Date Added: Thursday 21 March, 2019
by Austin
£126.99
Ive just had a very interesting experience with one of these that Ive had in the humidor for 10 years, and felt it was worth sharing. I bought these a decade ago in a pack of 5 from Geneva (not from C.Gars) dated 2001 (notoriously a very bad year on the whole for Havanas), and indeed found them to be from one of those early 2000s batches that were very tight, overly strong in the blend and slightly bitter. The wrappers were dark and very oily - which some older Cohibas did indeed have, usually on these oddly strong and bitter blends. FOHtv did a review of some Siglo 2s that had this very problem. They were not counterfeits - just badly blended and constructed as many batches were back then - there were still distinct Cohiba flavours. Its purely guesswork on my part but I think these infamous old strong batches of Cohibas were possibly just from tobacco harvests that were rushed into production and not properly fermented and aged before rolling, so they never got the chance to mellow out. Also the wrappers were a little darker and of inferior quality. The previous ones from these 5 that I have tried over the years have been too strong and unrefined so I left the last 2 and forgot about them until now.
I figured 18 years of age is quite enough and they cant really mellow out much more so I gave one a go this evening. It had mellowed a lot and was actually quite enjoyable but for being too tight. I cut it down by 2 inches from the cap end to get rid of an obvious twist I could feel in it and the draw opened a little, but still it had a slight bitterness and wasnt producing enough smoke for my liking. After smoking an inch of it I decided to just let it go and experiment and just carefully removed the entire dark wrapper leaf. Wow. SUDDENLY it opened up enormously producing huge plumes of smoke and had lost that bitterness which was largely from the wrapper (and tight drawing). The flavour profile was now suddenly very much Cohiba with that dry grass, cream and citrus and some lovely biscuity notes and a light exotic spice and Cuban earthiness. It now looked extremely rustic and ugly with the exposed binder leaf but it still burned perfectly. Not the best Cohiba Lancero Ive had but still extremely good. I felt I had to share this because if any of you find yourselves smoking a tight cigar that youre going to bin, take the wrapper leaf off. It will allow the bunch to open out and massively improve the draw. If the wrapper leaf is poor quality it will remove some of the bitterness also. This particular cigar would not have even got a review from me (I dont consider duds from the early 0s to be worth reviewing) had I not tried this and had such a revelation and change to the smoke. Had I had this quality of smoke from it normally it would have got 5/5 (probably around a 94 to 95/100), but I enjoyed it so much after removing the wrapper that it had to be 4/5. Ultimately no good cigar should require operating on at all and that alone should warrant a very low score indeed, but this is kind of a special mention. Never in all my years of smoking cigars have I had such a massively dramatic change from garbage to a wonderful, delicious cigar. As a very last resort I highly recommend trying this on a very tight cigar that you simply arent enjoying, as you might find it radically changes it into a wonderful smoke.
