\'05 ERDM coronas de luxe

[broozer]

i meant to post this earlier and got tied up making dinner and forgot:

This is a wonderful looking cigar with almost a flawless wrapper. There's a slight box press to it since it came in a dress box, but not too much. It's damn near round like cigars in cabs. The ash is very "tight" looking and is grey with very various black patches in it as well at the first half inch or so in. Naturally it's got that ERDM flavor, but it's much stronger in regular tobacco flavors as opposed to the GdE I smoked earlier today. The draw is perfect and it's producing a lot of smoke.

This ERDM unlike the GdE earlier does have some pepper notes, but the creaminess is not near as up front. It's there, but it's hiding. I don't know if it will stand out more after years of aging or not, which of course is what makes it so much fun to age cigars on my own because one day I WILL find out if the creaminess will come out more. This cigar has definitely not developed like most aged ERDM's that I have smoke ('99 tainos, '99 GC's and my '97 GdE's). naturally because it's only 3 years old (well, next month it will be).

Nearing the end of the first third the cigar is not really changing much. It's pretty much just a good clean tobacco taste with a hint of pepper and cream except the pepper is hardly noticeable at this point. Again there are flavors that I just can't describe or detect, but that's why I'm drinking water with this one. In hopes of figuring some of them out.

Well, at almost the halfway point it's really not changing much, but hell….i'm not complaining at all. I really love the ERDM line and I believe this is one line along with partagas, Bolivar, sancho panza and SLR that really ages beautifully. The classic creaminess of this line is coming back in spades and is very nice. To me this cigar tastes way more than 3 YO. Smoking it blindly I'd would most likely guess it's at least 5 YO. It seems the final portion of this cigar is going to be dominated by pepper and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just a wonderful, creamy and DAMN good El Rey del Mundo. I adore this brand and would put it in my top 5 favorite brands if I had to choose them. There was a lot of taste similarities between the corona de luxe and the grandes de espana today.

I would have taken more pics, but my battery ran out on the ole camera. Next up…….the '98 tainos.