Aging Room Small Batch M21 | Cigar Review

By Cigar Reviews by the Katman on February 27, 2014

Wrapper: Dominican Habano Ligero
Binder: Dominican
Filler: Dominican
Size: 5.75 x 47 “Fortissimo Perfecto”
Body: Medium
Price: $12.90 per box of 10

This blend made its debut at the 2013 IPCPR trade show.

Fortissimo means for the orchestra to play loudly through a certain passage.

The stick is from Rafael Nodal and his Boutique Blends Cigars line. It is a limited production cigar that has an 8 year old wrapper. A total of only 3000 ten count boxes were released.

Construction is excellent. The wrapper is a medium brown with a very smooth touch. The pigtail cap is expertly conceived.

Loads of oil emanate from the wrapper. Seams are tight. There are a lot of veins but nothing off putting.
I like the size of the stick. It looks designed to become a flavor bomb.

I remove the pigtail cap but only the wrapper leaving the tobacco underneath untouched.

I smell notes of cocoa, sweetness, spice, cream, nuttiness, a very strong woodiness and leather at the clipped cap, and fruit.
Time to light up. With the small nipple at the foot, I normally clip it back a bit so not only do I get a good start but it generally eliminates the out of control char line.

The first puffs show off the rich tobacco flavor. Right after that comes the spiciness. The draw is perfect. The spiciness goes from black to red pepper in the blink of an eye and becomes very strong.

I also get flavors of cedar and leather.

As the cigar burns, I get some nice sweetness met by a graham cracker component.
The strength starts out at classic medium. But feels like it is going to get stronger.
The char line is a bit wavy.

So far, so good. A very nice and pleasant flavor profile. As it is not the usual Nicaraguan blend so popular, I expect some different notes.

The flavor profile keeps expanding as I smoke it down. The sweetness is not only graham cracker influenced but has a dash of caramel.
The flavors are ultra-smooth.

As the second third begins, the strength settles down into classic medium body.

At this point, I’d have to categorize this cigar as a “cookie.” The combo of sweetness, nuts, graham cracker and caramel make it something you want with a glass of milk.

I’m a big fan of Rafael Nodal and Boutique Blends. It seems that Rafael has really found his niche with these blends. Not a stinker in the bunch of them. All great sticks.

One thing I like about Rafael is that while he is a friend on FB (Boutique Blends Cigars), I can see from his posts that he is just a regular guy. No pretenses. I like that.

The lack of creaminess puts a special spin on this blend. Drat. Just as I write this, creaminess shows up. Go figure.
This ain’t a cheap cigar. And in limited production. But I thought it was worth the price to try one. It is one of those blends that you can taste where the money went.

I near the halfway point and the stick is singing to me.

Here are the flavors: Creaminess, nuttiness, graham cracker, sweetness, cedar, leather, and wood.

Swigs of water really make flavors explode on the palate. I never drink alcohol, especially spirits, when I smoke. It can really distract the flavor profile. I know there are plenty of sites that tell you what to pair your cigar with and I’ve tried it. But strong, even smooth, alcohol dominates your palate.

As I near the last third, there is a floral note. Honeysuckle. With a dash of real honey. Sweetness appears to dominate the flavors. The creaminess is the perfect offset.

It is friggin freezing here in Milwaukee. It is 11am and -22°. And I have windows open to ventilate the smoke. Brrrrr.
I know there are plenty of states experiencing the exact same thing. But as a California boy, I never got used to it. But the cost of living prohibits us from moving to warm parts of the country.

The last third makes the cigar an official flavor bomb. What a delicious cigar.

Thanks to the perfecto shape, the cigar band slides off easily.

The cigar finishes out beautifully. Balanced, long finish with plenty of nuance and smooth as can be.

Even at the price point, I recommend you get yourself what you can afford. You will thank your Uncle Katman.

And now for something completely different:

I’ve been in so many bands, both original bands and cover bands…that I cannot begin to count them all. But my favorite of all time was called “Homegrown.” It began in 1970 and ended in 1972.

There were five of us. All consummate musicians that could cover the great bands of the day from Led Zeppelin to the Stones to Cream to the Beatles to Grand Funk. We had ‘em down cold.

Unfortunately, these are the only photos in my possession that prove there was a band called Homegrown.

We discovered we had a huge popularity amongst Marines in So Cal. We played at El Toro, in Tustin, almost every month, if not twice. It drove the bookers crazy that the soldiers wanted us all the time. The other bookers wanted to put their variety wedding type bands in there and when they did, it was like WWIII.

The Marines would have been happy if we played there every weekend.

Our real forte was Zep. Our lead singer did Plant like nobody’s business. And the guitarist was Page incarnate.

We played where they ate chow. It was huge. It probably sat 500 hundred people. And it had a nice stage at one end of the room.

We got to know everyone. All the Marines. We even had a coterie of body guards to protect us from out of line Marines that got too drunk.

One night, a Marine decided he didn’t like me. So I started making fun of him in the mic.

He came at me so fast that no one could stop him. I was holding my huge Fender Precision bass and I turned to my left and just as he put his feet on the stage, I reared to my right, hard, and got him right in the face with the head of my bass.
He went sprawling on to the floor. He was dazed and confused for a long time.

Our singer did all the Hippie drugs of the day and loved to sing stoned to the gills.

So Marines would walk up to him while he was singing, Mark put his hand out; palm up, and the Marine would drop a bunch of pills into his hand. In one swoop, Mark mouthed and then swallowed them all. He had no idea what he took. He sang his best while on acid. LOL.

Shorty was the biggest offender of giving Mark drugs.

One day while setting up in the afternoon, a bunch of our friends came in looking concerned. They asked if we heard what happened to Shorty?

Our first thoughts were that he got shipped out to Viet Nam. No. That wasn’t it.

“Shorty took a shit load of drugs and went up to the roof of the barracks.” That would be four stories high.
“And then he jumped.”
We were horrified.

“But he’s OK. He will still be here tonight.”

We all looked at each other. Huh? “He’s not dead?”

“No. He was so loose from the drugs that he just bounced a couple times.”

That night, about halfway through our first set, in stumbled Shorty. He was limping and smiling at the same time.
He came over between songs, shook our hands and said he was fine. Just a little sore.

We played Camp Pendleton near San Diego only once. It was at the height of the Viet Nam war. Pendleton was merely a boot camp that got 2 year recruits ready to go there and pull a trigger.

At the end of each boot camp, a party was thrown on base. And our agent got us a gig there. Hundreds of really drunk Marines. They could barely move because there were so many of them.

They kept getting on stage and grabbing the microphone. MP’s kept pulling them off stage.

Most of the chatter into the mic was this: “I don’t wanna die! I don’t wanna die!!”
This was horrible and depressing.

Instead of hanging out with them during breaks, we hid in our dressing room but they barged in.

All of them would be crying. All of them would be bitching about the Marine Corps. How they hated it.

Our breaks kept getting shorter and shorter. We couldn’t take it.

A sergeant told us that one third of these guys would not come back.

After the gig, the Marines were sent out immediately and back to their barracks.

There was absolute silence as we packed the gear up.

And silence on the way home. We didn’t stop to get something to eat as we ordinarily did. We got our shit from the van, loaded our own cars up and headed home.

We didn’t talk to each other for several days. And at the very next practice, I told the band I am never playing that place again. They all nodded vigorously in agreement.

From then on, it was strictly El Toro.