I went to the B&M today and the Opus X's were in. I grabbed the last couple Perfexion #5's and couldnt help but notice how light the wrapper looked. It looked almost like a Connecticut wrapper.

The owner of the B&M guessed it had something to do with the recent hurricanes. My cell phone pic isnt the greatest but you could definately tell the difference between todays pick up and last November's.

Anyone else notice this?
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hmmm interesting indeed! I will leave this for the more experienced B/SOTL
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Definitely some color variation there....you'll have to let us know how they smoke and if they taste different.
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Does the wrapper smell the same as the darker one? Does it smell kind of like raisins?

I would guess you either have something very rare or very fake. My money is on fake.
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Theyre DEFINATELY not fake....My B&M is DEFINATELY 100% legit.

As far as I could tell, they smell the same. I really want to wait a little before I smoke one and then give a verdict.
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Could just be wrapper variation.. I have seen some variation in the last couple of releases, albeit not as drastic as those...

I will check my Opus when I get home and see what I find...
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wow interesting...let us know how it goes
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A local B&M got in their new shipment of OX, and I remarked to her they looked very light and questioned if they were in fact Ox. She said, (in a very heavy mandarin accent) "Oh ya, dey opus hex, dey arways that light" I wasn't too pleased with the appearance, but it seems this run has a very light wrapper.
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This is been discussed at the local B&M.
The wrapper is very light with this batch and apparently its pretty blah as well. It was advised to stick to the smaller sticks. As I only like the smaller opus to begin with I decided not to buy any this round.
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Id love to see a review on these and see if there are a ton of flavor variations.
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:-) I'm glad she cleared that up for you
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Cool...At least I know I'm not the only one seeing this...Thanks for your input guys...The next question is "Why?" and "Has it affected the quality?"
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I don't know, I didn't want to gamble with that much money when there are known good sticks for much less.

Let us know.
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same deal here in michigan. but they smoked sooo good. slow cooked flowers (in the best sense). Hadn't heard about the hurricane, though. but Opus=one of the few gars worth the hype, inmho. (that means in my humble opinion. I typed inmho cause it was shorter than typing in my humble opinion, which is a lot of words to type even once so I say IMHO instead).
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I don't recall ever seeing that type of color variation on Opi. The proof is in the pudding. Let us know how they smoke.
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The last few newer Opus X that I got at my local shop did indeed have a slightly lighter color wrapper than some from the past but I didn't notice any difference in the taste.
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Suprised you didnt notice a taste difference being the wrappers are definetly lighter. Most I have spoken to about this stick are not happy with the current batch. Some of these guys smoke a lot of Opus and stock up on them.
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As an Opus whore (or a recovering one) this batch is very bland to me. Yes, ours are light as well here in NY (wrapper color) but definately not as good as other batches in the past. Also (possibly noteworthy) this has happened with other recent batches as well - 2 batches last year were blander than normal to me. and 1 batch the previous year. I am not sure what is causing this. I should ask Moki.
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You would think that these would be subjected to higher standard and that someone along the line would think that this batch isn't very good, so why release it? Probably because people will still buy it.
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Oh, you know they'll 'never rush the hands of time.' :-)

As far as the hurricanes impacting the crop, maybe?
So if the ones sold in 2007 were made with tobacco from 1999 http://www.vitolas.net/displayimage.php?album=35&pos=6 then this affected tobacco would be from 2001? (all other things being equal)
This may have been Hurricane Iris damage? If so, there were some bigger storms that impacted Hispanola more after 2001. What they have from the upcoming batches may be worse than this and they decided to use this, or stretch it out to cover some worse crops, or crops they didn't even get to harvest? I don't know, just a guess.

Or they could be tweaking the blend,

Or they could be just seeing if the folks at CigarAsylum will notice.
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