Wrapper: Nicaraguan Corojo 99

Binder: Nicaraguan

Filler: Nicaraguan

Size: 6 x 50

Body: Full

Price: $8.50

Viaje is Spanish for “Journey.” And that’s about all the information I could gleen from the Viaje web site. Farkas has decided to keep everything very close to his chest…

Viaje is a series of blends designed by Andre Farkas, who as a young man has a helluva’ vision. His cigars are made in small batches and blended with love and care. He specializes in making his blends Nicaraguan Puros.

They’re next to impossible to get. But once you’ve smoked one, you’ll know why.

The construction is gorgeous. There are a couple of soft spots in the middle but nothing to get my thong in a roar. It has some veins…. A couple of long ones running down the length of the cigar. It has a beautiful triple cap.

The aroma is all about dark chocolate and black earth. At the foot, it’s the earthiness that dominates the aroma.

I light up.

I get a real blast of spice and cocoa and earth! It has a deep, dark richness immediately. It raps you upside the head and yells at you to pay attention. Standing on top of those other flavors, is a wonderful sweetness from the wrapper. It’s syrupy and creamy and like thick butterscotch. The char line is dead nuts perfect.

I am really floored. How can a cigar exhibit such sophistication so soon? Now I don’t want to write this review. I want to sit back, close my eyes for 90 minutes, or so, and enjoy.

But I cannot. I must describe my experience to you in my stilted use of the English language. You have my apologies. The draw is perfect causing loads of smoke to emit from the foot.

At the 1” point, I’m looking at a nice array of flavors: cocoa, earth, creaminess, and syrupy sweetness…with a full body that’s going to have me swooning by the end of my journey. All I had for breakfast was a bowl of air….I mean a bowl of Kashi puffed crap. So I fear that I am doomed to swoon and spin near the end of the stick.

The first third is about setting up for the money shot in the last half. Yeah, it’s delicious, but it hasn’t given up what it was blended to do.

As I enter the second third, black coffee combines with the panoply of flavors. The red pepper is ever present, but never overpowering. It allows the sweet flavors to show off without overwhelming them. The butterscotch is not a subtle flavor. It is out there as strong as the spiciness and the cocoa. (Yes, I’ve grabbed a Diet Coke.)

Again, I must compare this line to the La Palina Family series of cigars. I am a huge fan of La Palina but this Viaje line has dared to step up to the starting line and tell La Palina to get out of the way.

The ash is very grey with specks of grey.

The draw is a dream. And the burn is laid back and relaxed…. It stretches out, and oozes, like good sex.

The sweetness increases. And I smell it first….a floral note. Then I can taste it. Lovely. Way in the back of my palate, I taste cinnamon. Instead of blossoming, the flavor profile gets dense. It becomes a piece of plutonium and digs deep and hard into a ball of pure energy that wants to explode….waiting for a countdown. The flavors are very intense. The price point on this cigar is worth every dime and then some. There is a world of $8 cigars out there that can’t even touch this blend.

The spiciness moves from the back of my mouth to the tip of my tongue. It burns a little. But I’m a huge fan of spice. If you’re not, then this stick ain’t for you. Go smoke a Macanudo. The burn line is getting a little erratic and I hope it corrects itself.

The second third ends like it started. Flavor and body are magnificent.

As I enter the crying game of the last third, I expect nothing short of a miracle. Let’s see…

As expected, the power of this cigar leaves the launch pad. I can feel it in my gut and my head. The laptop screen becomes a little blurred. My nose begins to run. And all I can think of is the Jimi Hendrix song, “Are You Experienced?”

“If you can just get your mind together
Then come on across to me
We’ll hold hands and then we’ll watch the sunrise
From the bottom of the sea

But first, are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced?
Well, I have.”

As I try to nub the cigar out, all the flavors explode like nuclear fission. They shoot at me and surround me like the Hadron Collider.

This cigar surpasses my wildest expectations. If I saw you in a dark alley with a Viaje Oro, you would be laying in a pool of blood while I searched your body for the rest of them. Really.

They have plenty and are itching to sell them to you. You gotta’ be nuts not to take advantage of this.

Now for something completely different:

R had the ability to scare the living shit out of me. He had a sterling background in the Marines and served in Viet Nam. 3 times.

But tonight, he was really pissed off. I don’t really remember the circumstances leading up to the melt down, but I remember the melt down.

R is a musician who bleeds perfection. The band was way ahead of its time. We were treading ground that would not come around for another 20 years. And this frustrated R a lot.

We did way too many drugs, mostly coke. And R drank. I didn’t. It was a lethal combo. It was just past the middle of the night when I gave R a ride home from Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood. He was on fire. Nothing went right. And we were spending a fortune on recording time. It was a good 45 minute drive and with each mile that passed, the fire breathing got more intense.

R was screaming at me, the world, at himself. And then he started pounding my dashboard…with such ferocity that the dashboard began to crack in huge fissures. It was as if explosives were placed in small cracks and then lit.

My adrenaline was racing as I began to fear for my life. I didn’t know if he would change the direction of rage from the dashboard to me but I thought it highly possible.

I kept telling him, no, pleading with him to calm down. None of this was worth him killing me. LOL!

As we got off the freeway, we had about 15 minutes of city driving and at a stop light we saw a man smacking around a woman in front of a liquor store.

R screamed at me to stop and don’t move the fucking car. He jumped out and was on top of the woman’s attacker in a nano second. His arms were a blur as he nearly killed this guy. The woman fell into a heap. I left the car sitting in the middle of the road, with the doors open and ran into the store and demanded they call 911.

The woman was in bad shape. But the attacker was in worse shape…much worse. I struggled to get R off of him. The guy was down and going no where. I was afraid R would kill him.

There were no onlookers. I finally used all of my strength to pull R off and we both rolled backwards on the sidewalk. I grabbed him by the collar and screamed at him we had to get out of here. “Do you want to go to jail?”

R’s eyes were as big as saucers. But he understood and followed me to my car, still running.

We got in and I peeled rubber.

Blood was everywhere. R’s knuckles were raw meat. He was hyperventilating. I found a paper bag in the back seat and made him breathe into it.

I got him home and we cleaned him up.

To this day, I have no idea what the fuck happened that night. I just remember the look of a killer in R’s eyes.

But a few decades later, he is as calm as a kitten….a kitten with lots of guns.

Categories: CIGAR REVIEWS