Wrapper: Honduran Olancho San Agustin
Binder: Honduran Jamastran
Filler: Honduran Jamastran and La Entrada
Size: 6.25 x 54 Toro Box Pressed
Strength: Medium/Full
Price: $8.99
I seem to have ventured into the lane of reviewing expensive cigars lately. I shall pay my penance by reviewing an affordable cigar today.
I received these cigars from General Cigar over 7 months ago.
My sponsors are sold out but in my Google search, I found several online cigar stores that still have them for sale. So, go nuts.
BACKGROUND:
Released August 2022
Limited production of 2500 boxes of 20
2000 smokers participated in a poll giving advice for an LGC blend they’d like to smoke…LGC listened. I believe LGC is currently doing this again for the next release.
THE WHOLE MEGILLAH:
I haven’t smoked a Honduran puro in ages. I’ve smoked one stick of this blend but it was only a couple months into its hibernation.
I found only one written review done by Blind Man’s Puff. And they too waited 7 months. I didn’t read it as I don’t want to be influenced before I review a cigar. But they clearly liked it due to their final rating, so that’s a good sign.
It has been 80 degrees the last 7 days here in Milwaukee. This morning at 7am, it is 19 degrees and snowing. I always open the windows for a review. I am layering myself in lard and ferret fat to ward off frozen testicles. Since they mostly hang around my knees, I am afraid they will snap off at the midway point. I may still want to get Charlotte pregnant.
The box pressed corners did not fare well in my humidor. Pretty close to just being a common shaped round cigar.
Nice subtle aromas from the wrapper: Gingerbread, cinnamon, black and red peppers, milk chocolate, creamy vanilla, café au lait, cedar, and freshly baked bread.
The draw is too airy for my tastes. The cigar weighs nothing. This review won’t take long. My PerfecDraw draw adjustment tool sulks in its sarcophagus.
First puffs are tasty. Elements of creaminess, milk chocolate, a lovely maltiness, a touch of black pepper, cinnamon, raisins, black licorice, and fresh cedar.
OK. Good start.
I get an immediate run in the burn. Drat.
If I am required to chase the run for the entire review, I will be pounding my desk with my shoe like Khrushchev. I’m so fucking old I remember watching that on the evening news in 1960 when I was 10.
I torch a hefty half inch to try and rid the cigar of its run to West Germany. Now I wait and cross my fingers. I’ve found the trick is to torch the fucker and then let it sit for a couple minutes and try a few delicate puffs hoping the run has stopped. I sometimes chop off the offending half inch and re-light.
Strength is medium.
Complexity is minimally effective at this point. C’mon…7 months of naked slumber. If this is what 2000 LGC fans wanted…Yikes.
The body is weak. Just a so-so creamy cigar. Nothing special.
I’ve never been a fan of Honduran cigars. Especially Honduran puros. I don’t feel tobacco coming from that country has any significant balls or intensity. Used as a multi-country mash up and it works just fine.
The cigar is thinking of running again.
I stopped writing to go ahead and read Blind Man Puff’s review and we seem to be on the same page as far as its flavor points.
The goddamn run is starting to piss me off. If the construction disintegrates during this review, my rating will reflect poor rolling. The first one I smoked had an identical issue. I take drastic actions and clip the entire cherry from the cigar and let it cool off in the ashtray.
The flavor points are linear…not helped by its burn issues.
Transitions are non-existent. The finish is black pepper and creaminess.
Unless there is a major turnaround, I rate this as an unbanded no-name $6 cigar.
There are notes of coffee, milk chocolate, creaminess, black pepper, raisins, malt, and cinnamon. But they are not transitioning into fatter notes as I smoke the cigar down with 4” left to go. If this was truly a good cigar, I’d have seen something in the blender’s intent to ring the gong and declare victory.
If this cigar planned on shining, 7 months of humidor time would have brought out its sparkling personality. Clearly, aging made no difference in the blend. All I see is crazed Jack Nicholson’s head through the cracked door.
The char line refuses to behave. This is a deal breaker for me.
Zero depth. Subtleties and nuances are merely invisible to the naked eye.
Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” is playing in my pods. Now this is a song that stands the test of time.
I near the halfway point and the strength is upped to medium/full. But still very much linear in its approach.
I gotta’ add an old Stewart Copeland story from 1975 to this review to make it worth reading.
The fact that I only found one review after a release date nearly 8 months ago tells the story of this blend. It just wasn’t worth reviewing. My apologies are offered as I kneel before you with hat in hand.
The cigar has a very pretty billboard sized cigar band…so it has that going for it.
I really hope the second half has something to add to the conversation.
Shhhh…the burn is behaving…did I jinx it by commenting?
It took the cigar 25 minutes to reach the halfway point. Underfilled.
Yep. I fucking jinxed it.
The blend opens up a bit. But now it is too spicy. It outweighs any subtleties I was counting on.
I have no idea what the 2000 smokers told LGC about what they wanted to see in a new blend. Either LGC failed to meet their expectations or…
A sweetness pushes through the spiciness. Raisins and brown sugar.
The savory v. sweet balance is out of whack.
Due to the cigar being light in the loafers, an unwanted heat appears.
The second half is better than the first half but that doesn’t reward the blend with a gold medal at the kosher pig competition.
Normally, I’d pack it in by now. But I want to give the second half a chance.
Sips of water do not bring flavors to the forefront. Sips of water are taken to put out the heat.
The cigar remains at a $6 status.
LGC is merely an unremarkable catalog cigar that lures smokers who are at the beginning of their cigar adventure. And that’s OK.
You should read Blind Man’s Puff review. They might have much better palates than I possess.
Nicotine enters. My vision blurs.
With 2” to go, I stick a fork in it. A linear blend with little character and no substantial redeeming qualities. A shame.
RATING: 75
And now for something completely different:
1975
We were in Amsterdam looking for hash because the Paradiso Club was closed on Mondays. Damn! The band’s American lyricist… (A very nice older lady of 40…ha-ha) told us where her connection was. She gave us a map. Yes, she traveled with the band. Her name was Norma. She died an untimely death from cancer. Sweet woman. And my only other Jewish comrade in London.
Stewart Copeland and I took off on our journey. The city is peppered with canals which are used for both travel but are also lined with thousands of house boats.
You could always tell where to buy weed because the houseboat had it growing on its roof. A not very subtle advertising gimmick. But you didn’t know its quality; so, you took your chances. And even though we were all on the management payroll and “rock stars,” we were still relatively poor. Magical management accounting ledgers.
The map got us hopelessly lost. And we started knocking on doors of houseboats asking for directions. One boat invited us in, and we were shocked at what we saw.
An American man, garbed like a feudal king, was sitting on an honest to God regal throne. Gathered at his feet, were half a dozen young boys in their underwear. The décor was an homage to Liberace. He kindly gave us the right directions (as we would find out) and then we did a Three Stooges shtick of trying to get out the door.
We got to the right boat. I impressed Stew that he should knock instead of just announcing we were there. But nobody told Stew anything. And Stew was a big guy; so, he had a false sense of power. We were young.
The door opened, a fist was thrown into Stew’s face, and he crumpled like a cheap suit. I charged the big burly man and cold cocked him with one punch to the neck. I can’t claim to be smart when I was young.
I stepped over his slumped body and walked over to a big desk. On top was a chunk of hashish the size of a dinner plate and about 2” thick. I broke off a piece, put some Guilders down to pay for it and helped get Stew up.
The boat owner was still out cold. We ignored him and left.
As Americans, Stew and I chose to smoke our hash in a pipe instead of that stupid method all Europeans used; they got two rolling papers laid end to end; overlapping. They broke up one or two cigarettes and sprinkled the tobacco inside the rolling paper. They then heated and crumbled the hash; and sprinkled it on the tobacco. A piece of match book was used and rolled into a tube and placed at one end of the unrolled concoction. The whole thing was then rolled into a long joint, with a cardboard mouthpiece.
Neither of us smoked cigarettes and that method gave us the spins. So, a pipe was the way to go. At parties, we offered our pipe to the Europeans, and they whined that smoking it that way got them too high. Pussies. We laughed and lit the pipe.
I went to a lot of cool parties once I was in Curved Air. Every bloody wanker in England smoked cigarettes. Well, I didn’t. I would get constant offers of a fag during the length of a party till I wanted to hang myself…so I started carrying an unlit cigarette in my hand. When I was offered a cigarette, I would just hold up my hand and they went away.
The unconscious guy had a roommate and he showed up as we were leaving the boat. He apologized for his friend and offered us a ride in his dinghy back to our hotel. We said of course.
The boat was the same size as the one Tom Hanks used in the movie, “Splash.”
The canal was rough from all the tourist boats. We bobbed up and down and swished from side to side. We thought we were going to die.
We got back to the hotel totally seasick. We handed the hash to the other band members and then Stew, and I retired to our rooms to lay down.
We hunted down cannabis, discovered an old perv, got into a fight, almost drowned in the canal, and made it back to civilization without being killed. Just a typical day of being on the road.
Categories: CIGAR REVIEWS
Cigar Reviews by Phil 'Katman' Kohn 
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