Drew Estate Natural Dirt

Drew Estate Natural Dirt maduro
$4 (B&M), Size: 4", Ring: 43

Drew Estate's Natural Dirt cigar is made in Esteli, Nicaragua from a bouliabasse of international tobaccos.

Dirt's maduro wrapper is a toothy, veiny chocolate color, and gives an aroma of cocoa and faint spice. The wrapper started to unravel an inch into smoking the cigar. And watch out for the cap, it's entirely too sweet.

One reviewer, to circumvent the overly sweetened cap on the Dirt, suggested turning the cigar around and lighting the cap and smoking from the foot. Hmm, sounds like an interesting idea. So, I turned the cigar, punched the cap, and toasted it.

The draw from the foot was medium, not very loose, and the cigar tasted surprisingly good, even without the sweetened cap. The cigar is fairly short, so it doesn't have a lot of time to evolve. The flavor was a basic nicaraguan tobacco, a light woody flavor, underneath a strong cocoa note, likely from the wrapper. It was a well balanced combination of sweetness and traditional tobacco flavors.

Dirt isn't a bad cigar, if you can get around the super-sweet cap. Still, the B&M's price is too steep for how short this cigar is.

Java by Drew Estate Maduro

Java by Drew Estate maduro corona
$5 (single B&M), Size: 5", Ring: 42
Nicaraguan wrapper, binder, and fillers

I was in a local cigar shop, out of sympathy (and a little guilt for getting most of my smokes from C-Bid), and saw that he had some of the Java cigars. Ok, I thought, I don't take myself so seriously that I won't smoke a novelty cigar. So, I bought a couple, and hit the road.

Java, a fragrant and boxy cigar, is a collaboration between Drew Estate and Rocky Patel (the squareness gives it away, eh?), rolled in Esteli, Nicaragua. I love coffee, and I like to drink coffee while smoking a maduro cigar, so why not try a blend of the two?

The Java is a classy-looking cigar, with simple and elegant bands near the cap and at the foot (another Rocky Patel cue). Out of the cellophane, the cigar looks like a long, squarish coffee bean. A coffee bean with veins, that is, and the aroma confirms the Java name.

The cigar was surprisingly lightweight, and spongy, and once the cap was punched, had a draw that was much too fast. While smoking, I had to sip at the cigar to keep it from burning too fast and too harshly. The sweetened cap was also a bit flaky.

The first half inch was a clash of harsh burning tobacco and the cloying sweet taste of the cap. After that the flavor mellowed to taste like a sweetened version of another Esteli native; Perdomo's bundle cigar, Tierra Del Sol. Ok, so we have a Tierra Del Sol with a Starbucks mocha. While the cognoscenti may have issues with either, or both, the two belong together like Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson.