Wrapper: Nicaraguan Corojo (Jalapa)
Binder: Nicaraguan (Aged 5 years)
Filler: Honduran (Aged 5 years)
Size: 7 x 50 “Churchill”
Body: Medium/Full
Price: $7.00

I searched high and low expecting to find some information on this cigar. Nada. The only stuff I found was the little PR snippets at the online stores…which alluded to this being a brand new blend from Nestor. I was lucky enough to find the leaf stats. There is nothing on the Plasencia web site because there is no Plasencia web site.
So here goes another blind taste test.

Nestor Plasencia makes a shit load of cigars…a huge shit load. Mostly for other manufacturers. He is the kind of the bundled cigar deal.

But he does take the time to put out some very good cigars under his own name. I’m hoping this is one of them because this is a big honker and will take a lot of my time.

The stick is fairly solid. With a couple soft spots near the cap. But it feels light in the tobacco department. There is a bit of an oily sheen. It appears the cap is a single.. The Corojo wrapper has that beautiful reddish hue. Which is a nice offset to the either maroon or reddish brown cigar band. (Men are usually color blind to shades of colors.) And then there is the hip gold lettering with the name of the cigar and what looks like the Alamo. I highly doubt it is the Alamo but I thought I would be funny. OK. Not funny.

Lots of veins. I clip the cap and find aromas of French toast, sweetness, cedar, spice, leather, and nuts.
Time to light up.

The first puffs are redolent with ha-cha-cha spiciness. The draw is excellent as smoke pours from the foot. Sweetness abounds. And a bit of earthiness.

The char line becomes instantly wavy. And the cigar, near the foot, really softens up. At the moment, the high level of red pepper is what attractive to me. I like ‘em spicy. The body starts out at classic medium.

Now Plasencia cigars sell a lot of its own brand on CI and they are rarely expensive. If you punch in the name Plasencia on CI’s web site, you will get a bunch of cigar choices but only 5 named Plasencia. The rest he either helped make or made for someone else.

And the price range is in the $3-$5 arena. So not your typical tattooed New Breed type of cigars. Which are usually very good but overpriced; with a few exceptions. So, this being a $7 cigar makes a bold statement.
The burn line is a mess and I touch it up.

At the halfway point of the first third, a flavor profile begins to develop. Some creaminess shows up.

I don’t usually smoke Churchills. But this was a gift. They take too long to burn. They are very rarely flavor intense. And they take too long to burn…I think I said that.

The cigar is getting some subtle flavors of toast, cinnamon, cashew, earthiness, and sweetness. The red pepper has tamped down a bit. And the creaminess is still the biggest component.

The ash is very delicate which takes me back to an early statement about the cigar feeling light in the loafers..er… tobacco.

I found nothing about the body of this cigar so I guessed when I started the review that it was probably medium in strength. So far, I’m dead on.

You seen the movie, “Oblivion” yet? What a disappointment. “Prometheus” still reigns.
The stick is turning out to be very pleasant. Nothing earth shattering. I certainly would not pay $7 for it. It should be like the rest of the Plasencia line; in the $4 range. I checked Cbid and the sticks are going in the $2-$3 range. This, I believe, is appropriate.

It’s a good knock around cigar but nothing special about it.

But because I love my readers, I will take a bullet to the chest and finish this monstrosity just in case it bursts from its cocoon into a butterfly later on in my journey.

I get the feeling that Nestor is trying to break into the New Breed of cigar blending with this cigar, failing miserably.
The cigar continues to have a lousy burn. At the halfway point, the cigar does begin to blossom a bit. The red pepper does resurgence. And the creaminess is joined by a bit of cocoa. The cashew component is very sweet…like raw cashews. The toastiness is a nice element. And keeps the cigar a little interesting. Clearly, I am grasping at straws here.

Then it happens as I begin the last third. The butterfly emerges. Flavors are bold and exuberant. Finally, the cigar can be called well balanced and now has a very long finish. Flavors are just exquisite.

But I am spoiled by the tattooed ones. Most of their cigars start off as flavor bombs in the first inch. The blossoming of flavor in the last third is old school. That is why Sam Leccia designed the Nub cigar. Right to the sweet spot of the cigar. Sort of man before his time. And I am glad his legal troubles are behind him and he is pumping out some extraordinary sticks.
So now I’ve hit the sweet spot. The cigar is absolutely delicious.

The last third is extremely pleasant and the strength increased quite a bit. I am getting a helluva nicotine kick. The flavors morph into one. Except for the creaminess and spice. The creaminess is just screaming laughter. Very potent.
I remove the band but it has too much glue requiring a knife to get it off. Where the hell is quality control?

I’m digging this cigar. And I bet with several months humidor time, instead of a few weeks, this cigar might surprise me. I have a second one that I will allow to nap for a couple of months. And if it changes dramatically, I will return and amend my review.

It’s hard for me to nub a stick with so much nicotine. Never have smoked a cigarette makes me a real pussy. When I can no longer focus on the laptop screen, it’s time to stop.

I finish the cigar, which took 90 minutes to complete, and am happy I got to try this stick. Even with the sweet spot being so delectable, it is not a $7 cigar. Go to Cbid.

And now for something completely different:

I was sitting, alone, at a small outdoor café in Paris. We had played the night before. And I just wanted to be alone. So I found a NY Times and sat and had some coffee and a croissant.

While I was reading, someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Roger Waters from Pink Floyd. He was sitting with Nick Mason, the drummer…who I had met earlier in my rock star life.

Roger asked if they could join me. Duh!

They were in town to play three concerts. We were there to play two. Nick told me that they had come to see us the night before. I asked why they didn’t come backstage and Nick told me they didn’t want to be obtrusive. “Be obtrusive next time, boys.”

Roger, who plays bass in PF told me he admired the way I played. Wow!! The thing is was that my style approximated Stanley Clarke’s style of jazz fusion which really hadn’t hit Europe yet. So I stood out. In fact, that style of playing is what got me the gig with Curved Air. For once, America was ahead of Britain is music stylings.

We sat and drank coffee for two hours. I told them all the dirt about CA. And Roger dished on David Gilmour. These fellas hadn’t gotten along in years.

Meanwhile, Nick was like me…the band’s peacemaker. Only he didn’t get fired for that trait like it did to me.

I found Roger a bit haughty. While Nick was a regular guy. Our good time kept being interrupted by autograph seekers. I was asked for my autograph not because I was in Curved Air, but because the morons thought I was in PF. So I started signing David Gilmour’s name. Roger got a big kick out of this and started introducing me as David.

We had a lot of fun in that brief two hours. I never laughed so hard. These were funny guys, like me. Then we started people watching and making up conversations we thought the passerbys should be saying. I spit my coffee out from laughing half a dozen times.

I discovered that they were playing across town that night from where we were to play, but at a much later hour. Roger invited me to come backstage and hang. I agreed instantly. After our gig, I quickly grabbed a taxi and took off. Didn’t even change out of my stage gear. The band asked where I was going and as I got into a cab, I yelled, “Roger Waters and Nick Mason invited me to their gig.”

They all laughed at me because in their minds that would never happen.

I got there an hour before they went on. I had plenty of hash on me but there was no need. These boys could smoke me under the table. Fortunately, their keys player smoked it in a pipe like I did. That European method of mixing the hash with cigarette tobacco was intolerable and made me sick.

I smoked so much that halfway through their almost three hour concert, I was too tired to go on. So I left, leaving a note explaining why I left. I was tired.

I ran into PF one more time. We were in England and both bands had finished their gigs and were heading back to London. The only place to get something to eat at that hour was these horrible truck stops every 25 miles. They had a little cafeteria and all you could get was the same thing: bangers, bacon, eggs, and potatoes. A real treat was that they liked to put stewed tomatoes on top of their eggs. It repulsed me at first but I got used to it and it became the only element that gave flavor to flavorless English food.

The band sat next to us in this giant dining room. Darryl whispered loudly, “That’s Pink Floyd!!!” We all laughed because he said it so loud that even PF could hear it and it made them laugh.

The next part was priceless. While CA tried to act cool and not make a big deal of sitting next to PF, the boys right away came over and shook my hand and hugged me. All of them. CA members were stunned.

“See. I told you they invited me in Paris to hang with them.”

This pissed Darryl off no end. He was such an arrogant prick. How could a lowly American like me…a newbie to the band be liked and acknowledged by such a famous band.

Nick sat down next to me at our table and we kibitzed for a while. He basically ignored my band mates. I was loving it.
There are a million road stories and this was just one.

Categories: CIGAR REVIEWS