Wrapper: Havana Connecticut 2017 (USA) ~ Aged 7 Years
Binder: Mexican San Andrés
Filler: Dominican Criollo 98 Ligero & Seco, Mexican San Andrés, Dominican Vuelta Abajo, Viso & Seco
Size: 6 x 52 Toro
Strength: Medium/Full
Price: $150.00
Date Released: June 2025
Quantity Released: 600 boxes of 10
Factory: General Cigar Dominicana
My cigars received 3 months of naked humidor time.
THE WHOLE MEGILLAH:
While the wrapper is aged, there is no info declaring that the binder and filler was aged.
I gave away three of my five cigars. I have not smoked one before this review. I’m going in blind. The price tag makes this cigar special…like me.
The crazy looking box that the 10 cigars arrive in is a sci fi marvel. Each cigar is contained in a plastic tube. Each of those tubes are inserted deep into the cavern of this alien egg. $1500 for the whole shebang. You pay $1250 for the container and $250 for 10 cigars. Or $25 each. This is not the official line but it’s what makes sense. I found no info describing the material that the box is made of. I’m guessing it must be plastic. Made in China.
Once I debauch the paper tomb that encases the cigar, its appearance is nothing to write home about. Looks like a cigar. There is roller’s glue residue near the foot that doesn’t scream $150. I’m getting a bad feeling.
The wrapper is nearly devoid of aromas. Only thing I get is barnyard. Well, shit.
The cap is misshapen like me after a bag of Fritos and a six pack. Fortunately, my PerfecPunch holds a Green Card and goes to work. The 8mm, which is the smallest of the three punches, finds a home and moves decisively to remove just enough for the perfect blowhole. The draw is a bit tight but I’m hoping it will open once sucking begins after torch meets foot.
The cold draw follows the lead of the wrapper’s aromas with little to offer. Leading the listless pack is clove, vegetal notes, baking spices, vanilla, and the slightest bit of coffee.
Time to light the beast.
Good start. Rich and bold. Fatness like my Aunty Trudy after seder dinner. But immediately, the burn is fakakta. My Humidimeter reads 64% so I’m good. I have the Stooges on the tube to balance my thoughts.
First flavors are very potent black pepper, deeply earthy, generically sweet, and light oakiness.
One reviewer showed beautiful photos of structurally sound ash. Mine falls apart easily and the char line is uneven.
While the cigar starts quite nicely, I’m not getting any gee whiz thoughts emanating from palate to the brain. Whose brain? Dunno. The blend needs to pick it up.
I was 10 in 1960 when the Alfred Hitchcock thriller ‘Psycho’ hit the theaters. My parents sent me to a matinee with my friends. Pretty crazy for them to allow that considering the fallout from the critics concerning the nudity and violence. I was ready for it until the shower scene. Without thinking, the moment the shower curtain was parted and the iconic screeching music began to play, I threw my tiny hands in front of my face with just enough parting of the ways to peek. Nothing like this had ever been filmed for a popular audience. The next day, I was in the shower and I had a nosebleed. I was washing my hair when I noticed blood swirling in the drain. I ran out of the shower stall like a bat out of hell. I took only baths for two months. It’s all about timing.
As inch two begins at the 12-minute mark, the blend becomes very creamy with a pleasing earthy undertone. The black pepper sees a red pepper addition to the mix as the tip of my tongue begins to tingle. Strength is medium/full triggering my reptilian brain pan that this cigar is going to be kick ass in the second half.
The char line is out of control and I must correct it. Never a good sign for any cigar, let alone a very expensive one.
In the late 80’s, I knew Tippi Hedren (The Birds). Her husband owned the construction company I worked for. It was a medium-sized company and as such, there was just and I and another gentleman with the title of project manager. Tippi and her daughter (Melanie Griffith) loved going to the Rich People’s Club for lunch with their movie star handsome husband (Luis Barrenechea) and stepdad, respectively. Tippi was always polite but she had an air of arrogance about her. After all construction people weren’t show biz folk. Tippi wasn’t a tall woman but whenever we spoke, it felt like she was staring down her nose at me. When word got back to her that I was a washed-up rock god, she eased up a bit. Tippi Hedren considered hubby an ATM machine. She had an animal preserve in Orange County whose main mission was to save lions.
Citrus finds its way to my decaying palate. I’m putting a lot of pressure on this blend. As I should. I refuse to exhibit the rarified air that we should not include the price of a cigar when we critique a cigar. Of course we must. I understand others who feel differently and I respect them for their wrong choice. But this cigar, with 3 months of home detention, should be singing an Italian aria in D#minor to me. At the moment, it is the drum solo from ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.’ In my high school band, this was the chance for us to bolt outside of the gym to smoke us a J.
I need a sip of water. I’m not impressed. A couple reviews were not impressed either. The up and down critiques signal inconsistency in the blend. And the cigar goes out. Damn.
Nuttiness appears once lit again. The well-roundedness kicks in with signs that the cigar may be going places. I hope so. I don’t want General Cigar to take me off their blogger’s program list. Where would I be without a long list of $7 catalog brands to review. To be fair, once in a while, General will throw in something decent. But most of the time, their list is something you find from Cigars International.
Lou would come upstairs to project management around 2 PM, after his lunch with the wife and kids, and he would sit there with a bottle of vodka and get shit faced all afternoon bemoaning his status in life and all the ways that Tippi was draining him of dough. Since there were only two of us up there, he vented incessantly…especially the drunker he got.
One day, we engineers got an assignment. Alfred Hitchcock had made moves on Tippi often, (During the filming of the movie, “The Birds.”) and without success, or so we heard from Tippi. At the end of the movie, Hitchcock gave Tippi one of the first portable radios. Remember it was 1963. It was the size of a boat anchor with a massive battery in it. And it had long ago stopped working.
The clarity of the blend comes in waves. So does the blandness. I don’t get it. Did I get a stinker? Maybe I should have smoked at least two cigars. Thank God I’m not a reliable cigar industry reviewer. Just a hack bringing you fine entertainment and a laundry list of curse words…or so says AI.
The first inch burned quickly but inch 2 slowed. The second third begins at the 30-minute mark. Ash is all over my shirt and lap. The burn line is better, but not much. The progress of the blend is not exponential. It labors. The cigar reminds me of any decent $15 stick. Shy of the $25 stick I predicted above in my opening statement.
This is a subtle blend. Nothing slaps me in the puss. Which is exactly what I want. My fingers are crossed that the second half brings the goods.
So, the other PM, me, and the purchasing agent, were given the task of figuring out how to replace the long dead battery and make this piece of junk work. We were told it was our number one priority while our projects went to shit.
We spent two solid days on the phone, all 3 of us…and we got nowhere. When we saw Tippi in Lou’s office at the end of those 2 days, we talked to her about our fruitless efforts and all we got was a perfunctory, “Boys. You can do better than that. I am counting on you. This was a gift from my dear friend, Alfred Hitchcock, and I want the GODDAMM radio to work. You got me, boys?” Whoa, Tippi. Now we knew why Lou drank himself stupid in the afternoons making us listen to the horrors of Tippi Hedren.
I’m waiting the same way you sit and tap your fingers in your doctor’s waiting room when your appointment was 30 minutes ago.
The first half comes to rest at one hour. $75 gone by the wayside. That’s like one day of groceries.
Will this cigar do better with extended home humidor time? Yes, it will. Will it reach the outer limits of space and time? I expect not. This is basically a rich man’s folly. Dudes with more money than common sense will buy the box of 10 for the fancy container. Stare at it for a while. Show it off to their friends for a minute. And then store it in the garage with their other fancy cigar boxes in perpetuity.
I remember when Melanie Griffith visited. She and Steven would be hanging waiting for mom and step pop to get going so they could get the hell outta’ there. I got the balls one day and introduced myself. Both were very gracious, unlike their mom.
I, of course, bragged about my Curved Air days to them…and they were impressed. The Police was still together, and I told my tales of hanging with them at gigs.
The burn is AWOL. In the photo below, I placed the cigar band upside down to signify distress.
Flavors are muted. There is no rush to judgment. No signal that the cigar is finding a sweet spot. It is becoming linear. I redact my assessment to only a $13 stick.
Steven Bauer would come up to engineering and talk to me about rock n roll. This guy really knew his stuff and we had a great time. A true musicologist. Of course I asked about filming ‘Scarface with Al Pacino. He had me enthralled. A classic film.
I’m thinking of all the great cigars you can pile into your cart for $150. Strength morphs into full. My vision blurs and typing becomes difficult. I need a martini and a waffle.
I’ve been sipping water constantly as there is a slight harshness to the blend. It causes a scratchy throat. I don’t like that much. I prefer smooth. It’s a long-standing tradition for cigar manufacturers to use smoke and mirrors, along with a Joe Camel approach, to get you to buy cigars. Fancy cigar boxes pull you in. Some even sell you humidors with the cigars. Again, all garage bound. Do rich guys have regrets? Big ones. But then their man caves are bigger than ours.
This cigar is going nowhere fast. don’t get me wrong, it’s an OK cigar. But I want more than OK.
Work would stop when Bauer entertained the troops and my boss was thrilled to be a part of it. Melanie would always have to come up and drag him out of engineering but then got caught up in the stories too. We did a lot of laughing that disturbed the worker bees downstairs.
I worked there for only a year. I got my fill of the drama of the Tippi Hedren family. A few months after I left Lou’s employ, I was cruising along the boulevard in Anaheim and I saw Tippi’s Cadillac in front of me. It had the license plate “ROAR.” We were at a red light so I jumped out of my car and raced up to the driver side of her car and yelled, “Tippi! It’s me!” She recoiled as if she had been shot. She had no memory of me. So I said, “Tippi! Bartec! Phil Kohn! The damn radio!” She smiled and rolled the window down. We shook hands and I ran back to my car that wasn’t a Cadillac. It seems fitting that someone besides Hitchcock scared the shit out of Tippi Hedren…who is now 95.
I’m smoking the last third. There has been no sweet spot. Just more of the same. A nice even flow of flavors. A mild richness. A lovely earthiness. A baseline of familiar flavors. And the cigar goes out.
I’m calling it.
You can purchase the Cohiba Spectre 2025 from sponsor Small Batch Cigar. Take 10% off with promo code KATMAN.
RATING: 86
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