This cigar had a medium to firm draw, owing to it's time in deep storage in a black lacquered box. The cigar just sitting out was very much a mixture of barnyard aroma and coffee grounds. It was covered with a thin sheen of oil and crystalline plume. The wrapper was colorado-maduro, with generous streaky red tones on a background of milk chocolate. It gave a bit of trouble on the cut, I think because of it's overall moisture. It was a bit like cutting a rolled up piece of tar. Outside of that possibly disastrous beginning, the cigar lit extremely quickly and bashed me in the face with tongue-coating, rich smoke. Initially, I was impressed with the molasses and coffee tastes, with a hint of something like steak-sauce or worcestershire sauce, MAYBE something akin to some pipe tobaccos you can find by certain manufacturers, that 'ketchup' taste. This quickly dissapated and I was left with a generally toasted tobacco core, with coffee notes quite prominent and some sugary sweetness WAY in the back, kind of a pure sugar cane syrup taste. God I love sugar cane. This is the time of year that the first field-burning would take place and the trucks would begin to haul load after load of fresh cut cane to Raceland to the processing plant. We'd ride our bikes down the highway and pick up the pieces that would fall off the trucks. There is almost nothing better for a sweet tooth than the thick, rich, sweet taste of cane juice. Where was I?? In Louisiana, apparently.
The cigar burned extremely slowly and gave up tons of smoke and flavor. Not much on real flavor changes, but bursting with occasional mystery hints of taste here and there, like a good cigar should be. Great core flavor and undescribable flavor hints coming and going throughout. However, I know you guys don't read this to hear me say "I can't describe the hints", that's what every chump who fancies himself a reviewer says. I have a job to do. SO, I did taste, on one or more puffs throughout the smoke, cinnamon, cane sugar, mint tea, butter, bacon, ketchup, steak sauce, hay, coffee, dark chocolate, tar, toasted tobacco, molasses and tea. This is a good compliment to a steady diet of minutos and perlas, a cigar similarly-sized, but totally 'dessert-like'. A reward at the end of the day. These are best pulled out on special occasions. What impressed me most was the quality to be found after 4 years in the box. This is not a cigar that tastes 'aged'. It tastes fresh and new and amazing. After 70 minutes of pleasurable diversion, I have no choice but to score this in the 90s.....92 perhaps. Great, but not ethereal yet. My suggestion is to pick up a box or two of these. I am sure that they can be had from 2007 even today. Hold onto them and treat them as special occasion smokes and you should always have one when you really need it. One more thing...this cigar will never be accused of tasting much like a Cohiba, but that seems to be the style in Habanos today, roll some good cigars, and put whatever band you like on them, call them 'special'. The quality that should be the hallmark of any Cohiba, however, is certainly there. But if you are looking for Lanceros with a dark wrapper, or Esplendidos Junior Maduro, you will ultimately be disappointed. Well, sort of.
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