Vegas Robaina Unicos EPO JUN 23 (FRCA25)

[TacoSauce]

This is the third installment in the "Cuban figurados are Ass" series. You can find the initial review of an exploding Dip. 2 here, and the follow-up review of a nasty H. Upmann No.2 here. The thesis is that "Cuban figurados are Ass." This is based on my experience with 33 figurados across various marcas that I had previously tried to smoke. Out of this set of 33 sticks, the only passable smokes were 2 BBF and 2 HdM Epi. No.3s. The remaining 29 sticks were various degrees of "Ass" due to construction issues -- mostly they were plugged and overpacked beyond what a PerfectDraw can fix. Notably, there wasn't a single passable Piramides in the group.

As described in the last post,  I have started to implement a weight-sorting protocol to help improve my experience with CCs in general. This works by weighing every stick in a box and replacing them in sorted order by weight. With this accomplished, I can then choose cigars with a lower weight to help avoid experiencing overpacking/plugged issues. On paper, this sounds like a grand idea. However, my previous experience choosing an H. Upmann No.2 of proper weight, didn't help at all. It turns out that a bad roll is more than enough to ruin a cigar of proper weight.

Below, I will review my next attempt at smoking a CC Piramides. This time it is a Vegas Robaina Unicos from an EPO JUN 23 box. I had one cigar from this box previous and it was NO BUENO. I weighed out the remaining sticks and the weight distribution is shown in the boxplot below. The expected weight is 14.26 grams (solid horizontal line). We can see that 14 sticks fall within the expected weight +/- 10% and the remainder were on the heavier side (this is a better distribution that what I observed for the Upmann No.2). I took the 3 sticks with weights closest to the expected value and then randomly selected one to smoke (14.39 g).

 

Review:

Another sunny Saturday afternoon. Still a bit cold, but you have to take advantage of these cold and sunny days before Spring shows up in full force. Once spring has sprung, the weekends will be too rainy to be outside. Pre-flight, tactile check of the cigar revealed it to have a mostly uniform pack with a little bit of give that made me hopeful it would draw properly. Pre-light, the dark chocolate looking wrapper gave off the classic, rich smell of hay. After clipping, I also got hay on the cold draw. The draw itself was snug. However, it wasn't plugged or restricted to the same level as I have experience previously -- so there was hope.  Running my fingers up and down the length of the stick again to check for plugs, I found two spots that might explain the snug draw: one at the band and another near the foot of the cigar. I decided to forego the PerfectDraw and move directly to lighting.

After lighting, the cigar opened in an unoffensive manner! However, the smoke output was low and there was clearly some restriction. Despite this, I was getting an okay dark, woody flavor with a touch of bitterness. 3/4 of an inch later, I apparently burned through the plug and the draw opened up enough to get nearly normal smoke output. A first for a Cuban Piramide in my experience! With decent airflow, the flavor immediately intensified and improved. The profile was leather, dark wood, cocoa powder and the tiniest bit of stewed fruit coming and going at the edges. This is a dark experience and there is almost no sweetness.

As I got to the half-way point, I was amazed to see the burn line was perfect and the ash was stacking up in the true "stack of dimes" manner. This performance had my jaw on the floor.  Could this experience be "not Ass?" As I headed into the final third, the wrapper started to split at the spot near the band that was previously identified as having a knot. Unlike previous experiences, this didn't get out of control and didn't affect the performance. Overall this smoked like a darker version of the Famosos with less fruit and less sweetness. In that regard I like the Famosos better, but this was still an enjoyable experience.

Rating: "Not Ass!!!"

Conclusion: The new system of selecting a cigar based on weight paid off big time on this occasion: it allowed me to experience my first ever "not Ass" Cuban Piramides. This brings the score for Cuban figurados to 5 out of 34 being smokable. Still not a great track record, but there is clear improvement. And that's a trend we like to see. 

[TacoSauce]

There was a slight issue with the weight plots across these posts. After fixing, I plotted the three boxes side-by-side and found it interesting. It really drives home the point that these sticks are consistently overpacked, which can lead to problems. I'm curious to know what thresholds we can use to interpret these weights. For example where is the threshold above which "PerfectDraw is needed, and will help" vs the threshold above which "you are SoL". Having organized these boxes by weight, I should be able to generate estimates for these thresholds as I (attempt to) smoke through the boxes.