I've been using a 100ct desktop and 200ct 7 drawer mini-cabinet quite happily for a couple years, but those humi's didn't offer any ability for box storage and they were full. The full aspect had not been a big issue, the newbiwe slippery slope has come and gone long ago, however since I was going to Cuba for vacation this year I knew it would be an issue after teh trip, plus I'm tired of having to maintain multiple humidors so the last thing I needed was a third.
Looking at my options I came to the conclusion that coolers are great if you have a lot of out-of-sight storage space (I don't) and care only about storage space with no thought for asthetics. Neither of those fit me so coolers are not an option. Wineadors are supposed to be a affordable compromise between the cheap big storage found with coolers and climate controlled cabinet humidors, but we don't usually see great deals on wine fridges in Canada and then you still need to go through a custom drawer and shelf order/build from the US to get the asthetics so a wineadr wasn't really not the greatest option either.
The only real option was to order a lifetime cabinet humidor that would allow for consolidation of my existing humidors as well as absorb my Cuba purchases (which became a bit larger than expected, maybe the slope was still there a little bit
). Of course that meant giving Bob at Aristocrat a call so back in mid-July I placed an order for an Aristocrat Mini. During the lag time between ordering and the build a little feature creap took over and what was originally meant to be just a Mini w/ beveled glass and a second singles drawer using my existing Cigar Oasis XL Plus turned into a Mini-Tall in a custom stain (roughly half way between light red and brown mahogany) with beveled glass door, linear DX base, 2 singles drawers, 2 full extension shelves and Bob's Set & Forget system. Because of the changes I made to the order, the build took a little longer than originally quoted but it finally arrived 2 weeks ago, 5 days before my wife and I flew to Cuba.
Like everyone else I've ever heard of ordering an Aristocrat I'm just blown away by the build, attention to detail, level of finish and overall quality of this unit. You do pay a bit of a premium for an Aristocrat compared to some of the other options out there, but you also generally get what you pay for that that's definitely the case Bob's work!
Unfortunately the box took a knock during shipping, but luckily no structural or cosmetic damage was done to the humidor. The based molding however did not fare so well. A little bit annoying, but as you'd expect Bob it taking care of it. He's just received the broken pieces to colour match the stain so he can now build a replacement base and ship it back to me.
As I mentioned, this purchase was all driven by the decision to go to Cuba this year for vacation. Well my expected purchase of a couple boxes ballooned a bit thanks to a few good OT checks before the trip. Good thing I ordered the Mini-Tall instead of just the Mini!
