Cigars are not meant to be cigarettes. In a essence they are meant to be a quality craft, like a good aged marble steak, aged wine or aged cheese. Some people will call it just smoking but no. Just like taking specific plants and making a salad, just like taking grapes and turning it into wine or killing a cow to make a porter house steak, a cigar is crafting tobacco leaves into flavor. That's the answer to my curiosity at a younger age. Cubans, the renown category or class of cigars hard to obtain because of the embargo the United States enacted toward Cuba for being a Communist government, yes there's more to it but this article is not about politics. Not only are Cuban cigars an obstacle and expensive to get but researching there are many imitations to the top Cuban cigar brands, specifically the Cohiba brand. Why? They say head honchos like Fidel Castro determined it to be a top notch blend, so if a head figure like Fidel Castro fount Cohiba(s) to be an ace, then the rest of Cuba and other nation's cigar smokers followed. It is just that bootleggers like that of music and designer wear make money off replicating the desired quality of the legit, on the negative aspect, ruining it for the consumers. Unlike music, which might have distorted sound quality, you can live with it and it's free. But think if you paid four thousand dollars for a fake Louis Vuitton bag worth thirty dollars, cigar smokers don't want to pay for dirt in their puff.
I did my research before I went and bought my Cohiba Espledidio cigars. I learned to look at the clarity and alignment of the label having the embossed golden Cohiba printed as well as the bold in script Habana, Cuba. I read to check for how many squared dots as well as where it is cut off. I checked for anything off about the band. I checked the cap: looked at it's construction and made sure it's a triple cap. I looked over the body and even peaked at the foot but never examined that portion in great detail. I smelt and squeezed one before I paid. I did not get these from the factory in Cuba directly. I did not even get to see the box itself. I bought a dozen. I got them from someone I know as an acquaintance whose mother lives in Cuba and he said he being family is allowed to visit on this account. I read there are only less than a handful of airlines or airports from the United States to Cuba and you need a specific type of visa for visiting, most travel outside the United States and then get a passport and visa and go from there. Analyzing my purchase, each one seems almost perfect: the wrapper has these neat, sort of hidden veins that blend in well, smooth, tan colored sheets of crafted tobacco leaf. The foot: the opening on the bottom where you light looks like an oval of layered tobacco. Based on many of the pictures online of fakes versus real, I determine that I have the legit shit. But only 95% so, there is still that 5% uncertainty that these master bootleggers have cloned the icon. So I smoke it:
More Photos Below...
Vitola: Julieta No. 2 - Churchill
Price: $30+ stick
Wrapper: Cuban, Vuelta Abajo or Habana
Binder: Cuban, Vuelta Abajo or Habana
Filler: Cuban, Vuelta Abajo or Habana
Aged in Humidor: One Month
(The remainder will age before smoking)
Tasting Notes:
Before even lighting it up, I could smell a light sweet aroma, not a melted or coated with sugar sweet. There are different kinds of sweet. This sweet aroma seems more refined, like from something aged and having it's naturals sugars release. I light it and it takes a moment but I start to detect a hint of woody (cedar like), earthy and cocoa flavor. It is really smooth smoking through and through. So far so good. Now I am on the second third of the Esplendido where the heart of the cigar is and I start to get the hint of a nutty taste mixing in with the cocoa taste, a sort of Nutella flavor, I get this note throughout the cigar and it is the best and dominant flavor I have tasted in any cigar. This is how the remainder of the cigar's flavor will be like with the occasional hint of spicy kick and the mentioned tasting notes in and out, all the way until there is thumb length left. The hint of earth or soil where the filler comes from changes sometimes from a medium to a deep flavor or a mix of flavors.
I had a cup of cheap coffee with it and after I smoked and sipped the coffee it washed away the quality flavors of the smoke, so I kept smoking and stopped drinking the cheap coffee. Remember these are medium to full flavor smokes. I think I would have done well to have gotten a Starbucks coffee, black (no sugar or creamer/milk), to accompany the Esplendido.
Appearance and Construction:
These Cohiba Esplendido cigars are packed on the dense side. In addition to the aforementioned: the foot of the cigar, the hole where you light up looks like waves of the edges of tobacco filler. The wrapper is tan with veins you can barely see, flawless, smooth, and with no blemishes. There was probably one in a dozen that had maybe a smidgen of a tear in the wrapper. The wrapper: a near perfect smoothness like a stripe on the American flag made of cloth, but it's Cuban. The triple cap seemed smooth and bound well. I had two, one on a quiet Sunday afternoon in my yard and another the day after, yeah the yearning for another the next day because the pleasure stuck on my mind.
This is a really good cigar, as many have pointed out, worthy of it's name and price. I fount the draw to be good once I got it going. The ash burnt like the pictures I have seen, kind of like Marge Simpsons hair, instead of blue, as if it were greying out. The cigar never went out on it's own, it clung on for about two inches until I moved and it fell off. I did not have the heart to dissect any of them for CSI purposes but when I was almost done and got to like about an inch and a half way burnt out, I started to tear the wrapper and binder, smelt the great aroma and fount the filler to be quality tobacco leaves, not dried up. The second one, I followed cigar etiquette and let it burn out on it's own. Even when I knew it was coming to an end or didn't want to smoke any more, I didn't want to stop, so I let it burn until almost the very tip. I would rate the Cohiba Esplendido a 92 from a semi-novice cigar smoker.
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