Mike Salsbury’s Blog

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.

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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…

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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:

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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.

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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…

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The 2 Guys
Smoke Shop in Salem, New Hampshire recently sent me an email offer
on the A.
R. Robaina line of cigars.  They caught my attention because
they contain 40% pre-embargo Cuban tobacco.  I’ve never been able
to bring myself to pay the rather high prices charged for pre-embargo
Cuban cigars, so I figured this is about as close as I’m ever going to
get.

In addition to the 40% Cuban long filler, the cigar
boasts a Cuban-seed Ecuadorian wrapper from the 2000 crop.  The
wrapper is a very rich dark brown with fine veins.  Its
construction is very firm.  Unlit, the cigar has a wonderful
smell.  A draw through the punched but unlit cigar was easy and had
a hint of spiciness to it.

Once lit, I found that I was in
for quite a treat.  The aroma of the smoke was by far the most
pleasant I’ve ever smelled.  It had what I can only describe as a
perfect “classic cigar” smell.  The flavor was a rich
medium-bodied one.  The smoke was very creamy white and (if I had
the talent to do so) would probably have blown wonderful smoke
rings.  Keep it away from your eyes, though.  It burned mine
like no other smoke ever has.  It also made my head swim more than
any cigar ever has.  Felt like I’d just pounded about a half-dozen
beers by the time I was about a half to two-thirds of the way through
it.  Wow…

The cigar burned evenly.  The ash was
firm and medium gray in color.  It stayed on the cigar until I
tapped it off.  I don’t think it would have stayed on if allowed to
grow to about an inch. 

If this is what a
“real” Cuban cigar is like, I understand why people love
them.  I enjoyed everything about this one and can’t wait to smoke
the other one I bought.  I’m even considering picking up a few
more.  (BTW, 2 Guys has a really good price on them that puts them
in just about everyone’s price range. I don’t know if I’m allowed to
tell what that price is, since they can’t, but let’s just say that an
“Abe Lincoln” and a couple of coins should get
you a single, before shipping.)

On a 1-10 scale, with 10
being excellent, this one has to be about an 8.75!  Definitely
recommended.

Read more…

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During my recent visit to Fort Lauderdale, I picked up a CAO
Brazilia Samba cigar at the Oasis Cigar shop in the Sawgrass
Mills Outlet Mall in Sunrise, Florida.  Last night, I had the
pleasure of lighting up the cigar and enjoying it, which took a couple
of hours.

The CAO Brazilia Samba is a torpedo
style cigar made in Nicaragua.  It has a dark brown wrapper with an
oily sheen an pleasant texture.  Only the tiniest of veins is
visible.  The binder and filler are Nicaraguan. The wrapper is
Brazilian, hence the name of the cigar.

The CAO Brazilia
Samba cigar is very firmly constructed and has a very solid
feel to it.  It’s 6.5″ long with a 54 ring gauge. 

Unlit, the aroma is pleasing, with a hint of a leathery smell to
it.  The draw is very easy.  The cigar lit easily as
well.  I found that the one I reviewed did not burn very
evenly.  At first, I attributed this to a poor lighting job my
part, but after evening it up a bit and ensuring that the entire end was
lit properly, it continued to burn unevenly at the bottom, with the
wrapper more or less refusing to burn.  Perhaps the bottom got too
moist in the humidor, I don’t know.  I didn’t expect that from a
CAO cigar.

The ash from the CAO Brazilia
Samba was extremely firm, which I expected given the firm
construction.  It was a very light gray, almost white, with trace
amounts of other gray colors here and there.

The flavor was a bit
intense in the first half inch or so, then mellowed out a bit.  The
smoke was very thick and white, visible all the way from my mouth to the
ceiling.  My wife found the aroma of the smoke pleasant, as did
I.  Nevertheless, she asked me to close the sliding glass door to
the house while I sat on the screened-in porch smoking it with a beer
(the “Grotten Brown” Belgian Ale that Michael Jackson the beer
expert rated the best of 2005).  The flavor to me was very good,
with a hint of a pleasing leathery taste and a very light peppery touch
to it.  A couple of unintentional breaths of the smoke into my
lungs (I normally do not inhale the smoke into my lungs, like – I gather
- most of you) were tolerable and didn’t make me want to cough like many
cigars do.  I got a mild “buzz” off the CAO
Brazilia Samba, far less than I did from the Perdomo Reserve
Cabinet Series I had last week in Florida, but noticeable (and no, I’m
sure it wasn’t the beer).

The cigar lasted at least two
hours.  I lit it some time after 8pm and it was going well past
10.  If you plan to smoke one of these and don’t plan to be drawing
on it constantly, make sure you allot a couple of hours to enjoying
it.

All in all, I’d say this was another fine cigar from
the good folks at CAO, confirming my evolving opinion that
they’re one of my favorite manufacturers.

On a 1-10 scale,
this is at least a 7.5.  I’d rate it higher, but
the uneven burn and the intense initial draws take it down a peg for
me.  If I have another in the future and the burn is more even, I’d
move it to an 8.

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 During my Florida visit I had the good fortune to visit the Oasis
Cigar store in the Sawgrass Mills Outlet Mall in Sunrise, Florida. 
While at Oasis Cigar, I picked up a Macanudo Gold Label
Shakespeare cigar.

The
Macanudo Gold Label Shakespeare cigar is 6.5
inches long with a 45 ring gauge. It features a Cuban-seed Dominican and
Mexican filler with a Connecticut shade wrapper that Cigars
International says is “culled from the first and second
primings”. The wrapper is a beautiful golden color and remained
properly affixed to the filler throughout my experience with it. Clearly
it is a well-constructed cigar, which one would expect from Macanudo.

Unlit, the Macanudo Gold Label
Shakespeare cigar has a very mild but pleasant aroma. A
draw through the unlit cigar showed that this mild aroma carried through
to the heart of the cigar’s filler. Drawing through the cigar was quite
easy. Since I was attempting to smoke the cigar while sitting next to
the beach, lighting it with matches was challenging but took only a
couple of tries.

The burn was far less even than I expected,
with about a half-inch of wrapper more or less stubbornly refusing to
burn until I was very nearly finished with the cigar. The ash from the
Macanudo Gold Label Shakespeare was a very light gray
as would be expected for a lighter-colored cigar, and stayed attached
until I intentionally knocked it off.

The flavor of the
Macanudo Gold Label Shakespeare cigar was
extremely mild, which is what I was looking for at the time. In fact, it
was so mild that at times I thought maybe it wasn’t lit, because I’d
draw a mouthful of smoke and barely taste it at times. As the cigar
burned farther down, probably about half way, its flavor picked up a
little and gained a bit of a peppery note to it, like an extremely mild
jalapeno.

On a 1-10 scale, with 10 being excellent,
the Macanudo Gold Label Shakespeare rated about an 8.5.
Not quite as good as the Perdomo Reserve Cuban Cafe series (which I
rated a 9) but close enough that I’d have no problem having a few more
of these in the future.  In fact, I bought several from
Cigarbid.com based on my good experience here.

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As part of a larger sampler I purchased from Cigars International, I
received a Perdomo Reserve Cafe Series “P” cigar.  In
this article, I review the experience of smoking this cigar.

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