El Baton Cigars and a Macanudo Inspirado Jamao

I’m, once again, writing from the back porch while I enjoy a new Macanudo cigar. I’m desperately hanging on to summer! It’s technically the last weekend of summer, cigars are one of the coping mechanisms I have to avoid slipping into depression. I’ll stop whining about this eventually! I had a few cigars this week, one that I planned to feature today, but burned so badly it was a pain in the ass and I decided to see if I can get another to try. It’s a shame too, because I really was looking forward to the cigar. I did smoke two cigars last night that I wanted to talk about. J.C. Newman Cigars was kind enough to share a couple of the new El Baton Belicosos with me. This is a cigar that’s been around for a while, so I dug out one of the old ones and smoked both to compare. The Belicoso is 5″ x 56, with an Ecuador “Havana” wrapper, and Nicaraguan binder and fillers. These are supposed to retail in the $8-9 range, I want to say that they were more of a budget brand in previous iterations, but maybe this is the new budget range? I won’t begrudge them the price, as this new offering is really quite good. It has a pleasing flavor, not too mild, nor too strong, with some nice sweet wood and spice. I followed it with an older robusto. I can’t recall how long I’ve had this cigar, but it has to be close to 7 or 8 years. The old version was nowhere near as refined as the new. There were similarities, but, even after years in the humidor, there were rough edges. I might even say there were some “off” flavors, but it’s so hard to really judge a cigar when it’s the second cigar of the evening. It seems to me that the new version is far superior, and well worth the money.

I’m smoking the Macadudo Inspirado Jamao as I type. Clearly I’m not writing with the cigar, as another writer pointed out on my Instagram post. It was semantics, and I’m anti-semantic. This is something like the sixth cigar in the Inspirado line. I really like the White, Black, and Red, with the Green being pretty good and I never took a shine to the Orange. There’s another Connecticut in the lineup too, the Brazilian Shade, with was pretty good. This Jamao is pretty good, especially first thing in the morning. The wrapper is the interesting part, being a hybrid of Handuran (Jamatran) and Dominican (Mao) tobacco, a Habano varietal. It’s very good, but to my very basic palate, isn’t every distinctive. It’s a good tasting cigar, on my ranking of Inspirados it’s right above the Orange. I feel like the should have put “Jamao” on the band somewhere. Good smoke, don’t avoid trying it! Inspirados are generally reasonably priced. As I sit here smoking it, it’s definitely good way to start a Sunday.