First off, let me get this little rant out of the way. One of the first things I saw when I got up this morning was a discussion about removing bands from cigars. In a nutshell, it seemed like there was a thought that there could be one single surefire solution to band removal. Here was my response: “There’s absolutely no set rule on how a band will come off (I’ve figured out RoMa), after thousands of cigars of as many brands, just about as many just slide off as come off cleanly. Some paper absorbs the glue and some doesn’t. Some factories use more glue than others. Uncello’d cigars shouldn’t have the bands glued to the wrapper at all and would be easier. Shade wrappers would be easier to slide off than broadleaf or San Andrés because they are smoother, but would damage easier because they are thinner. 9 times out of 10 your best bet is to wait until you are about to burn the band and carefully slide it over the business end of the cigar, taking care not to burn your fingers or the ring. This is the only way to successfully remove the RoMa bands, by the way!” Now, the only reason I referenced the RoMa bands was because someone else brought it up. It irks me that people put forth the notion that there is, or could possible be, a way to remove a band every time without either damaging the band or the wrapper or both. Some bands come off nicely, some are a trainwreck. As always on forums when I see misinformation, I try to correct and inform in a polite and respectful manner, and I hope to educate, although I often wonder if I’m wasting my time!
I’d like to welcome a new advertising partner, Cigar Thief. You’ll notice their ad on the right side of the website. They have a nice selection of cigars, and I never work with companies I don’t personally do business with, so before taking them on I placed an order for a sampler from their site. I received communication from them promptly that they were out of stock of the item I wanted, with options, which included canceling with a full refund which included the offer to send free cigars! I looked around and chose a less expensive sampler and told them if they wanted to substitute that and credit me the difference it would be fine, freebies weren’t necessary. A few days later the package arrived, well packed and as I expected, only with a 5 cigar 
Diesel Torpedo Sampler as the “for my trouble” cigars. Totally above and beyond and not needed. The sampler was the classic CAO sampler, the same sampler my wife had gotten me about 10 years ago, the one with the CAO classic in natural and Maduro, an MX2, a Brazilia and an Italia (times two). Excellent service, check them out. I hadn’t smoked a CAO Italia in many years, honestly, it’s a cigar I always wanted to like, but never really did. The Ciao vitola is 5″ x 56, and smoked very well, and I quite enjoyed this one. It has some Habano tobacco grown in Italy, along with some Peruvian tobacco, so it has a unique flavor, so it’s not at all like the Toscanos that use Kentucky tobacco (I know, right?). Different, not as bad as I remembered, I think I like these now!
The Diesel Torpedo sampler was a little frustrating to me, as four of the five cigars are not clearly labeled as to what they are. I suppose the Diesel experts out there will scoff at me for no knowing the color scheme delineating the various series. I figured I’d start with a benchmark, the Unholy Cocktail, of which there is a box in the humidor (from 2011). Clearly the color palate of those bands has changed over the years, because there wasn’t a clear match. The Diesel Uncut had a band on that that said Uncut, so I smoked that one first! I’ll work the rest out later. This is a nice cigar, a natural shade PA Broadleaf wrapper with a good amount of strength and spice. This had a good dose of espresso and cocoa too, I liked it. I think it had a good dose of nicotine, judging by the poor quality of my sleep that night. I still like it quite a bit.
I sorted through the rest of the Diesels, colors on screens never match actual colors on things in your hand, and it isn’t helpful that the folks at Diesel like that PA Broadleaf Maduro wrapper so much. I figured out that the beige band must be the Unlimited Maduro, which made it easy to match up the rest based on the band colors and wrapper colors. So I smoked the Unlimited Maduro. This one has a PA Broadleaf Maduro wrapper with a Mexican binder and Honduran and Nicaraguan fillers. It was rich, earthy, spicy, but not as strong as I figured it would be. Actually, it was downright smooth. Like the Uncut, it burned well, it’s made by AJ Fernandez, so that’s not a surprise, and it’s the 5″ x 56 “Unholy Cocktail” vitola. I’d be interested to see how this compares to the original Unholy Cocktail, but I think I’ll be more interested to see how the current Unholy Cocktail compares to a 2011 Unholy Cocktail, which I might do this week.
I just realized that the last four cigars I smoked were al 5″ x 56, that’s kinda weird. Last night I followed the Unlimited Maduro with a CAO Brazilia GOL. This is a pretty old school CAO, it came out in 2001, so it’ll celebrate it’s 20th anniversary next year. Let’s just get this in the post for the sake of search engine crawling: “CAO Brazilia 20th Anniversary”. There, I said it here first! Ha! Anyway, The Brazilia is a bit of a classic, Brazilian Maduro wrapper, Nicaraguan filler and binder, it’s been a good, consistent smoked for a long time, and I think we all can agree that it’s managed to survive the transition from Ozgener CAO to General Cigars CAO without any issues. It seems like the same darned cigar that it used to be to me, rich and spicy and pretty darned tasty. They even manage to hold the price down pretty reasonably. It’s hard to go wrong and I imagine this is still one of the workhorses of the CAO line.
That’s about all I have for today, until the next time,
CigarCraig
