Smoke-N-Spirits

This was my first shot at the Montecristo Reserva Negro.  Initial inspection looked very promising.  This dark little gem had a very smooth wrapper with minimal veins, small tooth and smelled great.  The weight and density felt great between my fingers and I was excited to light it up!

I clipped and toasted it up and started puffing away.  The drag was a little tight but not horrible and the initial flavor was good.  Smooth and silky with no harsh overtones.  Unfortunately before the cigar opened up the burn went south.  Despite a very consistent light it immediately started tunneling down one side.  One of my least favorite things to do is grab the torch to straighten a burn out, it always seems to tarnish the flavor.  However after rotating and using the spit trick I was forced to torch the sucker.  This proved to be futile as well!  About mid way through I finally put it down and let it burn out.  Hoping that after knocking the cold ash off and lighting the high side it would burn strait.  To my dismay this only helped a little and the stick continued to tunnel.  It wasn’t until the last third of the cigar that it started to straighten out and open up.

Once it finally opened up the flavor built along with a slight spice through the nose.  I really couldn’t taste much spice on the tong and the flavor remained smooth and mellow.  The intensity really built in the last third and fortunately my experience started to improve.

The finish was surprisingly good for having such a bad burn and I was left with a good taste in my mouth.  I plan on giving this smoke another try and hoping that the experience will be better.

OVERALL RATING: 65

Appearance and Construction: 15
Flavor: 20
Smoking Characteristics: 10
Overall Impression: 20

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 3:15 pm and is filed under Cigars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.