Wrapper: Ecuadorian Corojo
Binder: Mexican San Andrés
Filler: Dominican
Size: 7.25 x 47 Churchill
Strength: Medium/Full
Price: $14.00
Date Released: 2023
Quantity Released: Regular Production
Factory: Tabacalera Palma, Tamboril, Dominican Republic
My cigars received 6 months of naked humidor time.
THE WHOLE MEGILLAH:
I couldn’t find a single written review. I hate that. This means I cannot cheat and must use my own thoughts and fears.
Aromas from the wrapper are sweet with floral notes, honey, and candied almonds. The savory portions are barnyard, dark chocolate, and malted milk.
The cap is a slim target for my PerfecPunch. I rip off its knickers and put it to work. Slam dunk.
The cold draw’s first impression is honey cake. Following in order of appearance are dark chocolate, green mint, malt, almonds, and red pepper.
Initial puffs are pleasant. An early richness has me by the narglies so I purr into its ear: “Who’s your Daddy?” And then I realize I’m holding the cigar upside down and that its name is Dorothy. That wasn’t an ear.
The char line is crisp.
We’ve become slightly immune to the high falutin’ price of cigars these days. Another mid-teen price tag and we don’t flinch. We don’t like it, but we’ve succumbed to our inevitable future. If I’m wrong, I’m right. Fixin’ a hole.
The first inch tweren’t bad. It feels like a nice intro.
As inch two begins, a slightly sweet cider vinegar taste shows itself. It gives the cigar some punch. Does it jump off or does it languish? Coo coo ca choo.
Construction is excellent. A slow roll and the burn line remains crisp.
Toots Thielemans (1922-2016) is not a name that young’un’s recognize. He was a Belgian jazz musician who played the chromatic harmonica. The kind that Stevie Wonder plays, not the type that blues musicians play. Toots played on hundreds of recordings and accompanied a wide spectrum from Oscar Peterson to Paul Simon to Jaco Pastorius. He was playing an impromptu gig at a hotel Curved Air stayed at. The night before our gig, we sat in the audience and enjoyed his brilliance. He was complemented by drums, piano, and upright bass. Between sets, we introduced ourselves and we talked for a while. We seemed to be getting along just swell. As Toots excused himself to start the new set, Darryl Way asked if he could jam on a tune. Toots looked him up and down and said, “No.” Darryl was crushed. Good times.
The cigar raises its skirt and allows a beautiful earthiness to settle in. There is only a slightness of complexity but there are transitions. Perfection would be both.
Strength began at medium and as inch two ends, it remains medium. Meanwhile, I am deep fried.
A nice, salted pretzel rears its knickers, so we clear our throats as we take a peek. It’s time for tea and meet the wife.
The Sword of Labia has me just where it wants me. I likey.
My tongue and lips absorbed the first half wonderfully. A bit of age suits this blend. All the while, I haven’t owned a suit since my bar mitzvah. It hangs in the Library of Congress as a warning.
As I visit cigar social media, I am perplexed by the number of in the moment cigar photos in which the cap is soaked with a gummy substance emitted from the endower’s loose lips. I don’t enjoy looking at that and yet Likes are made with careless abandon. Is it an unwritten rule that no one says anything? If I want to stare at the wet end of a dark tubular object, I can always type ‘black cocks’ into DuckDuckGo.
How do I get that out of my head now that I typed that? Lawdy…
The second half begins with a nice caramel stroke. (Did I have to write ‘stroke?’ My Thesaurus is only a click away). Let it Be.
Transitions are meek but bold. They create a portrait of a nice cigar experience. The little buggers move with darting motions that are smooth and non-jagged.
I thought that this cigar was medium/full, yet it is nothing of the sort. It is medium and then it strikes me as the second half is in full throttle. The creeping nature of the blend seeps like a tree’s roots spread out beneath it. My positron reaction allows me to understand that it is understated and delicate and therefore I have no time to respond or oxidize. I prefer the former while distrusting the latter.
I get shit about rating almost everything in the 95-100 stratosphere. I don’t get it. The great majority of reviewers stick to 85-90, and no one blinks. I am different because I seek out good cigars to bring for your consideration and minimizing the dolts. At one time, I was pretty good at spewing invectives that made you smile a lot. But I was suffering from sleep deprivation psychosis due to undiagnosed nerve pain. I could have strangled my daughter, but instead, I chose to journal. This is true. Not more than an hour of sleep for 14 months in 2021-2022. I was losing my mind. I suffered three minor strokes. I’m OK now. We’ll let a jury of my peers decide.
The Sword of Labeaver is an excellent cigar. No shit. No rent. No money. Nowhere to go.
Sweet and savory. My two favorite things. Actually, my two favorite things find me too old to perform. Sonja once asked me in the boudoir, “You know, you can do anything you like.” I paused. I counted my options. I thought, I’ve already done everything. Now what? I merely said, “OK.” She brought it up more than once. I gave up. Stewart took over.
The second half is superb. Worth waiting for. And worth the $14 price tag.
RATING: 95
And now for something completely different:
A tale of New York City…Back in the mid-90’s, La Guardia Airport was going through 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, and I had to fly to NYC regularly.
What I didn’t know going into this was the stranglehold the unions had in that city.
The Ironworker’s 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). We 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 but 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 contract issues.
The 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, and he 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, backwards and forwards. When the contractor finished, he looked at the owner and this guy just sat there not saying a word. Finally, I jumped in and ran the meeting. The owner had put his wife as the 51% owner and then proceeded to cheat on her like a madman. He even cheated with a new chick hired in some menial office role that 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. Forfeited the whole thing over skanky sex.
I dreaded every time I had to get on a plane with the owner. I knew it was futile as he never helped. He was eye candy. The owner cowered like a 13-year-old in the boys’ locker room whose genitals had not matured and got whipped with towels until the kid cried. 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?”
Why weren’t the assholes working?
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 dollar 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, I guess.
And then they walked in.
Four guys in trench coats. All of them huge guys.
And they all sounded very New York.
“Hey. How you doin’? My name is Vinnie.”
The business agent 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 each sat at separate tables. They had 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 from 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.
I was literally pissing my pants.
When I insisted that we pay them standard pay, one of the guys opened his coat to show me his shoulder holster. Never said a word. Just smiled.
“You should know how t’ings run around here, kid. It goes like I say it goes. Capiche?” He said capiche a lot.
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 got mad. 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. The company took a huge loss. I was blamed. But the deli was exceptional in Queens, so I didn’t care.
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Categories: CIGAR REVIEWS
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