Toraño Single Region - Jalapa

I'm tickled that some new Toraño cigars have reached my little backwater. Unlike fab places like Chicago or Long Island, Lincoln, Nebraska, doesn't get the newer frontmarks very quickly. So, I was pleasantly surprised to find the new Single Region cigar in my B&M's humidor.

Jalapa, Jalapa, oh Eden of Nicaragua! Out of thy rich soils spring such smoky satisfaction!

I love Nicaraguan cigars, and as anyone who has bought any Cain cigars in the past year would know, Jalapa is one of those regions in Nicaragua where delicious tobacco is grown.

The Single Region Serie Jalapa sported a colorado-colored wrapper, and had the aroma of leather and cedar. While burning, the draw was okay, but I did need to relight the cigar a couple times. The ash was fairly dark from this cigar.

The initial blast of flavor was wood and leather, very strong in the retrohale, like someone had bashed me in the nose with a cedar 2x4. Not very peppery, per se, but very present, bright. There were hints of coffee, but the cigar didn't taste as "dark" as other Nicaraguan cigars tend to do.

Being a robusto, the flavors didn't change a whole lot, but were very present the length of the cigar. The flavor profile reminded me of the Tatuaje Havana VI, the bright, woodsy tone of the flavors. I liked it, and will be buying more.

Panacea Red Perfecto

My mother surprised me with a cigar bomb for Christmas. She's normally a tobacco agnostic, but she researched and picked out cigars she thought I'd like. The Panacea Red perfecto was one of those cigars, and I'd never seen them before.

The Panacea Red sports a Brazilian maduro wrapper, Dominican Habano binder, and mix of dominican and Nicaraguan fillers. The Brazilian wrapper on this cigar was not really spicy on the lips like Cao's Brazilia or MX2, but more muted, like on Nub's Maduro 460.

The wrapper's unlit aroma was of leather and potting soil, a dry, earthy smell. Very similar to Don Francisco's Custom Blend line. The draw through the cigar was outstanding, and the burn a little wobbly, but never had to reach for the torch after I initially lit up. The dove-gray ash held for a good inch and a half.

Closer to medium than mild-bodied, the cigar had pleasant flavors throughout; Leather, a dash of coffee, earth. The cigar wasn't noticeably spicy in an way. The flavors didn't vary much, but was a nice companion for an evening cup of coffee and a good book.

262 Paradigm Torpedo

Since I left the red-light district of cigar blogging, I've been busy with other projects, but quietly been enjoying some excellent cigars. Most recently, it has been the 262 Paradigm. These showed up in one of my local haunts, I bought a couple, then threw them in one of my coolers and forgot about them.

Well, I found them again a couple weeks ago, and the first one was pretty tasty. I smoked one again a couple days ago, and with burnt finger, was sad to find the cigar was finished. I set myself to smoking the third to review not because someone gave me cigars expecting me to fluff for them, but because it's a cigar that was well worth what I paid.

Start to finish, this cigar is delicious. What, you want me to blather more about it? If you insist...

On first light, there's a solid, mildly earthy leather flavor with light floral and spice notes. The first inch really echos the beginning, with added mild cocoa and coffee flavors combined with the predominant leather. The mild spice eases out during that first inch, but don't worry, it'll be back for the big finish.

The midsection of the cigar features a sweet leather flavor, with alternating harmonies of cocoa and coffee.

The prime spot on this cigar is the last 2 inches, where the leather flavor gets sweeter, the coffee tone gets bolder, and the spice comes back in for the grand finale. It is really hard to let this cigar go at the end, the flavors are that good.

De La Guardia Cigars

I love making connections with people, and my involvement with Social Cigar has allowed me many contacts. So, the marketing director for the new brand, De La Guardia Cigars, joined Social Cigar and got my attention, since they're just an hour away in Omaha. Omaha? Cigars? That's right.

So, I referred her to the guys that run two of my three local B&Ms, and a couple weeks later, received a nice promo/sample pack in the mail! Three cigars, a cutter, a package of mints (perfect for de-smoking the breath) and a kick-ash beer cozy!


Well, onto the important stuff; cigars. DLG offers two varieties of cigar in Natural(shade-grown Dominican wrapper and filler, Nicaraguan/Honduran Binder) and Maduro(Cubano Piloto (Dominican)Filler, Dominican Binder, Honduran Wrapper). They also offer to flavor the aforementioned cigars.

Natural

The DLG Natural gave an aroma of sweet, green hay from cap to foot, and the wrapper was fairly smooth and mildly toothy. Once cut, the cigar drew nicely and readily lit. The cigar was fairly mild, with the predominant flavor being the sweet hay noticed before lighting. The draw was good, and the cigar held about an inch of silvery ash.







Maduro

The DLG Maduro is just an earthier version of the Natural. The wrapper was a bit rougher, showing veins and lumps from veins or wrinkles in the binder underneath. The wrapper exuded the aroma of dirt and sweet hay. Another great draw was there, and the cigar held about an inch of ash while being smoked. The flavors were very similar to the Natural, with the predominant notes being hay and a little dirt, and not much spice at all.

Smoking either cigar, I felt that in a blind taste, I'd guess that these were blended by Rolando Reyes Sr., that they just have a flavor profile I associate with Puros Indios or Reyes. Flavoring these, as De La Guardia offers, is a great approach to these cigars.

First Impression: Rocky Patel 15th Anniversary

I unexpectedly stumbled into a Rocky Patel event at one of my local haunts this week, and bought a small handful of the new Fifteenth Anniversary robustos. Go me!

The Fifteeth has an aged Habano wrapper, which was nowhere near the black pepper spice of the Perdomo, Oliva, or Cain Habano wrappers. In fact, instead of the typical Habano tingle on my lips, I tasted a more earthy citrus, which screams Rocky Patel anyway.

The cigar lit readily, and burned straight, the draw was excellent on this box-pressed robusto. The flavors start with citrus and coffee, with only the mildest spice in the background. After the first inch the coffee notes became more pronounced. The spice as really mild through the whole cigar. I drank my morning coffee with this almost medium-bodied stick.

The smoke was creamy and plentiful.

The Fifteeth Anniversary is a signature Rocky Patel cigar, and though I may balk a bit at the cash register price of $11.

Writing Style?

There's a web site that analyzes your writing style, and this is the result I got after feeding the preceding cigar review into it:

I write like
Raymond Chandler

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Great, now I'll actually have to go out and READ some Raymond Chandler.

Jaime Garcia Reserva Especial

These are great days to be a cigar lover, as the variety of cigars right now are only matched by their quality, especially if you like Nicaraguan cigars. Oliva, Perdomo, Padron and, lately, Don Pepin Garcia have been rolling stellar cigars the past few years. The Jaime Garcia Reserva Especial is a blend from the son of Pepin. 'Son of Pepin' sounds like a horror film, right? But this cigar is dark and forebodes nothing but a great cigar experience..

Being an enthusiast of Nicaraguan cigars, and having had great luck with cigars associated with the Garcia family, my heart skipped a beat when these showed up at one of my local shops, and I bought a pair straight away.

The Reserva Especial sported a dark, oily, Connecticut Broadleaf maduro wrapper, with any veins being as low-profile as the seams on the wrapper leaf. And not only smooth, but giving an earthy aroma to the nose and a peppery spice to the lips. The draw through the cigar was free, but without feeling too loose.

Prominent flavors at the start were earth, cedar, and a nice spice. So far, very reminiscent of an Oliva Serie O maduro (one of my go-to cigars), with a touch more wood in the flavor profile, but very close. Gotta love Nicaraguan fillers. After the first inch, the intensity of the earthiness dialed back a notch.

By the middle of the cigar, the spice seemed to drop back a ways, yielding the stage to the earthy wood flavors. The Kona blend coffee I was drinking in tandem seemed to work well with the cigar, and I noticed some coffee flavors in the mix toward the mid-point of the cigar as well.

A bitter cocoa flavor also flirted with the palate after the mid-point, and the last third carried on with a solid medium-bodied presentation. Soft spice highlighted the earth and wood flavors to the end.

If I were given this cigar blind, I'd have said it was an Oliva at the beginning, but by the middle I would have been doubting the call. At $8 a pop for the toro, these cigars are fairly priced for the quality of the experience. Another hit from Nicaragua!