Don Fernando’s cigarblog

The Ashton VSG series is blended by Carlos Fuente Jr. for Ashton with some 4 to 5 year old Dominican tobacco and the wrapper is grown on the Oliva estate in Ecuador where they grow this wrapper exclusively for the VSG series. The sorcerer is a 7 x 49 sized cigar with a fine construction, a beautiful dark & oily wrapper with a silky feeling to it. There is a minor barnyard aroma noticeable. The predraw gives the right amount of resistance and leaves me with a dry feeling and a hard to describe flavor in my mouth.

I taste a full coffee flavor with a mild but enjoyable bitter taste to it and after half an inch I also get some chocolate, but the mild bitter coffee is still the main flavor and the chocolate disappears quickly. After a while the flavor goes stronger and the chocolate reappears and is quite sticky, it sticks in my mouth.

The flavors are consistent, pleasant, comforting and ‘warm’. Halfway the chocolate gets stronger and the coffee loses some of its strength and slowly fades away to the background. At the 2/3rd mark something mild salty and peppery show up but disappears just as easy. At the end the pepper makes a temporary comeback.

I get a lot of smoke from this cigar, but the smoke is a bit thin. The color of the ash is quite light gray and the ash is pretty firm. The burn is great, sharp as a razor and I don’t have any complaints about the draw.

Would I buy this cigar again? Yes, I like the Ashton VSG series a lot

Appearance: 8 / 10
Construction: 7 / 10
Draw: 7 / 10
Smoke & ash: 7 / 10
Burn: 7 / 10
Aroma (first part) 7 / 10
Aroma (middle part) 8 / 10
Aroma (last part) 8 / 10

I got this Opus X belicoso XXX with a date sticker of May 2006 in a trade and decided to light this well praised 4 5/8 x 49 Dominican puro tonight. The cigar is packed in cellophane and has a red ribbon on the foot. The wrapper looks nice dark and oily but has some big veins. Usually a vein isn’t anything to mock about, but when you spend top dollar for a cigar you can expect something that looks a bit better.

The aroma of the cigar makes me think of chocolate, pepper and something sweet. It is a unique aroma and I can even smell some cinnamon. The construction feels good and the fine predraw gives off a peppery flavor.

The first flavor is wood, I don’t know what kind of wood, but it is a specific flavor which I only tasted in Opus X and Liga Privada #9 before. I also taste some sweetness and mild chocolate. The flavors are rich, deep and complex but not overpowering. Halfway some pepper accompanies the wood, the sweetness and the chocolate, although the sweetness is disappearing slowly. At the same time the chocolate and wood are getting stronger. The finale is that typical Opus X wood again.

This cigar produces a lot of pretty smoke. I had terrible burn issues with this cigar, I had to light it over and over again which made the cigar bitter at some points. If it wasn’t for a review I would have tossed the cigar due to the burn issues, I never had a cigar burn worse than this top shelve stick. The ash is dark and frayed. Due to the flash the ash looks light colored on the picture, but in real life it was dark, ugly and frayed.

Would I buy this cigar again? I still have a few and they are very nice without the burn issues, but are they worth the money? Don’t think so

Appearance: 7 / 10
Construction: 8 / 10
Draw: 8 / 10
Smoke & ash: 7 / 10
Burn: 4 / 10
Aroma (first part) 8 / 10
Aroma (middle part) 8 / 10
Aroma (last part) 8 / 10

I found this 7 x 48 Double corona in my humidor and thought “well, I have some time to kill, why not smoke a large stick today” so I clipped it with my Palio and lit it. The wrapper of this Cuban cigar was pretty light colored and had lots of veins. The construction felt a bit under filled but the predraw was fine and left me with a very peculiar flavor of chewing gum, something I have never experienced before. The cigar didn’t have a lot of aroma. As it was a single I don’t know the age of this stick.

I could taste leather, dry leather, typical Cuban leather though, just dry and a mild creamy feeling in my mouth with a hit of chocolate. After an inch I get some pepper too, but leather seems to be the main and strongest flavor. At 1/2nd the cigar gains some power and at 2/3rd some nut flavor joins the party. I could also taste something fresh, but can’t describe what it was.

The smoke is thin but there is enough of it. The ash is frayed and light gray. I would rate this cigar medium bodied medium flavored.

Would I buy this cigar again? Possibly yeah.

Appearance: 6 / 10
Construction: 7 / 10
Draw: 7 / 10
Smoke & ash: 6 / 10
Burn: 7 / 10
Aroma (first part) 7 / 10
Aroma (middle part) 7 / 10
Aroma (last part) 7 / 10

This perfecto has a dark, rough Connecticut broadleaf wrapper with some veins, a Dominican binder and filler from Brazil, Dominican Republic and Cameroon. The 5 x 54 cigar feels hard but the predraw is fine and gives me a dry but peppery feeling in my mouth. The aroma is a mild hay and barnyard smell.

I can taste coffee and some leather, both very bitter and not really pleasant. After an inch the flavor changed to a creamy chocolate with pepper as supporting flavor. Soon the leather returns and the creamy chocolate becomes the aftertaste. Unfortunately the cigar also has a moldy flavor for a while. The finale is mild chocolate and pepper again.

The amount of smoke is quite low, and it is thin. The ash however is firm and pretty. This is a medium bodied, mild to medium flavored cigar

Would I buy this cigar again? Nah.

Appearance: 7 / 10
Construction: 7 / 10
Draw: 7 / 10
Smoke & ash: 6 / 10
Burn: 8 / 10
Aroma (first part) 6 / 10
Aroma (middle part) 7 / 10
Aroma (last part) 7 / 10

I went to see a roller, Christian Galvan, who works for General cigars at one of my favorite B&M’s in Amsterdam, Hartman cigars at the Beethovenstraat. Christian Galvan was there to roll cigars as part of the release of the Macanudo 1968 in The Netherlands. I smoked one right on the spot, and I brought one home to review and here it is.

Macanudo came with this new blend and named it “1968” as that was the year that Cifuentes blended the original Macanudo café, so this is a cigar in his memory. The cigar is blended with tobacco from the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, part of the filler comes from the remote island of Ometepe, which is located in the lake of a volcano. The binder is a Connecticut Habano and the wrapper is Honduran San Agustin Havana seed.

The size of this fresh rolled cigar is 5.5 x 52 which is not a regular production size, it’s in between the 6 x 54 toro and the 5 x 50 robusto. The cigar smells like hay. The construction feels good though the draw is a bit on the loose side and gives me a mild peppery raisin flavor. The wrapper is smooth, oily and dark.

I can taste toast, coffee and some pepper at the back of my throat. After a few puffs I also taste some bean but that flavor disappears soon, just like the toast. A chocolate flavor shows itself through the peppery coffee. After an inch the pepper joins the flavors that disappeared before and all I can taste is coffee with chocolate, of which the chocolate is slowly becoming the dominant flavor, but the flavors are well balanced.

After reaching the 1/2nd point of the cigar I get some toast again and at 2/3rd the chocolate disappears for just a few puffs. The grand finale brings me some cedar with chocolate and later some nuts and chocolate.

I get a lot of smoke, the smoke is a bit thin though. The ash is silver-gray and firm. The draw is fine and the burn is great, straight and it won’t die easily. I didn’t need to purge this cigar and could still nub it. This is a full flavored full bodied cigar, but the full bodyness is sneaky, because of the overwhelming flavors you don’t notice and realize that this is a powerful stick.

Would I buy this cigar again? Yes, I liked it, but this was a 2 day old fresh rolled cigar, I don’t know if the cigars that are commercially available have the same flavor palate.

Appearance: 8 / 10
Construction: 7 / 10
Draw: 7 / 10
Smoke & ash: 7 / 10
Burn: 8 / 10
Aroma (first part) 7 / 10
Aroma (middle part) 7 / 10
Aroma (last part) 8 / 10