Ash confronts a limited edition

Initial Thoughts

Damn, this is one fine looking tobacco assemblage!  The beautiful oily dark, non-veiny Brazilian maduro wrapper looks lovingly laid around the taught triple ligero innards.  Judging by the exquisite half-cedar wrap / fabric foot cover presentation alone, I'll bet this thing is a real winner!  Sniff test says yes!  Even the band looks high rent.  Can there be anything but a rave review in store for this mofo?  Er, ya, well...

The Smoke

V-notching this thing of beauty was jarring -- like v-notching the back of my leg (if it didn't have any feeling in it).  It felt like I was taking a hunk out of someone's Achille's tendon.  That maduro wrapper and the goodies below are quite stiff and cardboard-like.  But no matter, firm is firm eh?

It lit up effortlessly and started out with a perfect burn.  Initial flavor was quite full and earthy -- looks promising!  However, progressing into the first half revealed a couple of odd flavor impressions.  Now to be fair, there is quite a lot of flavor complexity in this guy (there must be, right?), but maybe there's just too much.  It's hard to put a finger on, but one of the main flavor impressions I got out of the multi-ligero fight occurring in the burning cherry was that of, well, something of a 'seafood-like' aftertaste.  Like when you gobble down a bunch of boiled shrimp that's been cooked up in a pot of Zatarain's Boil Seasoning.  Not a nasty stinky fish-like flavor, but definitely sea-like.  I wonder if someone accidentally dropped a bale of its tobacco in the drink before it made its way to the factory?

The other faintly identifiable flavor/scent (other than the predominantly earthy dark, almost coffee-like tobacco flavor) that recurred again and again from the cacophony was flowery.  But not a good kind of flowery, but more like the nasty cheap perfumey kind of flowery that whacks you upside the nose when the small-chested waitress at your local Hooters brushes by your table trying to make an impression.  Not good.  The funny thing is, if you take a whiff of smoke off the burning end, it smells wonderfully spicy and aromatic, like the fancy cedar wrapped presentation would demand!  But at the mouth end, somewhere along the way,  that spicyness just didn't make it through.  Bummer.

Now to be fair, I am being quite picky.  To try a cigar with such diversity in flavor is a good thing in my book, and should be experienced.   However, after the first few minutes into the smoke, the burn turned ugly, and stayed that way to the end.  Several times I almost had to put a wad of spit on it to control its unrulyness, but decided to wait it out to see just how ugly it could get.  It didn't quite turn into a hopeless wrinkled chicken claw, but the threatening unevenness did distract from the experience.  That and the mini-tornado of wasted (yet quite nice smelling!) burning-end smoke added up to a less than truly positive experience.  Oh, and finally, the v-notched cap disintegrated into a web of slimy strands in my mouth, and I'm not one for consciously slobbering up the end a cigar.

In the name of science, I braved the wicked burn down to a 1" nub to see if there were any more flavor nuances to be had.  Unfortunately, not much other than a burning sting resulted, which turned the inside of my lips and the tip of my tongue numb, like I was being prepped for some surgical dentistry horrors.  But once the monstrosity was extinguished, the predominantly good flavors lingered on in my mouth for a good long while after the sting dissipated. 

The Rating