Romeo Y Julieta Short Churchill SMA Feb 2018 (RJSCRW)

[leepers]

Cigar was beautiful in wrapper and impeccable in the hand. Weighty with a crisp edged foot. Even color throughout. 

 

I’ve always had a sentimental spot in my palate and cigar smoking mind for the r and j short church. When I first came to smoke Cubans, years ago on a job, this was the one I fell for. Like that first girl/guy you feel that buzzy, headlong anxious swoon for. And you ask them to dance or go to the movies or on a walk. And they say yes. The very ‘yesness’ of it all tumbled through your every nerve. That’s how it will always live inside you. Electric, giddy. That’s first love of a kind. Discovery. 

 

So smoking this stick is not just a smoke. It’s a dip into my palate’s memory. And all that I remember. 

 

Let’s smoke this stick. 

 

It’s fairly young. It lights beautifully. Right away, it’s white pepper for ages. Like you’ve accidentally gotten hold of a croc. Face and mouth tingling. Tons of smoke. Nice even burn. Not much else is getting through here. Absent are fruitwood. Stone fruit. There’s a touch of saddle leather. Maybe vegetal wax. It’s spicy and fun to smoke but the first third seemed off kilter. Thirty minutes later and the experience was utterly different. White pepper? Gone. Faint traces on the retrohale. What was profoundly present was a nice finish, good mouthfeel and...kind of nothing. It wasn’t unpleasant but all the primary and secondary flavors I normally remember from this mark and vitola were oddly absent. It still had a Cuban twang. But the wildness of the first third fave way to a kind of pleasant but simple and unvaried middle third. Last third smoked like a return charge of a cavalry. The stone fruit came.  And then left. Leather on and on. Cedar on the nose and pleasant pencil/burning charcoal back note appeared toward the end. 

 

I don’t this is the stick I fell for. Palates change. We all move on. I don’t think this is what an R and J SC is though. This felt like middle third especially was rather aberrant. I’ll def smoke more. I may, like old love, hunt down an older box. And see if I can light one up and remember those days again. I still smile when I see on in my hand. It’s a bit of joy always.