Dominion Cigar Black Lotus Maduro and the Contest Winner

It seems like I haven’t smoked many cigars since my Wednesday post, and I guess I’ve only smoked three, two of which weren’t worthy of mention for various reasons. My back porch is relatively cozy with the propane heater going, considering evening temperatures have been in the single digits. The cold still has an adverse effect, I had a Nub Habano 464T that was several years old that just didn’t work right, and a Toraño that I will revisit as I’ve heard great things about it, but it was lost on me.  So, as usually happens this time of year, I’ll focus on one particular cigar, in this case, it’s an IPCPR show sample from a Canadian company called Dominion Cigar.  Their first cigar offering was the Black Lotus, made at Tabacos De Oriente in Honduras, came out in 2014, followed by the San Andrés maduro version last year, which I smoked yesterday.  The band, as well as the dark wrapper, are rather appealing in appearance, the band features a purple lotus flower. I have to admit, I’m a little confused about what this cigar actually was based upon the information on the website. It looked and tasted like it could be the maduro, but the website states that the maduro only comes in a Toro size, this was clearly a robusto. There is some ambiguity in the description, I’ll just quote it here and let the reader decide if it makes sense:

In mid 2016 Dominion launched a maduro version of its very successful Black Lotus cigar. The blend itself is very similar to the natural, but features a Honduran six priming Sumatran binder, and a Nicaraguan habano maduro wrapper. The outcome is a cigar with smooth rich flavours of dark molasses, and creamy tobacco. In late 2016 Dominion also launched a maduro version of the Black Lotus featuring a Mexican San Andreas wrapper. The Black Lotus maduro is available in one vitola, a 6 X 52 Toro.

Maybe I smoked the original “natural” ( I guess), wrapper, but I don’t think so. The wrapper looked darker than pictures of the Honduran Habano wrapped version. I suppose an explanation could be that the robusto is a new vitola in the line and the website hasn’t been updated yet (in the six months since the trade show?). I’m going with my original impression that this is a maduro, maybe not San Andrés, but maduro, for sure. There were hints of the molasses as indicated in their blurb, with a bit of dark dried fruit sweetness. I found it to be rather mild, but a very nice cigar, well-behaved after an initial uneven burn, which could just as easily have been a lighting issue on my part. I’ll reach out to the folks at Dominion and hopefully they will clarify some things for me, but it was a really nice cigar that I would happily smoke again. I have one each of their Flor de Claro and Dominion Classic in toro size that I’ll smoke when the temperatures climb above freezing.

***Update:  I received the following clarification from the folks at Dominion Cigars:  “Some clarity on the Black Lotus blends, as the website says, the original Black Lotus is a natural, and comes in three vitolas as mentioned, 5 X 52 Robusto, 6 X 50 Toro and 6 X 60 Gordo. The colorado shade wrapper is darker, but it is still a natural not a maduro, so what you smoked based on the picture you posted in a natural. The Black Lotus maduro only comes in one vitola as mentioned on the website, in a 6 X 52 Toro. You can tell the difference between the maduro and natural, as the maduro has a secondary band that says maduro on it, you wouldn’t know that unless you actually had one of course. As far as what wrapper is in the maduro, their are two different wrappers, but only one in the United States which is the Mexican San Andreas.”  Thanks to Bernhard for setting me straight. Now I am very interested in smoking the maduro!

Contest!

Today is going to wrap up the third in the series of Holiday contests.  I know I’ve put a lot more work into the contests in the past, but I like to think the goodies I’ve been able to give away have been unique and worthwhile. These unauthorized contests are my way of sharing my good fortunes. This final edition featured some great stuff from Drew Estate, stuff that the DE collectors might drool over, and maybe isn’t out there everywhere. I love it, but I love to share even more.  So, I’ve consulted with the Random.org random number generator, and it pointed me to Kirk.  If I don’t hear from Kirk this week, I’ll e-mail him or otherwise track him down! It’s amazing to me the number of names that appear on every contest, going back several years, I thank you all for reading along as I enter the ninth year of doing this! Many thanks to Drew Estate for the goodies, great cigars and good times they’ve provided me over the years!

That’s all for today, until the next time,

CigarCraig