I know they have always been crazy with their reviews (12 year old Madagascar vanilla, etc.), but I was reading their review in the 2009 calendar for the month of July is as follows:

Nub Habano 358
"It's fat and stubby but attractive and draws well. There's an initial cedar blast in the smoke that also shows coffee and a touch of pencil lead flavor"

Now, when was the last time you walked into your local B&M and asked them for a cigar that tastes like pencil lead? :-) How do you even know what pencil lead tastes like unless you ate pencils as a kid? :-)
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Reminds me of the Fuego 777 I tried to smoke this weekend. The first taste I recognized was pencil lead.
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think i'll start a new wtt thread, i have plenty of pencils as trade :-)
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I know the taste of pencil lead, but I can't say I've ever tasted it in a cigar. :-)
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:-)
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Some cigars seem to put lead in my pencil!!!:-)
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I always taste pencil lead right after soggy cardboard. :-)
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Nor would I want to ...:-)
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Did they happen to mention whether it was fresh pencil lead or aged pencil lead?

If it was aged pencil lead, I may have to try one someday. Hard not to like fat stubby aged pencil lead smokes.
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I've seen pencil lead mentioned in wine reviews too.
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I've tasted pencil lead in many cigars. It's a sign of a dog rocket from my experience.
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I hate to admit it, but pencil lead or pencil shavings are in my cigar vocabulary. I associate it with an unpleasant flat mineral flavor. Hard to explain but when you taste it, you know.

But, you should've known you'd find some crazies at the Asylum.:-) At least were proud of it!:-)
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Ok... I'll ask. Have you consumed pencil lead before?
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If you sniff a pencil sharpener, you'll know the smell. For that matter, what does barnyard taste like? Or earth?

Most flavors for cigars are more associated with smells then tastes.
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OK. I gotcha.
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Exactly. We actually taste with our nose as well as our mouths.
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Pencil lead is a common descriptor for cigars and wine. Tire rubber is another one that always threw me. But I have picked up both in wine before and they taste like you would imagine pencil lead and tire rubber tasting. And no I haven't tried either one but I know the smell of both. So you can somewhat infer what they would taste like.
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Did the reviewer mention if it was #2 or #3 pencil? In my experience, one is quite tasty... the other, not so much.









yes... I am joking :-)
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Exactly. I mean how appealling is the smell of a barnyard full of dirty animals, their excrement, and mud. And how appealing is the smell of dirt/earth?

It ain't in my book.
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For me, it's more about finding a word to describe the flavor as opposed to finding a flavor that can be described.

I have detected tire rubber in a few smokes. I usually like DPG/PJ smokes, but the La Riqueza's have a bit of burnt rubber flavor to my palate. In looking at reviews and descriptions, I notice many describe it as burnt Hickory wood.

I believe that my burn tire rubber = others burnt Hickory. Just goes to show you how important it is to have a wide open vocabulary when describing flavors.
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