Wrapper: Habano Sun Grown
Binder: Nicaraguan
Filler: Jalapa Valley Ligero
This is one of my favorite vitolas, and this one is perfectly constructed, triple capped. Nice and firm. The wrapper feels toothy and smells of dark chocolate and coffee. 
It really smells fantastic. The wrapper almost looks like it was taken from the Padron reserves. It is really that rich and dark and flawless. Pre-light draw tastes of cocoa and nuts.
Easily lights up and right off the bat I get a subtle sweetness off the rich tobacco flavor. Good helping of cedar and wood shows up here in the first third. By the second third, the sweetness fades out and the cedar and wood seem to over take the smoke. I wouldn’t call this leathery, but I suspect some of you might pick up leather components to this. There is also a hint of spice on the back palate.
By the final third this cigar was starting to disappoint. The cedar and wood flavors developed a bitter edge and the smoke was getting very warm in the mouth. I put this cigar down just before it would have burned past the band. It’s almost as if the cigar started off with the best flavors and then slowly degraded every one of them. I was really digging the taste of this cigar in the first third. Too bad it just couldn’t keep it up.
If you like cedar/wood flavors and for some reason like a little bitter edge too it, this is the cigar for you. It is not, however, the cigar for me.
These cigars have gotten great reviews in Cigar Aficionado lately so when I saw a box in my local B&M I decided to pick up a few. The wrapper is beautiful and toothy. It smells a bit stinky, which is a good thing I’ve found, when it comes to flavor later on. Beyond the stinky, almost wet earth-like smell, comes chocolate and a little spice. Very pleasing on the nose.
When I cut the head of the cigar, I barely cut into the cap and it still immediately unravelled, leaving me a little perturbed. Little did I know this was only the beginning of the construction issues to follow.
The first third of the cigar tasted of tobacco, nuts, and hints of spice on the back palate. Then – as I was still puffing on this thing, mind you – this cigar extinguished itself. I’ve been smoking for over five years now and I have yet to experience a cigar with a plug so bad. I kept puffing in vain but the tobacco just wouldn’t burn. Pictured to the right is where it stopped. And things were just starting to get good!
I let the cigar cool off and then clipped it about an inch past the burn line and it was clear it was bunched so tight that the air was just not able to enter the center of the cigar for fueling the burn. I have two more of these so I will not jump to conclusions just yet. Perhaps this was a fluke. Although, even as a fluke, they have machines that test the airflow through the cigars before they package them that should have alerted them to a problem like this. Not sure if box-pressing played any part.
Oh well. For now, its a good tasting cigar with unsound construction.
When the original distillery was built in 1819 by the future Duke of Sutherland, the quality of Clynelish whisky was so prized that only private customers were supplied.
Over the years, Clynelish has continued to be held in high regard by experts. The great Victorian, Professor George Saintsbury, selected it as a favourite and today’s malt whisky gurus consistently praise its unique combination of North Highland and maritime qualities.
The bottle it comes in is tall and narrow and the color within is a perfect amber. Now, on to the tasting! The bouquet emanates sweet honey, lemongrass, and spice. The alcohol pierces strong in the nose though, and makes y
ou wonder if its crowding out some of the more subtle notes that would be found otherwise. This might be due to it’s alcohol content being on the rather high side at 46% for a scotch of this age. I prefer scotch’s right on the minimum 40% mark, but hey, thats just me.
As soon as this thick, viscous scotch hits your mouth it explodes on your taste buds with flavors of tart fruit and spice. As it burns down your throat the spice and fruit flavors immediately disappear and are replaced with a very subtle smokeyness on the mid-palate, accompanied by a good helping of sea salt. Its a weak smokey taste, almost tea-like, but I personally love it. 
The finish is a tad short and with it returns the fruitier flavors of before while dropping the saltiness.
Overall, an excellent scotch for 14 years age and at about $65 USD on the open market right on the money. It is definitely going into my usual rotation.
Wrapper: Brazilian
Binder: Indonesian
Filler: Dominican
This company has become a very recent addition to my cigar vocabulary. Created by a land developer and avid cigar smoker, this new company is really producing some spectacular smokes right now. The cigar reviewed here is from the Maduro line. The thing I really love about this company is that they break up their cigars into three blends, Mild, Medium, and Strong. And they are all really fantastic, with the Medium line (the Maduro’s) rising to the top. With an introduction like that, I should just get down to business.
The only reason this cigar did not score higher was due to some of its cosmetic problems. The wrapper is veiny and toothy, not the best looking maduro wrapper I’ve come across, but its not ugly by any means. The cigar band is a bit tacky and cheap feeling, which wouldn’t be an issue if this was just another cheap house brand smoke but this cigar can compete with the best of them, and I found myself longing for a band that said as much.
The cigar cut clean and pre-light draw tasted of chocolate and aged tobacco. The draw was perfect for my taste, the burn was even but I should note that the ash tends to curl and get blown off on this cigar, which is something I don’t come across often. The first inch or so of this cigar tastes heavily of cappuccino. Further smoking brings in dark chocolate underlined by a hint of spice. This keeps up until the midway point where the chocolate fades to a heavy tobacco taste. The finish is short, in fact the whole smoke is short, and ends on that heavy tobacco taste with hints of spice throughout. Fabulous cigar, I currently have a few boxes on order and for the price, $6 a stick, I can’t imagine why I haven’t bought more…
Wrapper: Honduran
Binder: N/A
Filler: N/A
If you took off the wrapper of this cigar and gave it to an avid Camacho fan and once they had finished smoking it, told them it was a Camacho, odds are they wouldn’t believe you. I am not a fan of Camacho, never have been. They are usually too strong for my taste. But this cigar is different. Very different.
Grown from a new strain in the mineral rich soil of the Jamastran Valley, the wrapper is a first for Camacho and the flavor it produces is fantastic. Only one problem: there was only enough wrapper to make approximately 50,000 cigars. So in walks Abe “Ming” Dababneh, the owner of Smoke Inn, on a recent trip to Camp Camacho in Honduras. He tastes the cigars made with the limited wrapper and loves them. By some miracle, he manages to get them to sell the whole batch to him. One lucky sonuvabitch, right?
Construction: The cigar itself is beautifully constructed, the wrapper is perfect without any blemishes on any of the cigars I have smoked so far. The band is as ornate and visually appealing as any of Camacho’s others. The fact that they put as much effort in the band as any of their other cigars is quite a surprise considering they had already sold every single cigar before they even had to come up with a band.
Pre-light: The head cuts perfectly. Draw is fine. Tastes of cedar and nuts before lighting.
Taste: The first inch or so as some very heavy notes of roasted nuts and earthy spice. By the midway point the smoke mellows out into a damp cedar taste and holds strong until the finish when the nuts and earthy spice come back to frame it out. The cigar did have some bitter notes but these were always associated with the cedar taste and did not make the smoke unpleasant at all.
Overall this cigar is a solid choice, especially for those who enjoy Camacho’s more than I do. This cigar will allow Camacho fans to taste those little nuances they are missing out on when they are getting their asses handed to them by those big black triple maduros.