Mar 29

Bucanero Salsa Cigar Review

Posted on Monday, March 29, 2010 in Cigar Reviews

This 6×54 stick comes wrapped in a toothy, firm dark brown leaf showing a slight red hue, minimal veins and clean seams with a soft box press. The aroma is an oily, slightly sweet tobacco, a perfect humidor smell. First light reveals a medium-full body, very smooth oily smoke giving a rich aged tobacco taste with a good bit of black pepper and a long finish. 30 min in by the 1/2 way point the flavors had not really changed, which is just fine since they were very pleasant. The burn however did have problems, requiring a couple early touchups and a couple relights from the wrapper not keeping up. It was an even burn though, and the post light flavors were un effected. Ending the stick at 50 min, the flavors for the remainder of the stick were unchanged, which was just fine! Thank you very much to Bucanero Cigars for sending this sample for review. Photography by BG Pictures.

Tags: Aroma, bg, bit, black pepper, Body, Box, brown leaf, Bucanero, cigar, cigars, couple, fine, finish, flavors, hue, humidor, leaf, min, nggallery, pepper, photography, point, Press, red hue, remainder, Review, Salsa, seams, smell, smoke, Stick, taste, tobacco, tobacco taste, toothy, touchups, veins, Way

Mar 12

Corona Nicaraguan Selection 10th Anniversary Robusto Cigar Review

Posted on Friday, March 12, 2010 in Cigar Reviews

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Corona Nicaraguan Selection 10th Anniversary Robusto Cigar Review

This 5×50 stick offers a dark tan, firmly packed wrapper showing minimal veins and tight seams with a large double cap. The aroma is a mellow tobacco smell, reminiscent of the ‘perfect humidor’. Starting off it gives out huge volumes of smoke with a very easy, free draw. Flavors are extremely sweet, tasting much like a flavored tip. The core is an aged tobacco, very smooth with a good bit of pepper kick that comes on the end of the draw holding and building through the long finish. 40 min in at the 1/2 way point flavors remained very consistant, still medium-full bodied but without a strength kick. The last third mellowed the whole stick out – the body came down a touch to medium, the aged tobacco changed to a slight earth, the pepper zing came down and the big sweetness changed to a suble licorice. Burn was excellent all the way down, holding the ash in thirds for a total burn time of 1 hour. Thank you very much to Corona Cigar Company for seding this for review! Photography by BG Pictures.

Tags: 10th anniversary, Anniversary, Aroma, ash, bg, bit, Cap, cigar, core, Corona, corona cigar company, Corona Nicaraguan, Draw, earth, end, finish, flavors, humidor, licorice, min, nggallery, pepper, photography, reminiscent, Review, Robusto, Selection, smell, smoke, sweetness, Tan, tasting, The, tight seams, tip, tobacco, veins, Way, wrapper, zing

Sep 20

Regarding My Reviews

Posted on Sunday, September 20, 2009 in Informational

A couple things I am frequently asked, be it on the blog, through YouTube, comments on the articles or videos, email, through forums, etc. – is why don’t I give cigars a rating and talk more about the stick before I smoke it?

Simply put, there are some things that I have chosen not to do because I feel they are irrelevant to the pleasure and experience of smoking a cigar. Such things as the so-called ‘pre-light draw’ and rating systems are a couple of them.

I don’t buy cigars to suck on them unlit or stick them up my nose and smell them. I smoke them. What they give you by doing such things has no bearing whatsoever on what they burn and taste like when you actually enjoy them as they were meant to be. Frankly a cigar could give ‘skunk’ through a ‘pre-light draw’ but if it smokes well that’s all that matters. Even considering such silly things, let alone imparting some qualified opinion on them to the quality of a cigar, is like buying a race car and judging it on how well it looks on jackstands. You smoke cigars, you don’t stick them up your nose or suck on them unlit.

Ratings – be it numerical, stars or whatnot – are 100% subjective as far as flavors are concerned. Each person has unique taste buds. Each person has different preferences to tastes. Two people can smoke the exact same cigar – share the same stick even – and taste different things. People can also do the same, get the exact same flavors and both can have different opinions OF those flavors.

Putting any kind of rating to flavors is ONLY, IMO, useful whatsoever to the person giving the rating, for his/her own future reference.

The way I do my reviews is very simple. I report the experience that I receive, noting everything that happens. This is obviously only applicable to my palate, but through trial on your part, you may find yourself having similar physical taste to my own. This is only found by smoking some of the same cigars that I have, and comparing your own results with mine. Finding a reviewer with similar taste means you can then glean better insight into other cigars that you have not yet had. You can then use that insight to decide if the flavors present would be something you would enjoy.