A tale of two cigars

[patrickamory]

Tonight I pulled out my second stick from a partial box of Connie A's that I won on BR in July. 

Draw was perfect, construction very good, and just a delicious cigar from start to finish. Milk chocolate, bitter almond, nutty tobacco flavors. I smoked it in about an hour, and it was luscious.

I still had a smoking window left on my terrace, based on an arrangement with an upstairs neighbor, and I was in a good mood, so I decided to follow it up with a second, smaller cigar. I pulled out a Siglo I and... disaster. Fairly tight draw, went out three times in its short length, perfecdraw did nothing to improve it, and it was closed and mouthpuckeringly bitter from start to finish.

I've had a prior box of Siglo I's that I demolished in no time, just perfectly smoking chocolatey bombs, but this one seems to be a dud :( The good box was EOL OCT 20, purchased in April, and this one is SOP SEP 20, purchased in May (neither from our host - that was before I discovered FOH). I thought that Habanos put special attention to quality with Cohibas, but this is apparently not always the case.

Is there a word for when the ash looks all shaggy like this? It usually seems to be a sign that there is a problem with the cigar.

Thank god for the Connie A. This maybe counters the argument that you shouldn't buy partial boxes because the person is selling them due to not enjoying the ones they smoked, but I would be curious to hear from those with more experience!

[NSXCIGAR]

10 minutes ago, patrickamory said:

I thought that Habanos put special attention to quality with Cohibas, but this is apparently not always the case.

Eh, I've never found that to be necessarily the case in my experience. Particularly with Siglo I & II where millions are rolled in every factory from Pinar to Baracoa. 

Also, the burn issues on your Cohiba look like poor leaf processing might be contributing to that bad wrapper and binder burn. Not much can be done about that at the point of factory QC.