Wrapper: Brazilian Arapiraca
Binder: Indonesian Sumatra
Filler: Dominican, Nicaraguan
Size: 6 x 52 Torpedo
Strength: Medium/Full
Price: $12.60
My cigars have had 3 months naked humidor time.
BACKGROUND:
Released April 2023
THE WHOLE MEGILLAH:
These cigars have been on the block for 7 months. Not a single review. Gulp.
The Next Day ~ Nov. 30: I screwed up. There is another review: Stogie Press.
I love it when a cigar fumes aromas with perfume-like qualities: Cinnamon, caramel, cotton candy, giant floral notes, peppermint, chocolate, and vanilla crème.
I also love a titanic stick packed to the limit. But the draw needs help from my PerfecDraw. One penetrating swoosh and my tiny tool smiles. With no lips, no small accomplishment.
The window is open in my man cave. It is -3 degrees outside. My nuts fight each other to retract first.
Southern rock is on the menu this morning…Y’all.
Baking spice start. Creamy. Black pepper adds the right dose to spice things up.
Does this thing of ours have a proper consigliere to advise my palate correctly. Or will it be murdered next to the fruit stand.
I smoked a couple of these sticks prior to this review. They were missing intent.
Based on my research, the previous blends from Amendola were popular as they aren’t easy to find. This is my first foray into the Amendola Family circle of trust. Muskrat.
A maltiness ensues a couple minutes in. My mother’s side of the family was all mobbed up. My aunt married 5 times. All gangsters. If she brought home someone not named Swifty, we worried about her. Bugsy Siegel was mom’s 2nd cousin. Never met the man.
I feel the cigar trying. This cigar either needs a whole lot of humi time or…
There is a confused identity in play. It sorely needs some richness. The body is weak.
Strength is a solid medium.
Social and emotional learning. A new discipline in teaching young children. I won’t say, “Well, in my day…” My day wasn’t so hot. Bullying was out of control. But we now tend to overcompensate with parenting skills never before seen. The future will be full of sensitive souls. God help us.
¾” into the fatty, some life is detected. I want this cigar to be good. Why. Dunno.
There is a contradiction. Flavor points are nice. But the passion is absent. Blenders all have passion for any project. But getting the cigar to display passion is the hard part.
All my old musician comrades have found themselves panicking once they hit their 70’s. Not so easy to continue to play and make a living. They should have listened to their moms and gotten that degree just in case.
Richness plotzes just in time. Like a flipped light switch, overweight flavor notes of caramel, creaminess, assorted spicy peppers, espresso, and peanuts meet my palate halfway for the handoff.
Much better. A relief. It bums hard to report a dud. But I do believe I’ve attacked this cigar too soon. Months and months of humidor time is needed. The blender’s intent grabs my attention. It took over an inch to do so.
This is why I love Casdagli cigars. Without fail, every blend grabs you by the nuts from the first puffs. Dontcha’ love when that happens. It is a hard yardstick for others.
If you read about this company on their Amendola Cigar Family website, you will see that the boys go all the way back to 2010 in their quest to make cigar blending their life’s work. I was a kid of only 61 in 2010.
A fresh baked bread taste takes over. Super. It’s glorious. Really. Sweet unsalted butter is slathered in effigy. It quickly morphs into baked apple with caramel, cinnamon, and nutmeg. OK. The cigar needed to think before it pulled the trigger. That’s OK. I’ll take it anyway the blend wants to dish it out. Just a sign that with more rest, the cigar will start this way instead of waiting. A signal from the cigar gods.
Construction is outstanding. The char line is as sharp as a Don Rickles insult.
Tutti Frutti is an unexpected guest. Nice. It augments the baked apple with a smack of Juicy Fruit gum. You got caught with gum in your mouth when I went to school, and it was off to the principal. So stupid. Remember looking underneath your desk.
This is turning into a delightful cigar. Unique. I smoke so many AJ blends, my brain doesn’t know how to interpret something different. You gotta experiment. Read every reviewer out there. Consume every opinion. Never stick to one guy.
I love the slow roll. The cigar takes its time unveiling all its got. A good thing.
I gotta be honest. That first inch threw me. The blend has richly rewarded my impatience. And speaking of richness, that missing component I worried about is no longer sleeping with the fishes. It’s now a .45 Thompson spraying Sonny. Good times.
Creamy caramel, buttered sourdough, espresso, baked apple, Juicy Fruit, cinnamon, nutmeg, honey roasted hazelnuts, and the right dash of black pepper. The complexity sneaks up. The balance is forthright. Sweet v. Savory is how the Don likes it.
At the halfway point, strength is medium/full. One hour.
As a kid, my mother’s family would slum it and visit us for holiday dinners. The men wore suits with see through black socks. The women wore all their jewelry. I made a fortune as they secretly handed me $20 bills. By my teens, they had all disappeared.
I grew up thinking my mom’s dad had a heart attack and died when I was 2. He was a lawyer in Cleveland. In my mid-20’s, my gun moll aunt told me that he was rubbed out. No idea if that was true. She spent her last 20 years as executive secretary to the owner of Caesars Palace in Vegas. It’s who you know.
Richness splatters like multiple gunshots. Lip smacking is uncontrollable.
“Hold On Loosely.” .38 Special. Great tune.
Strength is potent without nicotine. Clemenza likes.
Malt is a big contributor. It took a while, but it is welcome. I like this blend a lot. Can’t wait to see how its brother The Bat fares. I will bring it to you soon. If you buy a box, you get both blends.
Strength soars. Didn’t see that coming as it hits full tilt with two inches to go.
If you snag some, and I think you should, let them rest as long as possible. I keep adjusting my final rating as the cigar continues to achieve Capo dei capi status.
Sometimes, a cigar is a journey of exploration. This blend fits that description to a tee. If you are an adventurous cigar smoker, this is a great blend for a reconnoitered hit.
It was a lovely two hour ride.
RATING: 93
And now for something completely different…an old chestnut:
A tale of New York City…Back in the mid-90’s, La Guardia Airport was going through some renovations. I was senior project manager for a high-end foo-foo gingerbread ferrous and non-ferrous metal fabrication company. The outfit was in Phoenix. I had to fly to NYC regularly.
What I didn’t know going into this was the stranglehold the unions had in that city. It was my first job in the Big Apple.
The Ironworker Union’s business agent had decided to charge us triple time without cause or reason (We employed 3 crews of seven union guys each…8 hours per day). I went back and forth, via phone, with the union for a month on this issue and I got nowhere.
The owner of my company was a weasel who told me to take care of it but would not get involved himself. He was my age but a real pussy. Afraid of confrontations…talked the talk, but couldn’t walk the walk.
Sometimes, a contractor would demand that both he and I attend a meeting that I knew would be a confrontation over contractual issues.
My owner would be all, “Yeah, I’m going to take this asshole down. Who does he think he is fooling with?”
We’d sit down in a closed-door meeting with our customer. The customer would start a rage opera on something that they forgot to include in their budget and was looking for us to take the fall. I had done my research and knew the contract and what we included and excluded. When the contractor finished, he looked at my owner…and he just sat there, not saying a word. Finally, I jumped in and ran the meeting. Pussy, man, pussy.
The owner had set up his wife as the 51% owner for tax breaks…and then proceeded to serial cheat on her like a madman. He even cheated with a new chick hired in some menial office role and she looked like Bucky Beaver. This girl could bite into corn a foot from the cob. Not a looker. He got caught and his wife took him to the cleaners. The idiot had two small children. Cost him millions over skanky sex.
And yes, the owner inherited the company from his dad.
Each time I arrived at the job site, my NYC crews were nowhere to be seen. Other trades would get on their radios, alerting my men that I was there so by the time I got back to where they were supposed to be working, there they were with an Alfred E. Newman look on their faces. ”What? Me worry?”
I finally demanded a meeting with the Local Ironworkers B.A. I had to scuttle this triple time thing in the bud, or we would take a horrendous loss on the job.
We were to meet at the Waldorf Astoria. It was winter and very cold.
I stood in the lobby waiting at 8am. They were late. Sending me a message.
And then they walked in.
Four guys in trench coats. All of them huge guys.
They all sounded very New York.
“Hey. How you doin’? My name is Vinnie.”
The BA and I shook hands but the other 3 spread out. We went into the empty dining room and sat down.
The BA and I sat at one table and the other 3 sat at separate tables. They surrounded me.
“Didja’ know that I’m the third BA in a year for this local?”
Gulp.
“Yeah, dat’s right…last BA just up and disappeared one night ‘bout 3 months ago. Hasn’t been seen since…I got the job.”
Double gulp.
And then he leaned into me and asked why I was causing so many problems?
I told him that there was no basis for charging me triple time during ordinary working hours.
All four of them laughed hard.
“Look here, kid…I say it’s triple time so that’s what it is. Capiche?”
I told him my budget would not allow for that.
They laughed again.
One of the guys opened his coat to show me his shoulder holster. Never said a word. He just smiled.
“You should know how t’ings run around here, kid. It goes like I say it goes. Capiche?” (He kept saying “Capiche.”)
My mouth was so dry, I couldn’t speak, so I just shook my head…I didn’t have a shoulder holster.
And with that, they got up and marched out the front door of the hotel.
I went back to my hotel and said, “Fuck it.”
I lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling. What if I had really pushed it? Would I have disappeared?
I called the owner of my company and told him how it went. He was pissed off at me for not “handling” it correctly. I yelled into the phone, “Well, why the fuck don’t you fly out here and straighten it out?”
Then I heard “Click.” He never brought up the job again. And the company never did a job in NYC again. I did love the deli.
Discover more from Cigar Reviews by the Katman
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Categories: CIGAR REVIEWS
