My friend in the USA sent me this cigar quite a long time ago, over 2 years ago in fact. Its always looked amazing in its coffin, but for some reason I have always left it alone until the correct occasion arrises. Well in the end I just decided to give it a go, and see if smokes as good as it looks, cant wait…
Appearance 9.5/10
Come on just look at the picture, whats not to like, it looks amazing. It comes in a really nice coffin, the cigar looks perfectly rolled, the bands are very crisp and well printed, and just look at the cap and the foot, they are works of art. If it wasn’t for the slightly darker colour at the tip of the cigar I would have given this a 10.
Construction & Draw 9.0/10
Construction on this cigar is as good as it looks, the wrapper is a lovely dark chocolate colour, with a nice amount of tooth, the end caps are great, and its clearly been well rolled. Two things dropped the score, again the darker part of the wrapper near the foot of the cigar looks a little less “special” than the rest of the stick, and the initial draw, until you get past the light coloured tip and into the body of the cigar is tight, and you do have to put a bit of work in!
Flavour 6.0/10
Well this is where things start to go wrong, there is nothing bad, or unpleasant about the flavour of this cigar, I could detect an earthy note and some pepper at the beginning, about an inch in I got a little cocoa and some sweetness, and then that was it. The flavour profile did not really change from there on, the strength moved from medium to strong as I got towards the end of the cigar, but the flavours were static.
In hind sight I was bored whilst smoking this cigar, and I should have stopped around halfway through, but as this cigar looked so good I was expecting that any minute it would take off and impress. In the end this was a meeh cigar, it might work in a smaller size, but it was just dull, and I would not have another one.
Value 7.0/10
I think these were around 15 USD when they came out, from a construction and presentation point of view I would say $15 would be okay, as long as the flavour profile was up to the same standard, and unfortunately this was not the case, so not great value for money.
Summary 6.0/10
Okay the truth is that for me this cigar is all style over substance , or to put it another way its “All fur coat and no knickers”. I was so looking forward to this, as I do like other PDR cigars, but for me this was just not interesting enough, so in the end quite a disappointment…