Wrapper: Undisclosed
Binder: Undisclosed
Filler: Undisclosed
Size: 5 x 50 “Robusto”
Body: Full
Price: $7.00

Today we take a look at the new La Aurora Untamed Extreme.

I want to thank some really great people who allowed me to make my September medical payment. You can go to GoFundMe to contribute as little or as much as you can afford. The battle has just begun for me. And every bit of help from you makes a huge difference. Thanks Christopher P., Laurence M., Gary E., Brad, Darryl M., David W., Blake H., Lin H., Bobby W., John M., Charles L., and Rodney K.

I would like to thank Miami Cigar & Co. for sending me samples of not only this cigar but the Viva Republica Advanced Warfare.

BACKGROUND:
No release date has been set yet.
From the La Aurora press release:
“La Aurora, known for producing perfectly balanced cigars successfully created the aggressive full-bodied Untamed while delicately keeping their signature balance, between flavor and strength. La Aurora’s Master Blender, Manuel Inoa, is now looking to push palates even further, with the Untamed Extreme.

“Guillermo León, president of La Aurora stated: “Our team created an incredible cigar. With Untamed, we went beyond our traditional products. Now with Untamed Extreme, we look forward to solidifying our position as a company, which can offer products to please those looking, for a more extreme smoking experience.”

DESCRIPTION:
This wrapper is a gorgeous deep, dark chocolate with a reddish tinge. It is also very oily and slightly toothy. It is dark and foreboding outside with rain clouds and a steady drizzle.
It was really too hot and humid last night for this California boy. Woke up constantly soaked to the bone. The point is on my first day back, no sun for photos. I have only one stick for review and doubt waiting for the sun to come out will happen during my window of convenience. Well, that was friggin boring, weren’t it, lads?

Construction is excellent with tight seams, few veins, a perfect triple cap, and very firm in the hand. Like me.
This small cigar is covered about 50% with cigar bands. The main band is that bold La Aurora lion in bright gold. It says “La Aurora” and “Untamed.”
The footer is a bright red with the singular word: “Extreme.”

SIZES AND PRICING:
The cigar comes in only three sizes (Not disclosed in the Press Release):
Robusto, Toro, and the 7 x 60 Behemoth. Price range is $7.00-$11.00. I’m spit ballin’ here but I would say the Robusto is $7.00, the Toro is $9.00, and the Behemoth is $11.00.

AROMAS AND COLD DRAW NOTES:
Both cherries and dark cocoa drive the bus. Joining those aromas are barnyard, earthy tobacco, a bit of coffee, toffee, and some leather.
The clipped cap and foot give off aromas of dark cocoa, barnyard, toffee, raisins, and earthiness.
The cold draw presents flavors of earthy tobacco, cocoa, spice, a touch of leather, and a bit of raisin.

FIRST THIRD:
The draw is pretty good. I’ve had the samples for nearly a month and the second of three sent to me was smoked a few days ago and seemed to be rarin’ to go.

The thing about La Aurora is that the blends, generally, need a lot of humidor time. But I wanted to return with a new cigar blend as opposed to something you’ve already smoked a 100 times. I do not believe they have been released yet.
Strength is pretty mild for a cigar described as full body. I may have screwed up by dry boxing the cigar in 88% humidity. It would have been better off in my 68% humidor. I wasn’t thinking. The cigar feels moist.

I’m a quarter inch in and to be quite honest, no flavors. A touch of spice and earthiness but that’s all folks.

I take a sip of water and a few flavors rush on by: Chocolate, sweetness, cherries, raisins, and coffee. So far, tastes like a Nic puro. I have no idea why they didn’t disclose the leaf stats. They released them with the first “Untamed” blend. Here they are: Wrapper: Connecticut Broadleaf, Binder: Dominican Corojo, and Filler: Dominican & Nicaraguan.

The La Aurora Untamed Extreme finally breaks on through to the other side: Red pepper, creaminess, cocoa, coffee, raisins, Bing cherries, malt (Biscuit Malt, Caramel Wheat) See Malt Chart, sweetness, leather, and very earthy notes.
Strength is medium body.

This is a very slow smoke. I don’t know if it is due to it being packed solid or the moistness.
Now the first stage of the Sweet Spot has kicked in. Spice, cocoa, cherries, and creaminess lead the pack of lemmings…or gazelles. In my present state, I can’t remember which is which. LOL.
Right now it tastes like a $6-$7 cigar. It’s OK but nothing special.

SECOND THIRD:
Smoke time is 20 minutes.
The earthiness of the tobacco is really the show at this point. The strength is just approaching medium/full. Flavors have diminished some. I no longer can identify a sweet spot. It vanished into the haze.

This might be why there are no other reviews, as of this day, of this cigar. All the Big Guys got their samples. But then they are so overloaded with free samples for review that their list must be a mile long. Me? I’m a shlub who begs for cigars.

The cigar goes out on me. Yeah, moist.
I reviewed the Untamed back in March. And I just read it again. I gave that puppy a huge rave review. This follow up is nothing like that blend. Unfortunately, not for the better.

The original Untamed was chock full of flavors and a real flavor bomb. The La Aurora Untamed Extreme is the little engine that could. It is trying so hard to be a really good cigar but it just ain’t getting there. For chrissakes, by this point, it should be blaring wonderful flavor. I generally review cigars after a month or less of humidor time. So this is no different than the review of the original Untamed.

This blend was supposed to put the Untamed to shame…sort of…well, you get my gist.
Strength is now a strong medium/full. I expected it to be a dynamite stick by now giving me the spins. It is just cruising on some nice flavors and an easy going profile.
Caramel joins the list of flavors. And once again, the flavor profile ramps up.

The malt conglomerate takes on the bedrock of the flavor profile. It pulls all the other flavors together.
New flavors and some old flavors: Creaminess, Malt, chocolate, caramel, nuts, toasty, peanuts (Same as the original Untamed), raisins, (the cherries are gone), sweetness, summer fruit, earthiness, leather, and cedar.

It’s as if the pupae became a butterfly. About time. I don’t think I will be on the Miami Cigar & Co. reviewer’s list after this review. That’s OK. I won’t remember why. LOL.

Side note: Charlotte got a new job. The last part time job was killing her. She had to clean apartments at an expensive retirement home in Brookfield. Very upscale. But the work was tearing her down.

She now works at Buddy Squirrel at Milwaukee Airport. She will sell candy and nuts. And give tours of the factory. The money is shit but she doesn’t need to get up at the crack of dawn any longer or go to bed at 9pm. I am so happy for her. They really took advantage of her good nature at the last place. She starts in two weeks. I’ve always bemoaned the fact that a woman with a Master’s in psychology from Goethe Universitat in Frankfurt never got the chance to use those skills to make some good dough.

HALFWAY POINT:
Smoke time is 40 minutes.
Since this ain’t a rave review, I might as well post a rock n roll story that I don’t believe I’ve ever told you.
Some nicotine shows up just as the La Aurora Untamed Extreme becomes full bodied.

No change to the flavors except for the caramel is making a big showing.
And right after typing the last sentence, the flavors really blossom. Big and bold. Like me.

The caramel and malt are screaming laughter adding Chocolate Rye Malt and Crystal/Caramel Malt.
This is what the La Aurora Untamed Extreme should have tasted like in the first 5 minutes. I don’t think my rating is going to be that great.

Jimi is on the cable TV radio and I’ve got the walls shaking.

The peanut element turns into peanut butter just like the original Untamed. The fruit is defined now as some kind of berry. So now we have a PB&J sandwich.

At this time, I would rather have a box of the original Untamed rather than a box of the La Aurora Untamed Extreme.

Ever wonder why I use the name of the cigar in its totality a lot? Google algorithms. By repeating the name as much as possible helps get me to the top of the review list on all of the search engines. The rest of the equation for getting me on at least the first page, if not the top 5, is still a secret and took me two days of research to get there.
Algorithms are tricky.

Turns out that the cigar is not that moist. The stick is pretty solid.
The La Aurora Untamed Extreme is very flavorful. A very nice cigar. But $7.00 is right on the money.
My good buddy, Darryl, sent me a bunch of cigars whose average humidor age is 4 years. I smoked a few that I’ve already reviewed yesterday and I don’t get it. Why do people think that long aging time improves the cigar?

All the great cigars seem to lose their oomph and zestiness. Virtually no spiciness left.

Spiciness comes from the fermentation time. So it makes sense that an extremely aged cigar will lose that component; which it did in the care package cigars I smoked. Don’t get me wrong. They were very tasty but much milder than they should have been.

Tomorrow, I will review the Tatuaje Brown Label Unicos Torpedo that Darryl sent me. It has 4-1/2 to 5 years of humidor time. And since the cigar is still available, I see no reason not to review it.

Back to the La Aurora Untamed Extreme.
If the cigar tasted like this earlier on, I would give it a very nice rating.

LAST THIRD:
Smoke time is 60 minutes.
The flavor profile has been pretty predictable. Not a big change over the original Untamed.
This is what I said in that review: “Right off the bat, the flavor profile is not messing around and the cigar takes off like the supersonic Concorde.”
The La Aurora Untamed Extreme takes off like a Cessna 183.

The cigar goes out again.
Despite the moistness, the char line has done a good job.

The final list of flavors: Chocolate, peanuts, caramel, malt, creaminess, toasty, sweetness, cedar, fruit, raisins, leather, and earthy tobacco. All in all, not a bad cigar. But it just doesn’t have that big “It” factor that the original Untamed had.

The strength is piling it on. I’m swooning from the nicotine.

I check Cbid and there are three units of the original Untamed up for auction. A box of Corona Gorda, that ends tonight, is going for $43 for 24 sticks. And the others are equally inexpensive at around $3.00 per stick. I’d jump on the box if I had the dough. And I’m pretty sure that’s where the La Aurora Untamed Extreme will end up a couple months after its release.

Let’s face it. La Aurora is not the greatest of brands out there. I found 20 blends on the Miami Cigar & Co. web site. There are a few really good blends there but overall, not so much.

“Urgent” by Foreigner is playing now. The best part of the song is the great sax solo by famed reed player Junior Walker. It came out in 1981. And I remember finding out that Junior Walker was not happy. They made him drop in his part every two bars. The solo sounds continuous but it was chopped up and inserted bit by bit. Really pissed Walker off. You can check out the song on YouTube.

As the end is near, this has been somewhat of an uneventful smoke.
After the wonderful experience with the Untamed, I expected more. The PR overplayed their hand on this blend. Instead of a quantum leap, it took a couple baby steps.

OK. Time to rate. I give it an 86. It is a pleasant cigar but nothing special.
No need to hold your breath until the La Aurora Untamed Extreme is released.
Final smoke time was 80 minutes.

PRICE POINT:
$7.00. I’m sure once it is on the shelves, you can probably score it for $5-$6 on Cbid.
But $9 for the Toro and $11 for the Behemoth? Ahh…I don’t think the cigar is worth that many shekels. And of course, the robusto that I am reviewing, will be the most flavorful of the bunch.

SUMMATION:
It feels good to be in front of my laptop. In spite of my meandering, I had a gratifying experience this morning. Now if only the cigar I reviewed met my expectations, things would have been much better.
If you do try it, wait til the price falls.
Please go to GoFundMe and donate all you can. PayPal works too. Thanks dear readers.

And now for something completely different:
A fan of Curved Air wrote to me and told me this story that I had completely forgotten.
Our first stop in Europe for a 6 week tour was Amsterdam. It was 1974.

We went into a sex shop and Sonja bought a tiny vibrator that one can turn on and just slide the whole damn thing right into the quedgie.
Stew came up with the idea of buying a giant rubber penis and he would tape it to his pants while playing drums.
The moment arrived and he chickened out.

The last song of the night, before encores of course, was Darryl’s theme song “Vivaldi.”
In the middle, Darryl would take off on a violin psychedelic tour of the universe using all the electronic pedals available back in 1974. The audience was stoned, or drunk, or both.
We would run off stage and light up a bowl and wait for the horrible 10 minutes to be over. Then we would run back on stage as Darryl began playing the “Sailor’s Horn Pipe.”

Stew refused to put the rubber penis on so I took the responsibility of dazzling the audience.
I always took my bass off stage with me during Darryl’s solos.

Roadie, Beric Wickens, nearly used an entire roll of duct tape to get that thing on me. And doing it so it wouldn’t be that obvious. I stood there in the wings with my pants dropped. I wore suede leather pants. And it took an act of God to get them on each gig. I could barely breathe by the time he was done.

I ran out on stage with my bass hanging from my shoulders. The rubber penis was hidden by the bass.
Sonja was at the mic thanking the audience. (I just typed “office” and had to go back and type “audience.” ??)

We did our first encore number called “Stretch.” How appropriate. It was my only bass solo the entire gig.
Right in the middle of my solo, I flipped my bass up towards my chest exposing the rubber penis. The lighting guy was cued to put a pin sized spot light on my crotch.

The audience went nuts.
And then I got arrested.

It wasn’t uncommon for Bobbies to be in attendance of any concert.
They didn’t even wait for us to finish. These two idiots walked on to the stage and grabbed each of my arms.
I then pulled what I call my Marx Bros. move. I did a Captain Spalding running around the front of the stage dragging the Bobbies along with me. The applause was deafening.

The managing director of BTM was not happy when he got the call from the Nottingham police. He drove up from London in the middle of the night and got me out.

He started to yell at me once we were in his big fancy Jaguar. And then he just started to laugh uncontrollably.
I got home and as I undressed, I went into deep depression as I stared at my Jewish weenie; undersized and so white that it reflected light. I would have become a really big rock star if my penis were really as big as the rubber one.

I was called on the carpet in Miles Copeland’s office. I stood there and was warned. Dire consequences were promised.
I behaved appropriately and promised I would never do that again.
So, I didn’t.
Ahh…youth!

Categories: CIGAR REVIEWS

Tags: cigar review, cigar reviews by the katman, cigars, La Aurora Untamed Extreme Pre-Release Cigar Review, miami cigar & co.