Montecristo Edmundo - GOS AGO 19 (MRW2)

[Meklown]

I love Montes. I have maybe 2-3 sticks a week on a regular basis (I smoke 6-7 per week). After having a no4 on Friday (review already posted), I pulled another for Saturday.

My parents were over in our place for dinner and to watch the match. Community Shield (for those followers of English football) - Liverpool vs Arsenal. I'm a fan of the Arsenal and Arteta has brought some joy and ambition back into the club. The parents arrived at around 6pm, and we started grilling some tomahawk.

Between dinner and the match (kickoff was 11:30pm local time), plenty of time for an easy smoke. Handed out Edmundos to Dad and my gf (mum doesn't smoke). Unfortunately I only had 2 in the drybox so I picked out one from my less-than-ideal storage (really just keep the box in my TV console with no form of humidity nor temperature control). Okay, bad move.

Cold draw: was a little humid, should have taken that as a warning sign. A little cocoa flavour.
1st 3rd: Started with a bit of cream and cocoa, but flavours are rather muted. Nothing much going on.
2nd 3rd: Right, the humidity in the cigar seems to be getting denser. It's getting harder to draw and the flavours are really muted. Nothing standing out at all. This is disappointing.
3rd 3rd: No, I'm not feeling anything at all. Well, lesson learnt. Store your damn cigars properly! Usually I put them in my desktop humidor (drybox) for above a month before trying to smoke them but, well, hope the other 2 sticks that I handed out are better than the one I had. Pitched it not long after the 2nd picture. 
Overall: a disappointing 78/100. Unfortunately I cannot give it a "good" score of 80 or higher.

Bonus: drinks for the night were good. A pretty decent merlot (the vineyard is located across the street from Petrus, I believe) as accompaniment to the steak, and the A'bunadh (pictured above) [batch 65, this bottle] delivers as many had before it. One of the examples to prove that NAS scotch is no problem if properly selected. However, more often than not, "travel retail exclusives" don't deliver to the same extent.