Drazzil and wayner123 Blind Tasting

W

wayner123

Country Gentleman
Welcome everyone to what I hope is a fun tasting test.

A while back Drazzil made the claim that he didn't understand how someone could not tell a Cuban cigar from a Non-Cuban. He said that Cubans have a certain taste to them that distinguishes them. I asked would he be willing to try this theory out blindly? He agreed and it was left at that for some weeks, till I got together what I considered to be a good enough selection.

Fast forward till now. Drazzil has the smokes and soon I will have his. I will just be guessing marca as I know all of his are Non Cubans. Hopefully I will get them correct. All of the rules apply to me except for rule number 3.

Rules:

1. No examination of the cigars.
2. Short review and guess to Marca
3. Is it a Cuban or Non-Cuban?

This is in no way meant to be a litmus test for every cigar smoker. It was something fun we decided to do and I hope it proves interesting for others. At the very least, he gets some smokes, I get some smokes and you all get to read reviews :D
 
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This should be fun. I dont think Wayne has too many Loki type smokes in his arsenal, but he does have the experience in Blind Tasting. I vote less than 50% success rate. :dr
 
Drazzil (David) gave me that sermon a few months ago. It only took one DPG El Centurion to disprove his theory.

This should be interesting.
 
Wayne, Thank you for allowing me to share my limited knowledge and "knack" for tasting cigars. That said, Please withold comments and revalations of cigars smoked until this test is completely finished. :ss

The bag on opening smelled very floral. Almost overpoweringly so. Being that I am not allowed to physically examine the cigars, I blindfolded myself and simply took around twenty minutes to feel and smell said stogie.

The wrapper was light brown or tan and dryer then I smoke my cigars, and smelled, oddly enough like a habano wrapper grown in Honduras. It smells spicy, cedary and slightly floral.

The binder smells floral, woody and spicy, I also got a whiff of salt.

Light: When I lit the cigar I my inital impressions were of Equaliptis, very floral and slightly spicy. The inital taste was very muted, as if it had been aged for a while.

The draw was rather tight, the burn was very sharp but not razor sharp. The ash was very illregularlly grey and white.

1st third the woody taste predominates with slight floral undertones, fading as the cigar burned.

The second third of the cigar continued on this note, with the slightest of slight tastes of caramel and cream and sweetness.

The last third of the cigar continued this trend, all in all it was a very uniform and good smoke. There was an herbal note on the end that was pleasant.

The smoke issuing from the cigar smelled very soft, and smelled just like the cigar smoked. The ash was very granular and smelled of salt.

If I had to take a wild shot in the dark as to the make of this cigar, I would say that its a Punch Habano aged a fair amount and that it is most likely cuban.
 
Second cigar:

Light:

Woody, Spicy. complex. Sweet, slightly vanilla.

First third: Bold flavor, woody, flavors of mint & chip ice cream.

Second third: spicy, peppery, slightly sweet. Rich tobacco. Mint & chip flavor continues.

Last third: Flavors mentoned before continue. Nub was sweet & spicy.

My judgement on this cigar is that it was well aged. If I had to guess I would say that it was a sungrown wrapper and that the filler was Honduran or dominican. It tasted a lot like a Perdormo Sun Grown or a Perdormo Cuban Corojo.

I am going to take a shot in the dark here and say that this cigar is definitely NON CUBAN in origin. There were slight floral notes present but nothing in the way of that Cuban "twang"
 
Cigar #3

Light:

Cedar, wood & floral notes, mint.

1st third:

Woody, Spice but not spicy. Slight sweetness.

2nd third:

Same tastes as before, woody taste more pronounced, slightly nutty? Earthy tobacco taste predominates. This is a very complex cigar other flavors linger on the palate, stuff I haven't tasted before. I cant identify it here.

Last third: Spicy. Same as second third but a sweetness becomes more pronounced.

It was at this point that my dad called. I had to put the cigar down for a while to talk to him, when I relit I wasent able to accurately identify most of any of the new flavors of the last part of the nub, other then a slight grassiness.

Okay. This cigar was extremely complex. I couldn't really even identify half of the flavors that were there. It was really hard to make a call on this one. It was a very good cigar and honestly, I couldn't really even make a call as to cuban or non cuban. It has a little of what I could identify as the cuban "twang" but I am out of my leauge on this one, I really am.

There were so many pleasant tastes that I couldn't identify. It was a good cigar, a REALLY good cigar. I am going to go ahead and put this into the CUBAN category, but only because it had a lot of tastes that I'm really at a loss to identify. I could really go either way. I would be forced to say that if I were to identify a make, I would say Cohiba, or maybe Bolivar, this is an unknown in my book.
 
Alright,

So I finally got around to smoking cigar number 1 from Drazzil.

The taste started off really nice, a nice little mixture of spice and tobacco and a sugary taste. The spice tasted like anise star, which was a little weird. But this quickly went downhill from there. The spice/tobacco/sweet taste quickly went away and was replaced by poor quality tobacco taste. Like most Gurkha's have. It is a taste like wet hay, and not good hay like some cigars, more like a hay that horses have slept in. The spice kept trying to come back at times. But where it had mixed fairly well before, it now just gave the wet hay taste a weird anise star blast. There were quite a few burn issues as well.

I don't know what this was, and I certainly did not like it. I would smoke it again... maybe. But I would not spend money on it.

My guess: A Rocky Patel R4
 
Cigar #2 from Drazzil:

This cigar started off tasting pretty good. A nice little pepper spice mixed in with what seemed to be a nicaraguan blend. However, this soon faded much like the first cigar. The taste that replaced it was the same hay like taste. A poor quality tobacco taste. This was the only taste I could pick for the remainder of the cigar.

My guess is one of the CI legends blend. If I must be specific, I will say Perdomo.
 
Onto Cigar #3 from Drazzil:

Starting off, I have not inspected the cigars, but a barber pole cigar is hard to miss. So then, first few puffs were actually alright. I could taste a hint of spice with a nice sweet taste. After the first half inch, the entire cigar went to spice. I could barely make out the tobacco taste at all. And that may have been a good thing as it reminded me of a wet cotton rag taste (much like a Gurkha). The spice was all that was left for the most part and this was one long cigar. Took over an hour. It was a weird spice as well. Not black pepper, not sweet pepper, not cinnamon or some other, but just a harsh weird spice. I say spice because I can think of no other way to describe it.

My guess is a Gurkha Barber pole cigar. Gurkha has 345,906,056.7 different lines, so it would be hard for me to nail down just one.
 
Cigar #4 from Drazzil:

Well this one is a very short review. It started out ok, but after 2 puffs, it got very bad. The rest of the time one word popped in my head with every puff, 'STALE'. I have never had a cigar that tasted this stale. The tobacco taste was stale, the spice was stale, the smoke rolling off the cigar was stale, even licking my lips after drawing tasted stale (from the cap being stale). This was a very bad cigar. I couldn't finish it much further past the halfway mark.

I have no clue at all what this was. I do want to know though, so that I never make the mistake of trying it again.
 
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