Wrapper: Ecuadorian Habano
Binder: U.S. Connecticut Broadleaf
Filler: Dominican, Nicaraguan, U.S. Broadleaf
Size: 7 x 38 Lancero
Strength: Medium/Full
Price: $9.27
Released: November 2024
Quantity Released: Undisclosed

This was a gift from a friend who likes the blend. I’m going in blind. In case I don’t care for it, there are two goons sitting outside my friend’s hovel waiting to do business…they will act depending on the outcome of my review. I hate it when my hand is forced.

THE WHOLE MEGILLAH:
This dinky pinky smells like a floral bouquet lying in a pig sty. Barnyard galore. Coming to its aid, are notes of dark chocolate, peaches, and baking spices.

The thing is plugged like Aunt Rhoda’s day-old colostomy bag. Using my PerfecDraw on a Lancero worries me. Piercing the toast on a one off…but what are my choices. The clog is easily removed and the toast remains in totem.

The cold draw is ice cold A&W root beer in a frosted mug, chocolate, clove, cinnamon, peat, and leather goods. Good to go.

I didn’t find a review of this cigar so I have no one to steal from. I guess I’m on my own. The start is a possum licker. Right off the bat, it’s delicious. Really good with rich notes of A-1 sauce, brown sugar, chocolate, Italian spices, salty pretzel, mixed nuts, lemon crème, mild black pepper, and broccoli.

I had no expectations with this cigar. I didn’t expect to like it. Partly because the price is reasonable. And partly because there are so many blends similar to this that the market is saturated.

Despite the cigar weighing in at 4 toothpicks, the fiery heat plumps it nicely and the burn is slow and controlled. I put a fiver in the cart and will pull the trigger if I’m pleased 90 minutes from now.

Our one-way non-refundable tickets were bought. We sealed our collective fate. Of course, a month before we left in that big jet airplane, our singer fucked it all up. He left the bar at closing time, got on his bike, immediately stopped by a cop, he promised to walk it home, he lied, and one block from home, racked it into a tree breaking both legs into a million pieces.

The elusive noun, richness, is difficult to describe or explain. A mysterious adjective as well. You know it when you got it. The Flamingo has it.

I had a flashback. The 1972 avant-garde film Pink Flamingos by John Waters. Starring drag queen Divine. All I remember is Waters instructing the large he/she to eat dog shit from the sidewalk. I still gag. I’m having fun with this Flamingo so all is forgiven.

The blend calms. I must be smoking it too quickly. I hate it when I do that.

The Ecuadorian always delivers caramel overtones. It’s doing so now. It helps save the flatitudeness that the blend slipped into an inch into the burn.

I saw a Who concert in which Entwistle went into an amazing solo. So amazing that Daltrey and Townshend turned and stared with jaws wide open. The man could play an Italian cantata on a damn 4 string. Most brilliant musicians carried the baggage of severe substance abuse. Always thinking that they could have done better. The carrot was never in reach. Poor souls all.

Strength is medium as the first two inches dissolve into memory. Solid but not remarkable. I hold dear that a sweet spot awaits.

And the cigar goes out. At this early point, the blend reminds me of the daunted Daughters of the Wind from Casdagli. That same richness qualities that I love about Jeremy’s blends are in play. The mighty Lancero is the first choice for gentlemen. It is dainty in appearance but delivers intensity not deliverable in big cigars.

Our singer demanded that we perform Dave Mason tunes. No one argued. The man just canceled his 2025 tour for health reasons. Mason’s 1975 “Midnight Special” live performance of ‘All Along the Watchtower’ is killer. He plays a few clams but it doesn’t take away from the energy.

It seems, as inch 3 begins, that the blend is stagnating. Flavors appear to this reporter as having been canonized like the 4 doctrines of the Mozambique Church of Devon, UK, S.W. 9.

I’m vacillating on pulling the trigger on the awaiting fiver.

What the blend has going for it is its derivative smoothness. But it’s time for this baby to perform. I just found a review. They didn’t care for this cigar. Now, I’m tainted. Why do I do this?

The strength leaps into medium/full territory without warning or permission. My eyes rattle like my first Uriah Heep concert.

I pry the cigar band from the fainting device. It rips some wrapper. This is why God invented PerfecRepair. I shake the bottle until I hear the Ben Wa balls clinking and then I schmoosh with the brush. The fix is in.

It’s up to the second half. The first was fine. My assessment of its pre-sweet spot performance is it is a very nice clone of what the experts blend. It’s only $9.

Skip and I needed to decide whether to forge ahead despite Travis’s idiocy or call it quits. Travis was laid up at the V.A. hospital. He ended up there for 3 months while they put his legs back together. We had invested our dough so the decision was made to move ahead with the Europe trip. A guitarist and a bassist with no singer. My God that was stupid.
A month after our galahad trip had begun, I scored a position with Curved Air. Skip flailed for a year and returned to the States. Sad for him. He was bitter for the rest of his life.

Transitionally, not much is happening. Maybe the cigar should be called Pink Stasis. The richness remains mild without hope. Complexity is minimal. The finish is the lackluster star of the show.

There is no sweet spot. I reviewed only one fitting Blackbird blend, The Raven, back in 2019. It was solid but no revelations were found. Just another pedestrian boutique provider. Critics point and yell, ‘Asshole’…but truth telling is not a prevalent source material for my comrades in crime. They tell the same story politely. Who has time for genteel explanations?

Strength is now kicking my arse. Flavors dissipate into the wind of mediocrity. But for the price, it still makes the blend a decent stick for times when we don’t care if we finish the cigar or not.

RATING: 88

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Tags: blackbird cigars, Blackbird Cigars Smokingpipes Flamingo | Cigar Reviews by the Katman, cigar reviews, cigar reviews by the katman, cigars, katman, phil kohn