Mike Salsbury’s Blog

The Indian Tabac Super Fuerte is a box-pressed, aged cigar made of
leaves from Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Honduras.  I’m not sure what
size the cigar I reviewed was. It had a torpedo shape with squared sides
from being box-pressed.

The Super Fuerte lit
easily and gave off an earthy aroma from the start.  The flavor and
aroma were consistently earthy.  There was a mild, even peppery
note throughout the cigar that picked up slightly near the end. 
The age of the cigar was evident in its flavor as well.  These are
aged 4 years from the factory, and mine had been sitting in a humidor
since 2004, so it was at least 5-6 years old.

The ash was firm, papery, and medium gray in color.

The
smoke was a pale gray color and of moderate thickness.

The
burn was even right down to the end.  As you can see below, I
smoked it right up to the point where my fingers had enough of the
heat.  (The bottle cap is there to give some
scale.)

An enjoyable cigar all around, but I
wouldn’t call it spectacular.  It gets a solid 6 out of 10 rating
from me.

admin Cigars Indian Tabac Cigar Review, Indian Tabac Super Fuerte Cigar Review, IT Super Fuerte Cigar Review

The Fonseca 5-50 received an 88 rating from Cigar Aficionado and,
according to Cigars International, a “Superior” rating from
Rudman’s guide.

The 5-50 is a 50 ring gauge cigar with a 5
inch length.  The cigars are hand-rolled in the Dominican
Republic.  They’re made from Dominican long filler, a
Dominican/Mexican binder, and a Connecticut shade wrapper.  

The cigar I reviewed lit easily and
burned extremely evenly, almost a perfectly straight burn.  It gave
off generous amounts of wispy white smoke while lit, even when not being
drawn. 

The flavor was very mild but evoked the taste
of coffee in my mind, with a light touch of leather to it.  There
was a light peppery note that started about half way through the
cigar.

The cigar’s construction was very firm and
sturdy.  The ash was similarly very firm and a light to medium gray
color.

It’s a very pleasant cigar to
smoke.  Nothing spectactular, but I’ve nothing at all bad to say
about it either.  I rate it a 7 out of 10, primarily due to the
lack of unpleasant characteristics.  This would make it a
“safe” cigar to smoke, or a good one when I’m distracted by
something else and can’t fully enjoy a more “excellent” and
expensive one.

admin Cigars Fonseca 5-50 cigar review, fonseca cigar rating, fonseca cigar review

The K. Hansotia Signature 101 cigar reviewed here is described as an “unbelievable new blend” by Cigars International.

The cigar’s wrapper is a darker Costa Rican Maduro leaf. The filler blend was supposedly created by Mr. Hansotia himself for his own personal enjoyment. The filler contains Honduran, Dominican, and Jamaican long-leaf tobaccos. It’s a fine-looking cigar, made a bit more special looking by the addition of its “signed” silver band.

The Hansotia Signature 101 lit very easily and burned very slowly and evenly to the end. It stayed lit quite well even as I moved about from task to task as I smoked it. If you smoke one of these, I recommend using a punch cutter or a “V” cutter rather than a straight slice across the head. The reason I suggest this is that the wrapper wanted to unravel after I sliced it.   I was able to prevent that from happening by moistening the end, but it did tend to want to still unravel a bit.

The flavor of the cigar to me had a strong chocolate note to it, more like cocoa powder or very dark chocolate than a Hershey bar. Although described as a complex and full-bodied flavor, all I could say that I picked up was the chocolate flavor and a very mild peppery note. The flavor seemed fairly consistent to me throughout.

The smoke coming from the Hansotia Signature 101 was very thin and wispy when exhaled. When drawn into the mouth it was sometimes hard for me to tell the smoke was there. The aroma of the smoke was bitingly sharp and my nose definitely knew it was there when I inhaled some that way.

The Hansotia Signature 101’s strength was very mild initially, but picked up significantly during the last third of the burn. I would describe it as a slightly above-average strength.   I definitely felt it by the end of the cigar, but it wasn’t quite as potent as the Gurkha Vintage Seriest (also made by Hansotia).

All things considered, I liked the Hansotia Signature 101 but don’t feel it was quite as special as some do. Still, it is quite a good cigar and I am not disparaging it here. On a 1-10 rating, the cigar deserves about a 6.5 – perhaps leaning more toward 6 than 7.

admin Cigars cigar review, Hansotia cigarreview, K. Hansotia Signature 101 cigar review, Signature 101 Cigar Review

Cigars International
refers to Gurkha as the “Rolls Royce of cigars”.
They tell us that Gurkha is “known for offering some of the most
prestigious and highly-rated blends in the world”. The
Gurkha Vintage Series is one of Gurkha’s milder cigars.

The wrapper of the Gurkha Vintage
Series (as you can see in the image below) is a slightly oily
Connecticut shade. It’s a very firm cigar.   The Toro size measures
6 inches long with a solid 50 ring gauge. It’s firmly rolled and feels
quite solid and sturdy in your hand.

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Read more…

admin Cigars cigar reviews, gurkha cigar review, review gurkha vintage series toro cigar, vintage series cigar review

I had the opportunity to purchase 12 Rum
Runner Buccaneer cigars from Cigarbid.com in late March.
This weekend I lit one of them up to try it out. I’d heard a lot of
people really like Rum Runners, perhaps because they were infused with
real Caribbean Rum.

The Rum Runner
Buccaneer is a hand-made cigar with 100% Dominican filler, an
Indonesian binder and Indonesian Wrapper. The cigar is a 42 ring gauge
size approximately 4.7 inches long. It’ll last the better part of an
hour depending on how often and how hard you draw.

The construction of the cigar was solid but it
felt a bit “mushy” compared to others like the Macanudo or
Cohiba. This didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the Rum Runner
buccaneer cigar, but I note it here because some folks don’t like a
cigar that isn’t rock-hard firm.

In the
shot below, you can compare the Rum Runner Buccaneer to the stubs from
the Macanudo Vintage 1997 and the Cohiba Red Dot Pequeno in the
ashtray…

Read more…

admin Cigars cigar review, rum runner buccaneer, rum runner cigar review, rum runner review

This cigar review discusses the Macanudo
Vintage 1997 Demi Corona Cigar.  I picked up a (wooden) box of
5 of these little gems at the CigarBid.com auction site. I didn’t
expect to get as good a deal on them as I got. They normally retail for
$49.95 a box on Cigars International’s
site (the parent/sister of CigarBid).  

They’re shipped
in a very attractive wooden box:

Read more…

admin Cigars cigar review, macanudo cigar review, macanudo demi corona cigar review, macanudo vintage 1997

I’ve heard of Graycliff cigars for a while now.  They began
as a “house brand” for the Graycliff resort in the Bahamas, a
special treat for guests of the hotel.  Their reputation grew from
there, and soon people who had never been to the resort began looking
for the cigars.  Graycliff introduced them to world, and they’ve
become a very well-known, well-respected, treasured brand name. 
Selling for $16 and up each and $400+ a box, they’re not likely to be
the “everyday cigar” of many people.  As part of a
sampler on the Cigarbid.com web site, I received a Blue Label PGX and 3
Red Label cigars.  I haven’t tried the Red Labels yet, but this
review discusses my experience with the Graycliff Professionale Blue Label PGX Cigar.

Read more…

admin Cigars Blue Label cigar, Blue Label review, cigar evaluation, cigar examination, cigar photo, cigar review, Graycliff Blue Label, Graycliff Blue Label Professionale PGX cigar review, Graycliff cigar, Graycliff cigar review, Graycliff PGX, graycliff professionale cigar review, PGX cigar, PGX cigar review

A while ago I purchased an entire box of Indian Tabac’s “Fire” cigars.  I bought
them having never had a cigar by Indian Tabac before, and of course
never having had the Fire line either.  Based on what I’d been
reading in the forums, Indian Tabac makes some good cigars, so I figured
it wouldn’t be a huge risk.  I just had my first one of them
tonight, and I’m pleased to say they were a good choice.

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admin Cigars cigar, critique, evaluation, examination, Fire, indian, photo, picture, review, Tabac

The folks at CigarBid.com
periodically offer “Carmen’s Sampler”, which is a bundle of
cigars that they describe as being first-quality stuff but with
blemishes, rips, tears, or other problems that prevent them from being
sold as top-quality, new cigars. I was a little cautious about bidding
on these because you have no idea what you’re going to get, but I
finally “went for it”.  Here’s a photo and description of
what I received for my bid (which I’d say was worth the price)…

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admin Cigars Carmen's Sampler, cigar, Cigar Bid, Cigarbid, Cigars, contents, grab bag, lot, Sampler

The Pinar 1958 Series B Pre-Embargo
Cuban Rothschild cigar is frequently being sold on the CigarBid.com auctions lately.  The forum
participants on the site have discussed this cigar a few times, and the
general consensus was pretty middle-of-the-road.  Some liked it,
some didn’t, and some were indifferent.  Having recently purchased
a 5-pack at auction, I decided to try one out.  Since none of the
reviews I read on the forum covered the smoking experience in detail, I
decided to do that here.  In fact, this review is probably going to be more detailed than any of my
earlier reviews.

Read more…

admin Cigars cigar, cigar review, evaluation, examination, Pinar, Pinar 1958, Pinar 1958 Series B, Pinar 1958 Series B Pre-Embargo Cuban Rothschild cigar, Pinar cigar, Pinar Pre-Embargo, Pinar Rothschild, review, review of Pinar Series B