highlight is a party at the Mansion on Saturday.

It’s all fun, but it’s serious marketing for Altadis, continuing to compete for the attention of smokers in a battle for brand share. Although these events are at the high end of the spectrum – Hollywood stars and Playboy Playmates – they are all part of an enormous promotional push by cigar makers and distributors for sales and notoriety.

The Rocky Patel Premium Cigar Co. will "reach $25 million in sales this year and we’re among the top one or two sellers in more than 50% of the retail stores where we are sold." That’s Rocky Patel in an interview in the newest issue of Smoke magazine.

"When I moved to Florida," he said, "I decided to seriously focus on quality because when I traveled to cigar shops I discovered that most of the hard core customers were true connoisseurs. I saw that the market was very similar to the wine market of twenty years ago when people were getting educated. I realized that people’s cigar palates were getting more sophisticated and we needed to meet that demand."

Patel has earned the respect of his fellow cigar makers by his fanatical drive for quality in all aspects of the cigar-making process: in the fields, in curing, sorting, rolling and packaging. The success of his hot-selling Vintage lines is a testament to his drive:

"Once we’ve sorted the leaves into primings, we ferment for a period of time based on the thickness of the leaves, taking the taste to another level while getting rid of most of the ammonia, nicotine and fertilizer from the leaf. This process allows us to build a cigar that has immensely rich taste but without sour taste or a bad finish. Once the tobacco is fermented, we put it away for anywhere from two to four years . . . in the instance of the Vintages, the wrappers are 8 to 12 years old."

And the future? "I think the next wave will go back to cleaner, richer cigar with greater tastes."

As we at C.I.G.A.R. reported earlier this year, the second Havana Cigar Fest & Beach Bash, held July 22.

They were so fired up that they created a contest to find the top ten reasons to smoke cigars, with the winning entries (and their authors) to be printed on the souvenir T-shirt of the event. After dozens of submissions, the winners (and some honorable mentions) were selected:

No. 10:
My kids need the boxes for school projects.
~ Tim Groza (Hiawassee, Georgia)

No. 9:
Teaches you about playing with fire!
~ Cindy Ward (Mahomet, Illinois)

No. 8:
Anyone can smoke cigarettes.
~ Mark Pierson (Lewistown, Illinois)

No. 7:
You don’t get crowded in a crowded bar.
~ Mark Crader (St. Peters, Missouri)

No. 6:
Better than lighting a $10 bill.
~ Cigar Butts Cigar Club of Naperville, Illinois