Tambo Petit Corona – Quick Puffs

It is not very often that you get to smoke something unusual in the world of cigars; the bulk of the smokes out there mainly comes from the 4 main producing countries (Cuba, Dominican Rep., Nicaragua and Honduras). You get the occasional tobacco leaf thrown in from countries like Ecuador, Mexico, Cameroon, the US, Brazil –for wrappers, but not only- Indonesia –mainly binders and the odd filler leaf from places like Peru, Costarica, and so on. I’ll admit that this is a rough generalization, but you rarely see Ecuadorian puros out there. So when I got the chance to get my hands on an Indonesian puro I just couldn’t pass. The cigar in question is sold under the brand Tambo and is made from all Indonesian tobacco grown in the island of Tambolaka. It is ironic that I need to stress that the tobacco is actually from Indonesia, but as with Cameroon wrappers, the name Indonesian or Sumatra tobacco is used to describe the variety of the leaf and not where it comes from and nowadays a large part of the so called Sumatra leaf comes from Ecuador. These were kindly provided by Ferydegiri, who is the exporter for Tambo Cigars, to some of the members of the UK cigar forum, so thank you for the opportunity to test these.

Bombed!

There’s many things that make coming back home after days spent on the rad for work great: my family, my bed cooking the simple food I like. Yesterday, coming back after a few days in Finland I had a little extra something to make my return even sweeter, a bomb from a fellow BOTL:

Thanks to Yiorgos fro Cigars.ie for the cigars, really appreciated!

Por Larrañaga Panetela

Let’s be fair, who doesn’t like a bargain? Nowadays life is quite a lot easier for the bargain hunter in all of us: the web is a source of much (sometimes too much) information and we can compare prices for many products in seconds and look up opinions in just a tad longer tan that. When it comes to cigars it is undeniable that many of us look for special offers, deals and new releases with almost religious attention.

On top of that we have the suave marketing sirens telling us about how we can save even more by going for the gimmicky copy instead of the original: marketing for products like Nica Libre (vs. Padron) and the like is a classic example for this. On the Cuban cigar market this is less common. The Diplomaticos brand might have been originally seen as a cheaper alternative to Montecristo but it soon carved out a space of its own, now rapidly decreasing thanks to Habanos discontinuations. But every now and then you hear opinions and rumours of this kind. One I found out while writing my Cohiba Panetela review was that there seem to be a few BOTLs out there that considered the Por Larrañaga Panetela as a cheaper, but equally pleasurable version of the Cohibas. Since The PL Panetelas are cheapish short filler smokes I was a bit doubtful but it is always worth a try, right?

Camacho SLR Monarca – Quick Puffs

Time runs lately and I can’t believe it is a week since my last post. I have been somewhat sidetracked by work and I suspect my boss would not accept blogging as an excuse for not meeting deadlines. Still, I have quite a few reviews waiting to be written and hopefully I will manage to put them up soon. Meanwhile another quick puffs review of a Camacho cigar, this time the SLR Maduro.

Camacho SLR Maduro Monarca

Length: 5″

Ring: 50

Price: This format of the SLR Maduro only comes in a Camacho sampler sold by one of the large on-line sources in the US. Other formats go for around 7-8$ in the US, 5.50-7€ in Germany. Not sold directly in the UK.

Wrapper: Connecticut Brodeaf Maduro

Binder: Honduran

Filler: Honduran Corojo

Smoking Time: 50′

Body: Medium/Full

Cigars smoked: one

Notes: Nice looking wrapper, almost vein free, but quite toothy. Feels nice and packed but has one hard spot and a couple of soft spot – all small which should not give issues. The start has a fair amount of pepper, a marked sweetness and a vegetal/acidic note, almost like Earl Gray tea. Form the smoking point of view this is certainly a very well constructed smoke: perfect burn, draw is slightly loose and the amount of smoke abundant, although by far not as impressive as with the Corojo I reviewed a while back! From the midway point the taste becomes more woody and less peppery, the notes of tea slowly disappear making room for some coffee. The burn is good throughout, but quick-ish. Although this is not a very complex cigar, it definitely is a solid well made cigar. It has some things in common with its pure Corojo brother, but is more toned down, which makes this a more balanced smoke IMO. Score: 87

Jerry’s mystery cigar challenge (Alec Bradley Prensado Gran Toro)

When I started to get interested in the online cigar communities I had no idea about the level of  camaraderie BOTLs can show. A while back my mate Jerry (Jdawg from the UK Cigar forums) came up with an idea challenge: he’d send me an unbanded cigar of his choice to try and write about on the blog together with a small sealed envelope containing the original band. I know the guys over at Dogwatch Cigar Radio do this on their show, so while this is maybe not 100% original, it is something I just couldn’t resist. For the first time I’ll be posting (almost) live while I smoke, updating this post every 20 minutes or so. Here we go!

23:15 Time to start, a bit later than expected after late dinner and a Skype session with my brother, but ready to go. The cigar is approximately toro sized, with a marked box pressed shape. It has a dark, almost maduro, reddish wrapper, slightly oily, with almost no veins and a decent double cap. At first look it reminds me of a RP Decade, but comparing them side by side this is a lot more reddish and not as dark. Once cut the draw is slightly tight and the aroma is cocoa, almost like in a maduro, but with marked cloves notes. From the shape cap and pre-draw I am pretty sure this isn’t a Cuban.