Old Virginia Tobacco Co.

Swung by yesterday. Good People. Thanks.

Great little shop that has a nice lounge as well! The cigar selection is pretty good, and they have some nice pipes as well. The proprietors are great, along with their online customer service. The OVTC stores are must-​visits for those who are in the hobby in Northern Virginia.

Great shop with a very nice lounge! Nice gentleman working at the counter. :)_​@cigarmachine

I’ve been coming here for years and am upgrading my rating of 4 to a solid 5. Frankly, this place is a sanctuary. Really decent cigar selection that isn’t wasted on a bunch of low quality cigars. The staff has always been polite and helpful and after a while they are very engaging. Smoke here, you won’t be disappointed!

Small place, but just nothing great about it. Went to get some gift cards, and guy (older) running the register kept telling me my card was declined. Hung around for the young guy to show up (45 minutes late) who put me through no problems. Old guy didn’t know how to work the register.
On a positive note, I received 3 free cigars for my troubles. Hopefully regular cigar purchase transactions will go through more smoothly.

I came here once with a friend of mine who is new to cigars but who lived nearby to pick up a couple of sticks. We walked into the humidor where one of the men staffing the place was running through a long-​winded explanation about misconceptions regarding the strength of cigars. I picked out a cigar for my friend and turned to pick out a different cigar for myself when suddenly the man explaining cigars to the young customer started bawling both me and my friend out. Apparently, my friend had committed the cardinal cigar sin of smelling the cigar. I will grant that his argument that putting a cigar up to your nose may be less than completely sanitary and turn other customers off was not completely unreasonable. However, the cigar was wrapped in cellophane and my friend was a newbie. Rather than take the time to calmly present his argument to my friend, he fairly flew off the handle to take both of us to task (though I didn’t smell the cigar) for this misdeed.
As a result of this, my friend has been soured on this store and perhaps the cigar buying experience. I will only go to this store again reluctantly, but I live far enough away to never to have to deal with the crotchety toad in this store again should I so choose.
The selection in this store is okay, but a bit limited. It has a fair number of brands (e.g., Oliva, Montechristo, Camacho, etc), but not a great variety within those brands. For example, I was looking for a nice Churchill-​sized maduro and ended up grabbing the only one I could find (an Ashton). The place also sells a small selection of pipes and pipe tobacco. There is a small selection of smokeless tobacco and wine, but I didn’t take the time to check that out. A few assorted accessories are at the counter including the usual offerings from Xikar and S.T. DuPont. Prices weren’t great, but the store is pretty much the only option if you’re out that way.
The lounge in the back is somewhat spare looking with one television mounted on the wall. The space is walled-​in and somewhat claustrophobic in spite of the fairly spartan furnishings within. I felt a bit weirded out just checking it out.
Parking is fairly typical suburban Virginia. I went on a Friday evening and the strip mall where this store is located was full of people doing the family dinner thing but my friend and I found a spot with minimal circling.

I am writing this from my girlfriend’s Unilocal account as I’ve never written an online review for anything in my life but felt compelled to do so after my visit here.
I live about two miles away from the cigar shop at Reston town center so this was out of my way. Let me just say that I will be going here from now on albeit the added travel time.
The staff was extremely knowledgable and friendly. None of that pretentious arrogance that I’ve dealt with at the town center. I am looking forward to my next visit to Old Virginia Tobacco and would not hesitate to recommend to a beginner or aficionado.

Nice store with well stocked humidor. Open late, sells wine. Smoking lounge. Very knowledgeable staff can direct you to a perfect smoke for you. Large selection of artisan and manufactured pipes, as well as bulk or tinned pipe tobacco. Stop by, you’ll enjoy the place!

You know, it does not cost anything to sit in their cigar lounge, enjoy a fine stogie and relax — whether your watching TV, reading, talking w/​others in the room or just checking your Droid… and all this for free! The only thing the guys at the Old VA Tobacco Co ask is that you purchase your cigar from them if you’re going to smoke it there. And, as the few other places around that offer a cigar lounge want to charge you a $$$ membership fee, asking that you buy your stogie from them is something I am happy to comply to. As for the selection — quite good enough.

OVT is a fantastic shop if you enjoy a good cigar. The selection is exceptional, the staff is experienced, and the lounge is a nice relaxing getaway. Visit Alan and the gang at OVT and you will not be disappointed.

I’ve shopped at this place a number of times over the last few years, even back when they were in the mall. The main reason I shop with them, above everything else, is location. They have always been the closest cigar shop to where I lived or worked. Their selection is good enough that I can usually find something I am satisfied with. But it fluctuates a lot. I might find something I love one month, and come back a couple months later and it’s not there at all. Meanwhile, other shops seem to have it consistently in stock. I smoke the mid-​range stuff, like Rocky and CAO, but not the Davidoffs and Ashtons, nor do I smoke the low-​end crap. That seems to be the range that’s most in flux. I agree with other reviewers that other shops in the area (though they are farther for me and/​or involve driving in more irritating traffic) might have better selection or better prices.
I also agree that the shop is laid out poorly. So much empty space, and the smoking area is in the back where you can’t see anything or be seen. I wish the smoking area looked out onto the sidewalk so you could have a bit of the café attitude. Smoke and watch folks go by.
So you could do better, but you can definitely do worse.

The guys here are pretty swell fellows, and I haven’t experienced any of the rudeness others have. However, the cigar selection is a weird mixture of very high-​brow and very low-​brow cigars. They have some great stuff, but they’re pretty expensive compared to other cigar shops, and the humidor is small. I wish they would carry Javas.
Overall, I prefer the tobacco shop at the corner of Route 7 and International Drive in Tysons or John B Hayes in the Fair Oaks Mall, but I live walking distance to OVTC so they’ll probably be my quick fix source.

I’ve been here a couple times and each time I easily spend $ 50 or more. Each time I go in I feel like I’m intruding on the employee at the register, and its always the same gentleman. So I go in to the humidor, pick out my cigars, and when I go to checkout the guy always to have contempt in his actions. If I had to recommend a cigar shop I would say Leesburg Cigars and Pipes is the place to go. It’s a short distance away and the service/​selection is much better.

This store used to be in the mall and I must say I do not think the staff is very friendly or helpful. On one visit, I was treated as if I was going to steal something and was told to leave my bag outside the humidor (even though it was a small jewelry bag which contained a ring for my wife, and a cigar would CLEARLY not fit in it without poking out the top.) On another visit I was given shameful looks because I asked if they carried the Alec Bradley MAXX cigar which I happen to like very much. Obviously the sales person did not like these cigars and looked at me as if I asked for Swisher Sweets or something. I didn’t think the selection was all that great either. I stopped by right after they opened and have really tried to go back a couple of times since then to see if they got any better or hired some new friendly faces but they did not. Most of the employees are pretentious and judging by their attitude towards most customers, they think they are better than you, and you are wasting their time. I would go somewhere else, probably some of the worst customer service I have ever had.

This is a review of the service at OVTC and nothing else.
I was greeted pleasantly after walking through the door, but it went downhill when I asked if they carried Djarum clove cigarettes. They are apparently part of the flavored cigarette smoking ban our government has seen fit to enact (don’t get me started on that bull shit); a fact I was not aware of. I was informed, in a rather curt manner, they were part of the ban and were therefore illegal to sell. I asked for clarification on the law and the gentlemen turns his back and starts walking to the other side of the counter mid-​conversation. He answered me, but it was fairly dismissive and I had a hard time understanding what he was saying. It was clear our conversation was over, whether I liked it or not.
Really dude? I was just asking about a sentimental favorite from my college days and clearly wasn’t up on all the pertinent laws. It wasn’t like I was asking if you carried bongs or if I could do lines off your daughter’s ass. Lighten up a little.
I get the impression the staff are only nice to you if you fit within their boundaries of what a cigar shop patron should be. I am a cigar smoker, albeit infrequently, and I can’t say the experience has me aching to return.

This is a newer OTVC shop. The shop is very spacious, but oddly the humidour is very small. There is all of this space in the shop, but most of it is just empty standing space. It seems they could have laid this shop out better. The selection in the humidor is decent, but I feel like it could be bigger. The staff at the shop is friendly and conversational. They were not push at all, but rather let us just look around and offered idle friendly conversation while we browsed. The lounge in the back was rather undecorated and just looked like a simple room with some unimpressive chairs to sit in and smoke cigars.
The shop was good, but it wasn’t anything spectacular.