Wrapper: Nicaraguan Jalapa Corojo 99′ AGANORSA (Agricola Ganadera Norteña S.A.)
Binder: Nicaraguan AGANORSA
Filler: Nicaraguan Corojo 99′ + Criollo 98’ AGANORSA + Medio Tiempo
Size: 5.25 x 48
Body: Medium/Full
Price: $10.50
Humidor Time: 6-7 weeks
Number of cigars smoked: 2

Today we take a look at the Warped Cigars Maestro del Tiempo.
Many thanks to an anonymous friend who supplied me with samples.

Photo courtesy of Warped Cigars:

BACKGROUND:
Debuted at the 2016 IPCPR trade show.
Factory: Casa Fernandez TABSA
Kyle Gellis is keeping the reason for the odd size names close to his chest and not divulging a thing.

According to Halfwheel.com:
“As for that AGANORSA tobacco, it’s a Corojo 99 wrapper from Jalapa, Criollo 98 and Corojo 99 fillers and a mixture of Nicaraguan tobaccos.

“A special 6102R (5 1/4 x 48) vitola will be offered. It features a tweaked blend, including the addition of medio tiempo tobacco from Estelí, and is limited to 150 cabinets of 100 cigars.
“A Medio tiempo (Spanish for “Master of Time”) is a priming that is found on some plants above the ligero leaves. Because the leaves are the highest on the tobacco plant, they feature more strength and intensity than other leaves.”

SIZES AND PRICING:
5205: 6.385 x 42 $8.95 Lonsdale (25 count boxes)
5712: 4.5 x 52 $9.65 Petite Robusto (25 count boxes)
6102R: 5.25 x 48 $10.50 (Only 150 cabinets of 100 were produced for a total of 15,000 total cigars.)

DESCRIPTION:
The cigar is packed solid with tobacco…no soft spots. I’ve taken it straight from my humidor and chose not to dry box it in our humid, rainy weather. If it stays jammed up and jelly tight, it proves my hypothesis that a couple cigars I reviewed recently were, in fact, under filled.
A nice oiliness coats the wrapper. It is a russet brown color with invisible seams and few veins. Amazingly, it has kept its near perfectly round shape despite handling, boxing, and shipment.

AROMAS AND COLD DRAW NOTES:
From the shaft, I can smell honey, floral notes, sourdough bread, whipped cream, dark cocoa, cedar, roasted peanuts, and salted pretzel.
From the clipped cap and the foot, I can smell strong red pepper, walnuts, peanuts, honey, cocoa, cedar, sourdough, and salt.
The cold draw presents flavors of salty pretzel, peanuts, spice, sourdough, cedar, and honey.

FIRST THIRD:
The Maestro del Tiempo starts off peppery, very creamy, sweet notes, salty, nutty, notes of cedar, and salted caramel.
The pepper continues to build with each puff.
Strength is medium body.

There is a very nice even distribution of flavors with a natural smoothness at play.
Char line is on the money.
Peanuts become peanut butter. Honey complements the flavor.

The Maestro del Tiempo is a nice leisurely smoke that allows me to savor all it’s got.
The creamy element gets a boost and coats my teeth. A new buttery component adds to that chewiness. All of a sudden, I feel like eating a homemade biscuit.
The pepper has moved to the back of the line.

When I received samples of this cigar from an anonymous reader, I had no idea what they were. The cigar bands are tiny and unreadable with old eyes. I could have used a magnifying glass we keep for just this reason, but I didn’t. It wasn’t til the other day, when I was contacted by a reader who asked why I hadn’t reviewed this cigar? Didn’t know I had it. So now it has plenty of humidor time to write about.

The char line makes its first faux pas. Needs immediate correction.
Strength hits medium/full.
Nuttiness is the star of the show in terms of the flavor profile. But that delicious tobacco makes a big showing all on its own. AGANORSA tobacco has a distinctive flavor that is guttural, sweet, and perfectly smooth.

SECOND THIRD:
Smoke time is 25 minutes.
Decadency now directs the entire experience as it is boosted to a new level as the second third starts.
There are no distractions to impede what this blend was designed to do.

I’ve reviewed 8 different blends from Warped Cigars. I find the blends to be inconsistent…some are spectacular blends and others are pedestrian. The Maestro del Tiempo is warming up to be the former.

Ever eaten honey walnut shrimp from your favorite Chinese joint? That is exactly what I taste now…minus the shrimp. Honey walnuts.
Yet, the peanut element is giving its half-sister, the walnuts, a run for its money.

Damn. As of this week, it is now darker for more hours than it is light. Sun doesn’t come up til nearly 7am. And before 7pm, the sun goes down. The only thing I miss about a Wisconsin summer; the long hours of light. You can keep the warm sticky humidity. If I spend more than an hour outside in this humidity, my 1974 afro returns.

I pour myself my first cup of coffee. If you check Cbid, they sell some great boutique blends for pennies on the dollar. I bought a 12 oz. bag of One Village Coffee Artist Blend for $7. Try and buy a boutique blend of beans at your grocery store for that price.

The halfway point is upon me.
The blend becomes super complex at this juncture. The red pepper surges like a mutta futta.
My excellent cup of coffee really accentuates all the dominant flavors…and exposes some of the more subtle ones.
Except for that one glitch, the char line has been spot on.
The wrapper is extremely thin. As I remove the secondary cigar band, a piece of wrapper is dislodged. Out comes the cigar glue.

One thing I hear from readers is how frustrated they get with fully packed cigars but they end up sucking on them like drinking a thick milkshake with a flattened straw. And worse, if they try to use a cigar awl to clear the passage, the sound of snap, crackle and pop is heard and the exercises stops dead in its tracks.
The Maestro del Tiempo is packed to the gills but provides a smooth and unfettered draw with loads of smoke that circles my head like a rain cloud.

LAST THIRD:
Smoke time is 45 minutes.
I am really digging this blend. I was bummed out at the last few reviews where I expected much and was disappointed greatly.
At last, a great cigar blend to write about.

Here they are: Creaminess, pepper, peanuts, walnuts, honey, sourdough, espresso, cocoa, sweet butter, cedar, a heavenly tobacco flavor, and salted caramel.
I’m glad I didn’t review the Maestro del Tiempo sooner than this. I might have missed out on some terrific subtle notes.

I removed the main cigar band and it’s déjà vu all over again. It removes some very thin wrapper with it.
Damn. I hit the sweet spot. This is fabulous.
The creaminess is abundant with compadres of sweet butter and coffee.

The char line is ragged. But as I am near the end, what the hell…why futz with it?
I love the Maestro del Tiempo. I have one left and I shall let it rest another month or two before indulging to see if the sweet spot shows up earlier.

I don’t understand why this size only comes in boxes of 100. While the other two sizes come in more manageable counts of 25. Clearly, 5 packs are available. But this stick is box worthy. But not for over $1000. That’s nuts.

Last thought…Kyle Gellis picked the perfect three sizes for this blend. I believe most experienced smokers prefer them in these incarnations. I’m just not a Gordo fan. The smaller sizes bring so much more to the table. The only downside is that they don’t deliver the 2 hour experience.
Get some of the Maestro del Tiempo before they are gone..especially in this size.

Final smoke time is one hour 15 minutes. The blend finishes off with a very smooth medium/full strength and not a lick of nicotine.

RAITNG: 94

The beat goes on….

In 1982, Long Beach, California had around 400,000 inhabitants.
And only two recording studios.
Both small; but doing business.
I bought my way into one. My gramps had died and left me some money.

The studio was called Sound Sorcery. I didn’t like the name but it had already been established.
It was in downtown Long Beach only blocks away from the beach. We had to shut down every year, for a whole week, during the Long Beach Gran Prix.

My partner did most of the engineering. I did everything else…which included producing all the bands that came in. And shoveling my grandpa’s money into modernizing the place.
The state of the place was a friggin wreck when I walked in. Totally disorganized. And needing serious updates to equipment and design.

So I did my thing and transformed the place into a modern, efficient company that turned a profit. We tore up the entire guts of the recording area and rebuilt it so it had perfect acoustics. I even brought in an acoustics engineer to redesign it for us.

We ripped the walls down from the ceiling down to about 5 feet from the floor. We then brought a dump truck full of sand and filled the inside of the walls with it…then closed it up again. We reshaped the walls and corners so that they bounced sound perfectly or deadened it perfectly.

We owned a used 1960’s “Wally Heider Studio” 8 track reel to reel recorder. 3” tape. That damn tape cost a fortune even back then. Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead all recorded using our machine.
We bought a brand new 16 track board. A Carvin. And lots of electronic doo dads. And we got as high tech as the 80’s would allow. My partner was a true journeyman engineer.

We worked 12-15 hour days 7 days a week.
As it was the early 1980’s, you don’t have to guess how we stayed alert during grueling recording sessions…sometimes 3 per day running 4-6 hours each.

On top of that, I was picking up session work on my bass for a lot of bands that had no bassist. I couldn’t play while they recorded, but instead, I would come in around 11pm, when the studio was closed, and I would lay down the tracks sometimes seeing the sun come up through the glass block windows in the lobby. It was my favorite time in the studio. Alone in the booth, just my bass, headphones, and I ran the recorder and the board while I found the right bass lines for the song.
I’d then go home and catch 4 hours sleep and then be back at the studio by 10am.

I sometimes brought in members of the famous L.A. Wrecking Crew, and also some local musician friends that went on to the big time, to help me when we had clients that were flush with dough.

It didn’t take long til our studio became its own rock star.

We did a lot of advertising and it worked. I wrote music columns for the two underground newspapers. And I bartered that for lots of free advertising.

We recorded bands, radio commercials, soloists, and video production; pre-MTV.

This cracked me up….Right in front of the door to the booth, we nailed a nickel to the floor. Countless clients tried to remove it and struggled…but never got it. When they walked into the booth, they found my partner laughing at them. It never failed to amuse. People not giving up on a free nickel taking minutes out of their lives to remove it.

My partner was previously head engineer at a film company in Hollywood. He engineered the sound for the only type of films they made: Pornography.
The actors in these films would come in and overdub moaning and groaning and slurpy sounds while watching themselves on the big screen. They brought vats of lotion to rub on their hands and fingers to get that sound. My partner said it was pretty gross and that all the women were horrifyingly skanky.
New engineer hires were tested to the max. They were forced to start off engineering the sound for gay porno. Most never lasted more than a few days. They sat in the booth facing a big movie screen watching guys doing guys while gay men overdubbed all the sounds.

When my partner told me about this, the very thought of that gave me the shivers. It’s something you’d never be able to get out of your head for the rest of your life.

I got tired of my partner embezzling while I was on the road promoting the Eddie Munster project, so I dissolved the partnership. Each time I went on the road, he stole and no matter how I threatened him, he ignored me.

I discovered a band playing out in Orange County headed by a guitarist I had known in high school. Excellent band. I was impressed. Two brothers. One played drums and the other keys. A bassist. And my buddy who was leader, vocalist, guitarist and played violin. All sang perfect harmonies and they were just a killer band playing the hippest and coolest music around.

Every time they broke into The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly” or Charlie Daniel’s “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” the club would go nuts. They had a great sound system so that is what I began doing; running the board…in addition to managing them.
They played locally for a couple months while I did their sound. But their headquarters was in South Lake Tahoe, Ca.

I had nothing to lose so I went with them. I was in dire need for some decompression.

The band leader’s wife’s parents owned a gorgeous multi-bedroom cabin in Tahoe and that’s where we lived from May to October.

The band was a big deal in Tahoe and had lots of gigs lined up. I got a cut as a 5th member of the band. Didn’t get rich but I fed myself. And if you’ve never seen, in person, the gorgeous mountains, lake, and forests of Tahoe, you’ve missed out on one of the great experiences of life.

While setting up for the first night’s gig, I was introduced to Charlotte Reichardt. A friend of the band.
The band had a plan. Set the Jew up with a German Catholic. Should be hilarious.

We took a break from hauling the gear and sat down for a beer in a big half circle booth. In walked Charlotte. Caught my eye right away.
She sat down opposite me and gave the boys hugs while saying hello.
Then she spoke.

A steel worker, or dock worker, would be offended by the way she talked.
She dropped four F* bombs per sentence.
The boys told me that my mouth was hanging open the whole time she was there.
We all swore of course, but I had never heard a woman swear like this.

Within a couple weeks, she asked me out. She claims it was the other way around. We had set a date and then I had to cancel as the band was going into the recording studio and I promised to produce them.
We did go out the following week and hit it off. Really smart lady and very funny. Made me laugh.

She felt bad for me because I was sleeping on the floor of that cabin so she took me in and I became a kept man. She had a condo right on the shore of the lake. Just feet away….Beautiful.

I grew very bored with the band and music. The novelty had melted away. Four months was enough.
Charlotte and I high tailed it down to Long Beach and I went to work for my father at his steel shop as a project manager.

I had had it with the music business. It was no longer fun. It was a chore. I tired of constantly dealing with big egos and assholes. “The customer is always right” syndrome wore thin.
6 months later, Charlotte and I got married at Indio City Hall. The county seat for the Palm Springs area. My dad had a condo there.

They had no courtrooms available so we got married by an official in a clerk’s office with a huge picture window that overlooked people in line paying their traffic tickets. It was so humiliating.
We started out our lives together like 18 year olds. Small apartment. Saving money. And then had a baby 11 months later. But nothing compares to having a steady pay check and having health insurance. It took a couple years before I was ready to go back to playing. By then, all the bad shit had been compartmentalized.
I was happy.

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