An Asylum and a La Gloria Cubana from Famous, Along With Some Other Cigars

The problem with taking Wednesdays off is that I have to decide which of the cigars I’ve smoked during the week to talk about on Sunday.  The reason I skipped my midweek post was that I had a Prime Living magazine article deadline, and I wanted to get that taken care of.  I have a calendar of the due dates for the rest f the year, let’s see if I can use that to plan ahead so I’m not waiting until the last minute every time!  I think it’s been about two years that I’ve been writing the Cigar Notes feature in Prime Living, it’s still crazy to me when I see my name in the byline.  I did smoke some really interesting cigar this week, I’m going to touch on these four briefly.

First off I smoked a Swag SoBe  Lavish, which is a robusto from Boutique Blends. This was part of the Cigar Authority Care Package and I smoked it while listening to the show in podcast form. This cigar really surprised me in that it had  distinctive flavor, I want to say it was like a green tea maybe, and I tasted it for hours after I was done. I’ll be looking for more of these. Yesterday I took a long walk with what I believe to have been a Perdomo 20th Anniversary Sun Grown Churchill, I didn’t take any measurements, but I swear it was larger at the foot than the head. I know it wasn’t a torpedo because Perdomo torps are pretty distinctive in their pointyness. For you cigar walkers, this size is good for five miles. Very tasty, but I prefer the Maduro in this line.  The Cohiba Luxury Edition is a stupidly expensive cigar, I can’t imagine dropping $38 on one cigar, but it was an exceptional example of cigar making and blending, and it was very good. This was the subject of my Prime Living piece, so you’ll have to wait until the May/June issue drops to read more about this. Finally, and these were in no particular order  by the way, there was one day this week that I was in the mood for an Epic Maduro, so I grabbed a Double Corona, which is really a gordo, for my evening walk. This line is rising to the top of my go-to list, and it takes quite a bit of will power not to just grab one the few of these I have on hand every day.  These are frickin delicious and Dean Parsons is a really cool dude. There were others, but these were the ones I had some thoughts on off the top of my head.

A couple of weeks back I received some cigars from Famous Smoke Shop, cigars that are made exclusively for them.  One of them was the Asylum Lobotomy in the toro size. Thank goodness they didn’t send the 770, that’s too darned large for winter smoking, shivering knocks the ash everywhere! These are a value priced take on the Asylum line, with a Maduro Nicaraguan Habano wrapper. This is a really nice cigar for under $5 if you like a strong, bold flavored cigar that has enough changes to keep things interesting. The burn on the samples I smoked was pretty good, I had to touch up a few times, but aging will certainly fix this. I imagine these will age well too, although they are good pretty much off the truck.  These come in the toro, 770 Double Toro (6×60) and a 4×44 “corona”, so there’s something for everyone.  I half expected this to be a lot stronger than it was given the name.

The other new offering in Famous’ exclusives line is from La Gloria Cubana.  This is a take on the Serie R line, called the La Gloria Cubana Serie RF (I’m guessing the “F” is for Famous…ya think?). As much as I love just about all things La Gloria Cubana, I haven’t had the greatest experiences with the regular Serie R line. These were really one of the first large ring gauge cigars back in the early 2000s, and I really wanted to like them, but they always came up short for me. I love the Serie R Esteli, and to a lesser extent the  Serie R Black (I find the Brick and Mortar exclusive Esteli a bit richer than the catalog/internet exclusive Black). So I went into the Serie RF with a cautious optimism.  I smoked the No. 13, which is a 5½x54 robusto. The blend is a Ecuador Habano wrapper, Connecticut Havano binder and Dominican and Nicaraguan fillers.  I need to smoke some more of these, because I really enjoyed the crap put of the one I smoked. It was smooth, sweet and full of flavor. These are a priced in the mid $8 range, but worth it, in my opinion.

That’s all I can manage this morning. It’s supposed to be a beautiful day, so I need to get something done around here,  including getting a nice, long cigar walk in.  Until the next time,

CigarCraig