I smoked a bunch of great cigars on my birthday weekend. After the Padron and the Unicorn on Saturday, I had to step down gradually! Sunday afternoon I selected a Byron 19th Century Grand Poemas that had spent a few years in the humidor. This cigar was a gift from David Garofalo at an IPCPR show a few years back, it had to have been 2017, as that was the last show I attended. This cigar was 6″ x 56 and I don’t believe it’s even available any more. It’s listed as a 2013 limited edition, and the blend is undisclosed. I know that it’s made in Costa Rica under the supervision of Nelson Alphonso. This was a spectacular tasting cigar, it had that hard candy sweetness that I haven’t been able to identify yet, but I love. I really need to buy a bag of old school hard candies and find that flavor, it’s one that grandma would have in her candy dish. It was perfect in burn and draw, as a cigar with a $33 price tag should be. You know me, I’m not dropping that kind of coin on a cigar,  but I certainly appreciate when I have the opportunity to sit back and enjoy such a great smoke. it was truly wonderful. Later I had another wonderful cigar, as I finished the weekend, a Joya de Nicaragua Cinco Decadas El General, a large, delicious cigar.

Back to reality, I decided to sample the Drew Estate Undercrown Shady XX, a line extension to the Undercrown Maduro line that came out a few years ago and I never got around to smoking. This returns this year as a limited release in the DE Summer Takeover. It’s a 5″ x 50 box pressed belicoso, for some reason it feels a little bigger than that. Usually box pressed cigars feel smaller. Much like the Dogma, this is based on the Corona Viva blend, which has some more ligero than the run of the mill Undercrown Maduro. This was a strong cigar. I felt like the strength overpowered the blend, and it was just too spicy. Maybe it was the wrong cigar for me for how I felt that day, or whatever the case, I generally like the Corona Viva and Dogma, although it’s been a few years since I’ve smoked either, oddly enough. It’s not that it kicked my ass, it was just more spice than the usual espresso/cocoa that I enjoy in the Undercrown Maduro. I’ll smoke one again under different circumstances, but I found this to be a spicy powerful smoke. 

Last night I went with one of my favorite milder cigars, the barber pole cigar from Danli Honduras Cigars, or, as they are now known, DAHOT cigars, The Clown. I always enjoy this smooth, flavorful cigar! Tonight I found a cigar that I got at the TPE show last January, back when things were normal. By the way, next years TPE show has been moved to May, which is interesting because it put is pretty close to the PCA show. I may be able to go, as I will have vacation time by then, and I wouldn’t have if it had been in January, not that there’s any guarantee that travel would be possible then anyway. Tonight’s cigar was the Micallef Grande Bold Sumatra. I would have thought I had smoked this cigar before, but I searched my own site and didn’t find a reference to it, so if I’m repeating myself, my apologies. This cigar was the 5″ x 54 and was box pressed, has a Sumatra wrapper (it would be dumb to name it “Sumatra” if it didn’t, right?), a Broadleaf binder, and Dominican and Nicaraguan fillers. I love Sumatra wrappers, and I love Broadleaf, oddly the two play nicely together making for an interesting smoke. Both qualities come through with the sweetness and some nuttiness. It wasn’t what I expected, but it was really quite good, and I enjoyed it. I think these are priced reasonable and, if I recall, are readily available, at least in my local market. The sales rep in my area is someone I’ve known for a long time, going back to the Usenet days, I seem to recall him winning an inflatable sheep at a large herf in the 90s, but perhaps that’s another story. Micallef seems to be making good cigars and doing the right things for retailers and consumers from what I can see.

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

CigarCraig