Wrapper: Cameroon, U.S Connecticut Shade
Binder: Dominican
Filler: Dominican, Mexican
Size: 4.5 x 49 Petit Robusto
Strength: Mild/Medium
Price: $6.99

My cigars have been simmering naked for 4 months.

BACKGROUND:
From Atlantic Cigar Co.:
“The Partagas Anejo Petit Robusto a limited-edition cigar featuring a vintage 1998 Cameroon leaf coupled with a pin stripped 2013 USA Connecticut leaf intertwined making for a beautiful an eye-catching presentation for this special release. This carefully aged barber pole wrapper covers a Dominican binder and filler composed of Mexican San Andres and Dominican Piloto Cubano leaves. A mild to medium-bodied blend, that offers a splendid smoking indulgence with its woody, leathery, earthy, and grassy notes. The cigars are handmade in the Dominican Republic in limited quantities.”

SMELL THE GLOVE:
Notes of chocolate, floral, malt, caramel, black pepper, salted pretzel, pantry herbs, slightly minty, and cedar.
The cold draw is easily attainable as the cigar is wide open. The cigar feels light as a toothpick. My PerfecDraw draw adjustment tool hunkers down for the next catalog cigar I pick to smoke, but not review.
Not much to taste…but if I scrunch my asshole, there are notes of spiciness, creaminess, black pepper, cinnamon, herbs again, and cedar.

THE WHOLE MEGILLAH:
A lackluster beginning. Notes of black pepper, creaminess, herbal, cinnamon, and cedar.
It’s a cheap cigar and tastes like one.

A bit of black licorice arrives. Strength is closer to medium than mild.
I am projecting that this will be a 35-minute smoke.

There is some warming of its cockles with a balance ensuing that is just OK.
A pleasant nuttiness appears.
The creaminess takes control of the helm.
After 5 minutes, I’ve burned an inch. Not impressed.

Zero transitions. The finish is creamy and spicy.
No complexity to exhibit either.
10 years ago, this would have been a $3 cigar.

The blend decides to lift its skirts from nearly the start of the cigar and then goes no further. No momentum. A hack.

The burn is wonky, but I refrain from putting flame to foot.

You hand this cigar out to your friends who smoke liquor store cigars, and they will love you for it.

1-1/2” burned in 10 minutes. I detect a pattern.
The cinnamon element makes my tongue tingle.
The black pepper moves ahead of the creaminess.

If I puff really hard, maybe I can finish it off in a total of 20 minutes.
I haven’t reviewed in a week, so I picked something easy to eviscerate.

Sam-I-am.
Nicotine kicks in.

One trick pony that can’t find its way home.

Now I’m not sure if I should waste “And now for something different” on this cigar.

The barber pole strips are disembarking the Hindenburg.
The flavor points are canonized. It’s downhill from here.
Squishiness ensues.
It’s anarchy.

Now I must add a story to salvage my time spent with this horse meat sausage.
The cigar has had plenty of time to show off given its ambitions and humidor time.

For such a mild cigar, the nicotine is at Cesium level.

1-1/2” to go and I’m getting annoyed. Thankfully, the cigar only took 20 minutes to get here.
I’m getting flop sweat.

That’s enough. Welcome to the world of one of my shortest reviews in 12 years.
I’m pretty sure that the cigar will hit bargain bins within 6 months.
Carry on…

RATING: 70

And now for something completely different:

This thing with Americans getting busted in foreign countries thinking that they could bring drugs in with them makes me slap my forehead. How can you be so stupid? The arrogance of this act leaves me with no sympathy for the devil. This is a related story that reflects that even I realized the consequences nearly 50 years ago.

L-R: ME, ZELMO MUTZ, TIM KRENZIEN, & SKIP HOWLETT (CIRCA 1973):

We young lads were on an adventure. We bought plane tickets and decided to take our instruments to Europe and try our wares on unsuspecting cultures. Skip and his wife Debbie left two weeks early so they could visit her relatives in Denmark. Then we would leave and meet up in Florence Italy. I arrived with my bass guitar, a speaker cabinet, and an amp. It took up all the plane’s weight allowance, so our clothing was carry on.

Skip and Debbie landed in Amsterdam first. So did we. We all left our gear at the left luggage area and got claim tickets so we could pick them up later. Skip was supposed to stop in Amsterdam first and snag our stuff. And then meet up in Florence.

But upon meeting him in Florence, he told me the gear was missing!
Holy shit! I had my speaker cab custom made for the trip. 18″ Altec Lansing speaker encased in 24 ply Swedish wood on wheels. And an amp of whose manufacture I can’t remember.

We grabbed our Eurail Passes, left the women, and jumped the train to Amsterdam. Skip wanted to bring some hashish along in his ruck sack, but I told him no. We’d be going through Germany and there are lots of police jumping on and off the train looking for drugs…especially from Hippie-looking guys like us.

We found a compartment full of people and they made room for us. That evening, as we passed through Germany, the Gestapo crashed into our compartment with automatic weapons and sneers…and a desire to send me to Buchenwald. The leader immediately pointed at Skip and yelled, “HASHISH! HASHISH!!”

We all stood up and Skip shook his head no. The leader used his FMC automatic to point at the rack above our heads used for storage, and specifically at Skip’s ruck sack. Skip grabbed it and brought it down. The leader screamed in German for him to open it. (I took 2 years of high school German and my parents spoke Yiddish when I was young).

Skip carried a high school 3 ring binder with one of those zippered pouches for carrying pencils and erasers. It was milky opaque, but you could see everything in it….and within it, was a nice big, hash pipe… with hash in it…not even wrapped in foil or anything to conceal it. I fumed.

We are all standing in the compartment like the Marx Bros’ “A Night at the Opera.” Couldn’t move. But then I began flapping my arms thinking we were going to German prison.

The SS leader points at Skip’s binder gesturing to open things. My arms are flapping hard enough that if there was an air current, I could attain lift off. Right in front of my eyes, with the Gestapo leader standing a foot away and watching intently, Skip grabs the hash pipe out of the floppy container and puts it in his back pocket. With the cop staring right at what he was doing!

I’m ready to pass out. All I could think of was the movie, “Midnight Express.” And how I would be some Turk’s bitch. No more teeth for Philly.

And then with a “whoosh”, the German Polizei left the compartment. No one was rushed to jail.
We all stood there staring at Skip in horror. What just happened? He removed hidden hashish, a foot from the SS leader, and he didn’t see it.
HE DIDN’T SEE IT!!

Skip reached around to his back pocket and brought out the pipe with a shit eatin’ grin on his face.
I snatched the pipe away, opened the moving train’s window, and tossed it. Skip screeched in horror. I responded with: “Are you fucking insane?” Do you know how close we came?”

Everyone sat down with a huge sigh.
I could only glare at Skip the rest of the trip.

LOWER LEVEL AT THE PARADISO CLUB IN AMSTERDAM:

We changed trains and it was packed to the gills. Not a single place to sit. We stood in the corridor for hours before Skip ventured towards the area between the trains and plopped himself down on the moving platform where there is thunderous noise. Conductors walked past him and said nothing; even though they knew it was illegal to sit between train cars.

The train stopped again, and we had to transfer. We found a car with no one in it and grabbed a seat. Just before the train left, a conductor asked us if we knew we were on a train heading for East Berlin? (The wall was still up back then in those days).

We ran to the right train and, again, had to stand in the corridor. The train brought us into Amsterdam about 18 hours after we departed. No sleep. No food. Hardly any money.

We headed to the train storage area and, there, in the middle of the room, was our fucking equipment! Just as pristine as we left it. I looked at Skip thinking it would only take an ounce of encouragement from his mouth that would make my next move to strangle him.

He then began flapping his wings and puffing out un-intelligible sounds. I was so pissed off. We snagged some food before we headed back to Florence an hour later. We figure that someone who worked in the storage facility “borrowed” our shit and had some fun. But managed to get it back in time for us to show up and claim it.

Skip said he wanted to go to the Paradiso Club to buy more hash to take to Florence. I all but karate chopped him in the neck.

The trip back was uneventful other than the fact that Skip developed a bad cold and sat the entire journey between cars with snot hanging from his sagging head to the floor. A perfect example of Jethro Tull’s “Aqualung.” I, on the other hand, stood for about 16 hours.
Thank goodness we were young.
It’s funny now…sort of.

Categories: CIGAR REVIEWS