Unbelievable - 2010 Montecristo Grand Edmundo EL

Fooled you.  This Edicion Limitada was NOT unbelievable.  What was unbelivable is that in all my time handling havana cigars, I have yet to have a beetle hatch under my roof.  Well, until today.  I was just poking around and opened the box, and saw some weird, fine brown dust on the cigar on the far right.  I had shuffled the cigars around once before.  I like to put the problem cigars on the far right side of a box so that I can polish them off first.  Light cigars that show underfilling, magazine rolls, super-heavy sticks.  Well, three weeks ago there was no sign of trouble.  Tonight, the dust.  So my eyes immediately went into danger mode.  WHERE was it.  I know you didn't make dust like that without coming out from.....there it was.

Now I have a firm true-ism where havanas are involved.  I have never had a single hatchout in a authentic cigar or box of cigars.  And now I was faced with this situation.  And I was not happy.  But I was definitely cutting it.  I would rather smoke a tight cigar than a loose one, and looseness and underfill was the reason for moving this cigar to the right.  And now I had to smoke it.  And it did not impress.  Some light cocoa and a little tea, but not much else.  Just too airy to properly develop flavors.  I stuck little tobacco cones into the holes, from pieces of clipped head.  I don't even feel like this cigar has any pedigree issues.  But finding a mature beetle and a twisting larva that was apparently not happy with the lights being turned on had me a little POed.  And yes, there were two exit holes.  If there is a good thing about the box being "infested", it's the tight-fitting lid on these boxes.  I have no fear of migration of the problem.  But DAMN, I am upset.

The cigar IS young, I'll say that in it's defense.  And as I said, it's the bad apple in the box, now in more ways than one.  But I expected to find great flavors that would have made me say, "aha, I sure didn't want to smoke one of these this early, but man, was it worth it".  But as you can see by the butt I left in the end, I was not going to get that experience.  In 4 years when I smoke another one of these, I hope it's a lot better than this one.  An embarassing 80.