RSS Feed
Feb 24

Ashton ESG 23 Year Salute Cigar Review

Posted on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 in Cigar Reviews

Ashton ESG 23 Year Salute Cigar Review

This 6.25×52 stick offers a dark milk chocolate wrapper with a slight tooth, tight seams and firm pack with just a bit of give. A triple cap and minimal veins combine with a slightly irregular lumpy appearance showing it as a hand made creation. The first third brought a medium-full body of flavors including a smooth creamy cocoa with an undertone of tobacco and pepper, the finish being short and more peppery than the draw adding a slight spice kick. By the 2nd third flavors had transitioned to a smooth creamy cocoa with a bit of coffee, touch of leather and on the end of the draw into the lengthening finish, a black pepper taste and slight zing over the tongue. The last third brought the coffee flavor more forward and amped up the pepper especially on the finish. Smoke output was very good, coating the mouth with rich, smooth tastes. Draw and burn were both excellent all the way down with no issues and not needing any thought. Burn time to the last inch was 1:35. Thank you very much to Ashton for sending this in for review! Photography by BG Pictures.

Feb 17

Do You Know Where Your Cigar Has Been?

Posted on Wednesday, February 17, 2010 in World of CO

I have noticed something over the years of buying my cigars. No, not that I spend too much (the wife disagrees), or that my tastes have changed all that much (they change, but very little at a time). What I have noticed is the sometimes subtle, sometimes great difference in smoking experience depending on where the cigar has been.

I don’t mean country of tobacco origin, or where it was rolled. I mean where it has been sitting before I smoke it.

Over the years my buying habits have changed for various reasons, as I suspect many of yours have as well. It wasn’t until a couple years ago I started seriously using the internet for purchasing my supply. It wasn’t until one year ago that I ever had any direct from a manufacturer. Back then, I went to my local brick & mortar or lounge and more often than not lit what I purchased right there.

It wasn’t until I was able to keep a nice supply at home, and smoke more often than not at home, that I was able to appreciate the burn and flavor differences present in different types of sale and storage environments. The way I see it, there are three of such.

The first, and most unaffecting to the cigars, is direct from a warehouse to you. The cigars have been produced, boxed and stored all nice and sealed up, waiting for you to open them. Usually they go right in to your humidor until the day they are enjoyed. The home humidor is usually a self contained vessel with nice clean air for aging and acclimation. What you get from the cigar is 100% what was intended by the blender, and it’s up to you for proper storage procedures for a good burn. This is what I experience now 99% of the time.

Second and third is buying from a local store or lounge. The difference is whether the cigars for sale are in a clean air environment or a smoking environment.

Maybe it’s just me, but I now notice sometimes quite a big difference when enjoying a cigar in an indoor smoky environment compared to outside or in a clean indoor setting. When I’m breathing, smelling and tasting a lot of stagnate smoke in the room, it is effecting what I get out of the cigar I’m drawing. Some of my local shops are better than others in this regard. My real close shop has no air circulation whatsoever except propping the door open. Unfortunately that is bad for the cigars in the store so more often than not the small shop with only two chairs is often a cloud from front to back.

Shops that do allow indoor smoking have two types of humidors – those exposed to that smoke and those separated. Some shops are also better at this than others. Tampa Humidor has an excellent air filtration system. Even at large events with 100 or more lit cigars in the lounge side, the humidor room smells of nothing but fresh cigars. Other shops have nothing but cabinet doors or worse yet simply open shelves in the shop, exposing the new cigars to sit in exhaled smoke for weeks and months. I find that cigars I purchase from such shops have a heavier, muted flavor profile than others. Sometimes they just taste ‘smokey’. The difference isn’t just taste but aroma. I don’t mind the smell of most cigar smoke, but I much prefer the aroma of fresh cigars.

Occasionally I get comments from readers/viewers expressing a difference in experience with a certain stick. Of course sometimes this is simply the difference between two people – but more and more I think it could simply be the difference in where our sticks came from. Most of the time what you see reviewed here is what I’ll call a ‘fresh review’. They have been acquired either directly from the manufacturer or directly from a retailers warehouse. When I buy locally I tend to do so from those shops with a clean humidor room.

So what about you – have you noticed any differences?

Sep 24

The Football Cigar Review

Posted on Thursday, September 24, 2009 in Cigar Reviews

The Football Cigar Review

This stick, about 4 1/2″ long and 60 or so around in the widest section, proved to be a novelty item. I didn’t know what to expect from it, simply because it was obviously a novelty cigar. On one had it might just be produced for fun and appearances, on the other – it is just a regular cigar with an odd shape and strips of darker leaf here and there. Unfortunately the construction proved to be very poor, with a weird burn at times, and offering little or no smoke until you got well over 1″ in to it. Flavors were very, very mild to mild, with just extremely bitter grass tastes and a bitter lingering finish. At the 1/2 way point the whole stick turned to soggy mush and got hot at which point I punted it. This $30 stick is good for appearances only. I still want to thank Football Cigar for donating it for review, I do appreciate the effort. Photography by BG Pictures.

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.

Feb 25

Welcome to Cigar Obsession

Posted on Wednesday, February 25, 2009 in Informational

Hi, I’m Bryan Glynn Editor of Cigar Obsession.  

This project is going to be a labor of love for me, simply taking you through my ongoing quest for the ‘perfect’ cigar. What I bring to the table is both popular and unique. Let me explain!

I am not an aficionado. I am not an expert. I am simply a regular guy who happens to LOVE cigars. I give honest reviews without the subjectiveness. Just the facts – how does it burn and what does it taste like?

I will be providing video reviews, from this exact perspective. I want to give everyone else the kind of information about each and every puro I encounter, that will help you decide if a particular stick is something that may appeal to you. Perhaps like myself, you are out to discover all the endless combinations of flavor, taste, aroma, strength, etc. Maybe like myself you also have an ideal in your mind that you hope to someday match to a particular stick.

I am fully aware that tastes range wildly. Both perceptually and chemically. What one person describes as full-bodied, another may consider mild! I will bracket my experiences, providing as many reference points as possible with my reviews.

My goal is to provide a complete review of the experience from start to finish, not simply a cursory reading of a stat sheet and a quick pan of an unlit stick or box. No, I want to convey the full sensations, exploring the nuances of each cigar fully.