Montecristo Especiales No.1 2005

I opened the seal on this box for the first time last month.  It was sealed in 2005 in Havana, Cuba, and hadn't seen the light of day for 7 years.  After smoking it, I realized I should have opened it a few years before.  Increasingly I prefer a young, tangy, powerful cigar.  Not a cigar that is STRONG, but one that has not been diminished by time.  As I have repeated here many times, I have the palate of a billy goat.  I am not sure if I am tasting a cigar or a tin can. I kid.  But only because I care.

The cigar lit a little slowly, owing to a firm draw.  The flavors, on the other hand, got cracking from the first puff.  THIS was a 'old' Montecristo the way they were meant to taste.  The quality of the cocoa powder taste was completely 3 dimensional and stark.  I was stunned by the brightness of the taste, just so clearly defined, sweet and rich.  And that is when it hit me that I WISH I had smoked this cigar sooner.  I enjoyed it very much, but it was a subtle kind of power to go with all that taste.  As great as the cigar tasted, there was a missing dimension that I love so much in a Montecristo.  I find a sweet and sour tanginess and a wonderful lip-smacking richness of flavor that I only really get in Montecristo, and occasionally in a nice 2-3 year old Bolivar.  I did not get that dimension in this smoke.  But I tried....and I hoped.

What I did get was a PERFECTLY well-behaved cigar and an abundance of smoke just pouring out of the elegant 38 gauge panatela.  I choose the word elegant for a reason.  Everything about this smoke is elegant.  The perfect construction, the shape and heft of it, the flavor, and even the feeling of it as I seem to see myself outside myself, a picture of utter sophistication sitting in a lawn chair on my porch and cursing the heat.  In a shocking truth, I have to admit that this is my first Especiales ever.  I have KNOWN for many, many years that some people think they are the finest cigar on the planet.  And yet there has always been something else to buy, something else to smoke.  Add to that the fact that they are not cheap by any mean and maybe I can be forgiven in my omission.

The first half of the cigar was smooth and chocolaty, the second half was a ramp up in power, plus more but softer cocoa, and a surge in tea and milk.  It is hard to imagine a better cigar than this, although I think the BHK 52 beat it out at almost three times the price.  So I will give it the same score as my BHK, but will NOT subtract 5 points for exorbitant cost and this cigar rings in at 95