I would like to thank Steve Saka for the ability to review this cigar. I ran into him along with Pete Johnson from Tatuaje Cigars at the 5th Anniversary Event of Top Shelf Cigar in Epping NH this Spring and got a few of these sticks to try.
Wonderfully beautiful cigar. Dark Brown wrapper, with a nice little pigtail on the cap. Wrapper is perfect, wonderfully rolled cigar that is nice and firm with no overly hard spots.
Pre-light Draw: Absolutely perfect draw with a little tug which I like on a corona sized cigar I seemed to get a bit of chocolate and cinnamon.
1/3
Monster strength, chewy like smoke. Lots of spice on the palate and through the nose. At first it doesn't seem that the spice is going away anytime soon. Flavors right off the bat were dark bitter chocolate, molasses, slightly woody finish. Super easy to get a lot of smoke out of this cigar. Bit of menthol-like like flavor pops up after a few puffs and seems to alternate after every other puff. After 3/4" spice calms down a good amount but there is still a good amount left that sneaks up on you and says HELLO every once and awhile.
2/3
Spice still seems to be rather tame. Chocolate and woodsy flavors dominate and the molasses like flavor sticks around on the finish but is not sweet anymore, almost kinda tart but very enjoyable. Later in the third there's is a nice balance of sweet dark chocolate and cinnamon/ clove spice alternating with nice woodsy flavors.
3/3
Spice in the back of the throat comes back and tongue. Meaty like leathery flavor with a chocolaty finish
Woodsy flavor comes back with lots of cinnamon. Really beginning to get hit with the nicotine. This is for sure a potent cigar.
Didn't get hot until the nub.. Surprising for a corona size cigar
Smoking time 1 hour 30 minutes
This is quite a good cigar. The burnline was near perfect and the flavors out of the cigar were pretty unique. I wouldn't think by reading this review that this cigar would be my cup of tea but it was quite good! I would love to see this with a lot of age to see what happens. Hopefully the production stick is just as good!
94 pts
*Note* Once I get my hands on some of the production Dirty Rats I will do a side by side review of the production and pre-production sticks (with pictures
:-) )
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