oneizzzz

Redfish Grouper Pompano Salmon Brook Trout

Happy Birthday Lisa!!

Happy Birthday Rob!

I was lucky to pick up some Encantos this year, and I smoked 2 of them in 2024. They were both so mild and sweet that I slurped them down very quickly. Each is memorable. To borrow a term from our beloved @JohnS' smoking diary describing this very cigar, I am "singing from the same song sheet" as @JY0. The other standout was a dark-wrappered LTO DIC 20 Siglo VI. Each of the first two cigars from this box had been muddled in flavor, due in my opinion to the youthful discord between the dark wrapper and the lighter flavor notes for which Cohiba is known. Luckily, this third one seemed to have outgrown its youth and was delivering incredible complexity. On the one hand, the wrapper tasted like dark chocolate, coffee, and prunes. On the other hand, the blend delivered classic light honey and grassiness. What a treat! It is unexpected and can really blow your mind when a cigar delivers such complexity puff after puff.

Congrats @Ford2112!

This guy is insane, he could be a top 5 edge rusher in the NFL.

EBP has been a fantastic code this year. Those punch will be great!

And how is it?!

Thanks for all the work you have put into this, @LizardGizmo. Such a great resource 💪 🏆

Is this a mis-stamped PTG box code? Cabinet sourced here on FOH. Haven't seen PIG before...

Didn't know that, thanks.

@JohnS Your reviews are wonderful as always and I'm excited every time when I see the notification that you've written some more. Thanks to you and @99call, another bona fide fan of this diary, for acclaiming Sancho Panza. It's such a great brand and has become one of my very favorites in the last year or so.

Great review of this cigar. Padron should hire you, John!

The font and spacing of the numbers on the serial code actually look off to me as well.

Hope you enjoy it when you do smoke one!

90 days? C'monnnn smoke one of the Pony Express and let us know what you think 😉

Doesn't make sense to go and remove a perfectly good anti-counterfeit measure. I don't have any 2023 Cohiba to compare. In the context of a market saturated with fakes, the packaging and anti-counterfeiting inconsistencies on legitimate Cohiba are just 🤦. It creates so much doubt and uncertainty. Very tough pill to swallow when combined with the price point. On the other hand in defense of Habanos SA, they've probably already priced out about 90% of the buyers who would actually notice these differences - so hey, no big deal right?

I have an ETA SEP 22 box.

Given the opportunity to choose a box in person, I typically prioritize aroma and wrapper quality/consistency. If those are equal between boxes, I usually pick the darker shade wrapper (Colorado or Colorado Maduro) simply because in my experience those are rarer when it comes to Cubans. As a result they typically offer a less common flavor profile which is nice to have in the collection. To me, the Cuban Colorado Maduro wrapper imparts a deliciously rich and deep chocolatey prune flavor. I absolutely love this flavor, but it can dominate the blend and render the cigar less complex. For example I have two boxes of GLE ABR 20 Trinidad Fundadores: one claro and one colorado/colorado maduro. Each has some rosado like @karp mentioned. They smoke so differently! The claro box is very fine, subtle, complex, and invites slow smoking and appreciation for the classiness of the cigar. The colorado box is less complex but just full-on scrumptious. I'm sure we can all relate to taking the first bite of a really delicious chocolate cake or mousse and then, "poof!", next thing you know the whole thing is gone and you are riding that sugar high. That's how the colorado box smokes. Just a fat punch of hedonism. Really different experiences and appropriate for different occasions. The 40 ring gauge of the Trinidad Fundadores makes it easier to notice how much the wrapper affects the overall flavor profile of the cigar because in such a thin ring gauge, the wrapper is making up a relatively high percentage of the total blend. It seems Habanos generally opts for Colorado Claro wrappers (do others agree?). That choice would make sense to me because Colorado Claro theoretically offers a light enough profile for the complexity of the blend to shine (coming from the claro side), while still offering a bit of the chocolatey taste we love (coming from the Colorado side). A nice middle ground for most blends.

These are way under the radar, amazing, and affordable. Shhhhhhh........ 😂

Is the gold bar in the BNGM box just decoration or is there anything inside? Would be cool if there were a couple tubos in there or something.

2011 Sancho Panza Molinos What a blend!

Got lucky in Brussels today.

2005 Saint Luis Rey Double Corona

Cohiba Robusto MAR MAR 21. They smell and look great, but bitter and terrible combustion. Maybe they'll come around.