Wrapper: Brazilian Mata Fina
Binder: Nicaraguan
Filler: Nicaraguan
Size: 6 x 55 Toro Box Pressed
Strength: Full
Price: $16.00
Released: April 2025
Quantity Released: 2,000 boxes of 10

My cigars received 2 months of naked humidor time.

THE WHOLE MEGILLAH:
It’s a lumpy and bumpy cigar. It has a nice oily sheen that offsets the drab flat brown. Is this just a fancy $8.00 CAO Brazilia or does the cigar offer up something special.

And father further, will this cigar offer up a richly layered and complex smoking experience or will it be common faire amongst the masses? Or is it further father? (Sorry, an old Marx Bros joke).

The cigar has weight. If it was cocaine, it would be worth a fortune. The genteel wafting aromas from the wrapper include black cherries, fudge brownies, lovely floral notes, exotic spices (cinnamon, cumin, cardamom, and nutmeg), vanilla, barnyard, and spicy red and jalapeno peppers.

I gently stick the cigar with my Humidimeter and it logs in at 64%. A bit low. It should burn well, if not entirely going up like flash paper.

This is the perfect clientele for my PerfecPunch. I have suggested to my little friend that it might want to pull its own weight and get a part time gig. Cigars are expensive. I get a mighty harumph as it swings to and fro in its hammock while trying to figure out how to sip margaritas without a mouth. I laugh at its moronic behavior. It laughs at mine.

The draw is splendonkulous. I don’t need no stinkin’ PerfecDraw…the even lazier older brother of the PP. There are tasty notes of licorice, chocolate, red and jalapeno peppers, espresso, buttermilk biscuits slathered with honey, and deeply rich earthiness.

Enough fol de rol, time to put torch to casket. It’s a kwick stop to Caldonia. Perfect start. Rich with instant depth and enough power to melt my gym shorts. My tambourine falls to the floor and a tiny screech says it’s fallen and can’t get up. Big fat notes of fudge with black walnuts, Turkish coffee made by Agador Spartacus, sweet dried fig, and spicy redonkulousness.

Normally, I prefer to ship my Knuckles directly from sea to shining humidor without a human touching them. But this is a limited release of only 20,000 sticks. Espinosa has had luck with his partnership with Mr. Ferry (his real name) and so these won’t be on the shelves very long. Hence, I feel it is up to yours truly to debunk, destroy, defoul, deduce, and du-oh the meat of this blend before I smoke up my four pack.

I was sitting on a stool at Schwab’s Pharmacy on Sunset hoping to be discovered. I was discarded as day old tripe because I tweren’t pretty or female…and I’m straight. I went headlong into professional bass playing instead. Did you know that trombone players often become bassists? True dat.

The burn is as rigid as a 12-year-old playing Smoke on the Water. Great construction.
Inch one disappears a bit quickly. Takes 15 minutes. Or in dog years, 16 minutes. The low humidity is to blame. The ash is strong and stands at attention. I stare up at the ceiling. Nice smoke output. Chocolate, espresso, almonds, black pepper, and nutmeg. I believe I’ve covered the 5 food groups of cigar tantaleezia.

The earliness of rich earthiness makes the absence of complexity hardly noticeable. Say that three times fast.

The aroma is gentile and non-semitic. Floral with a touch of curry. Nice.

Inch two is delightful. I reviewed the 2023 version of this cigar and did not care for it. It seems that the boys self-corrected and came out swinging. I am comfortable in that I enjoyed the balance of the Espinosa/Fieri outpourings since 2022. Solid blends.

The burn continues to be on the money. I tap the ash because my lap is a sacred place and once you’ve seen an extended ash photo, you’ve seen them all.

The blend will do well with extended humidor time. I’m only scratching the surface with less than two months of house detention. The blender’s intent is etched and easy to read. In case you’ve ever wondered, the Etch A Sketch in 1960 was a bore. It took a real artistic kid to get the thing to perform so the rest of us mortals discarded the thing after 30 minutes of frustration. Same goes for the Slinky. Boomer myths debunked.

The first half bordered on delicious. It’s a very pleasant cigar. But nothing extraordinary. It’s early in the blend’s development so I’m giving it props earned as I believe I can tell that it is going in the right direction. Anytime a manufacturer doesn’t proclaim aging, you gotta assume that it received the obligatory 6 weeks of rest after being rolled. Just enough time for the tobacco to settle and de-roughasize the edges. Then, it’s up to us.

All the go-to’s are there. Refined depth is just below the surface. I swear to the Greek god of Marmotian Envy, Diptherius Andipshitocious, that this is going to be a solid purchase. In the world of 2020’s corporate greed, $16 is mid-range. Not cheap but not outrageous. With promo codes, a doable buy. The days of great $11 cigars are in the rear-view mirror.

It would help if the flavor notes were a tad more prominent. Thankfully, the rich earthiness and depth of field makes up for this slightly lackluster approach. With more time, the flavors may not excel but the complexity will take over and that’s all we care about. No one, including me, sits in our man shed picking out flavor points. We like it. We don’t like it. We like it. We really like it!

Inch 4 dissolves into the ether. The blend keeps my interest in play. More pronounced now are flavor notes of dark chocolate, espresso, black cherries, gingerbread, honeysuckle, cinnamon, black tea, molasses, licorice, and red and black pepper. This will be vital in my final assessment. The sweet spot is there and disclamatory. Once again, showing signs of doing extremely well with do it yourself aging.

Just like that, serious complexity kicks in. Damn, Spencer…the blend is beginning to shine like a new glazed doughnut.

I just notice that the strength has escalated quietly. I haven’t sought out constant sips of water in a vain attempt to quell the brain fire. Only now, in the last third, do I feel the effects of nicotine with its medium/full power.

Technically, this is a Gordo. My experience with the behemoth size is that flavors suffer. Color intensity is often lacking. And more often, only in the second half do we get a real kick to the innards from the depth and complexity a smaller vitola will offer. I’m on board. Cue the Sopranos theme.

The blend is now in luscious territory.

The cigar ends after a two-hour journey that was fun and exploratory. Never once, was it tame or boring. I was invested. A fun blend.

You can purchase the Espinosa Knuckle Sandwich Chef’s Special 2025 from sponsor Small Batch Cigar.

RATING: 94

If you’d like to win a $150 Cohiba Spectre, click here. The giveaway ends on July 24.

And now for something completely different:
Skip Behind the Wheel…

Me and Skip in our West London flat:

I had just passed the audition. A band was being formed around the famed violinist, Darryl Way. On drums was Stewart Copeland. On guitar was Mick Jacques. Our singer was an American named Butch Hatcher. And me, on bass.

We called ourselves Stark Naked & The Car Thieves. A band in Berkeley, California had that name and since Stewart had gone to school there, he remembered that name. So, he suggested it. After all, we were 6,000 miles away.

We rehearsed in Miles Copeland’s house in St John’s Wood. A block away from the iconic EMI Abbey Road Studio.

Stewart got himself a bachelor flat about 5 doors down from the studio’s entrance. We would sit on his stoop, smoking us some hash, and watch the tourists risk life and limb trying to get that famous Beatles’ crosswalk photo. But drivers rarely slowed down and it appeared to be a sport to see how close they could come to running them down.

Our first gig was booked in Nottingham. The money was lousy but Miles supplied us with equipment and roadies….sort of.

Nottingham was a couple hours’ drive north. Butch Hatcher got his best buddy to roadie but we needed one more. I asked my best friend, Skip, if he wanted to make 10 Quid. He said yes. Skip never roadied and took the gig for fun…and the $25 ($160 in 2025 dollars).

The two roadies drove a huge lorry with the equipment jam packed inside. Neither boys had driven a stick on a big truck…let alone drive on the left side of the road, sat on the right side of the vehicle, or shift with the left hand. We passed them on the M1 motorway and could hear both screaming like sibling girls. Skippy was a complete wreck on arrival. An hour from Nottingham, they had to disembark the freeway and take the “A” roads through towns and neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, the band was driven to the gig by our road manager. We laughed, smoked dope, and drank us some beers.

Butch had worked in carnivals in the Southern U.S. And he knew how to swallow fire while spewing flames from his mouth. We decided to add that spectacle during our encore.

During our last song, we played furiously, he turned his back to the audience, slathered Vaseline on his lips and chin, and then squirted lighter fluid into his mouth. A lot of lighter fluid. This was the first time we saw him perform and we were really scared. Becoming a foot note to music history was better left to the professionals.

He turned around with a mouthful of lighter fluid. His roadie lit a torch for him and Butch held it to his mouth and out came 4 feet of fire. The crowd went absolutely bonkers. He did it a couple more times because he liked the applause. Although, if you listened carefully, you could hear us screaming, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

The band was on Cloud 9 afterwards because we did well and no one died. We decided to hit a restaurant for food and drink. Back then, most restaurants closed by 10 and it was only the Indian and Chinese places that stayed open past midnight, so we had to hurry.

The roadies had a couple hours of packing…plus the horrifying drive back. Only this time in pitch blackness. There were no streetlights on the A Roads back then. You took your life in your hands driving those windy roads with 10-foot-tall hedgerows.

I still remember the look on Skip’s face when I told him I was going with the band. He was crestfallen. I wanted to stay with my best friend, but the band expected me to come with them. I was new to the band and this was not the time to act out. Butch had no problems with saying nighty night to his buddy. My Jewish guilt weighed heavy during all the fun but it was up to Skip to understand. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

The next day, Skip would not talk to me. I tried explaining but he would have none of it. He felt an affront. I was his best friend and I abandoned him.

We did several more gigs as Stark Naked. When I asked Skip if he wanted to roadie again, he politely told me to go fuck myself. A short, but painfully brilliant, career as a roadie.

During a Stark Naked band rehearsal, Darryl told us that there would be a 3-month hiatus. Apparently, his old band (Curved Air) had one record deal to finish. They owed the record company an album plus they owed taxes so the decision was to put all the original members back together and do a tour, recording a live album. It was the easiest way to get both commitments out of the way.

Three months? Damn. We had just gotten started and we were on a roll. As Darryl finished explaining, he looked at me and said, “Kohn. You are going to be our bassist.”

Just like that. I had no idea what he was talking about or what I was getting myself in to. It would go from fun to a zombie movie in nothing flat.

To be continued…

Stark Naked & The Car Thieves:

L-R Stewart Copeland, Darryl Way, Katman, Mick Jacques, Butch Hatcher, Margaret Thatcher

Categories: CIGAR REVIEWS

Tags: cigar reviews, cigar reviews by the katman, cigars, espinosa cigars, Espinosa Knuckle Sandwich Chef's Special 2025 | Cigar Reviews by the Katman, guy fieri, katman, phil kohn