Shai has been a cigar and whisky lover since way before he could legally purchase either. He also brews, distills, and posts the same picture of his porch over and over with different smokes and drinks on Twitter (@dsappl)
Yes, this is indeed a whisky blog, but as you might know I’m also a bit into cigars as well. I was offered to try a cigar by the Cigar Club, to write about it, and I thought it was a really good idea. In fact my friend Shai (who’s a cigar and whisky lover and worshiper, one might say) agreed to write the first cigar notes on the blog, which was nice of him. I handed him the cigar and this is his impressions. true to the word.
Alec Bradley Black Market Robusto
Body: Medium to Full
Burn time: 60 minutes
Extinguished: 1 inch remaining
Format: robusto-ish (just a few mm longer than most popular robustos, with a typical robusto ring gauge in the 50 range)
Appearance:
The cigar is attractively presented with a large paper band about 2/3 of the way up the cigar from the foot. The wrapper is a very dark brown, appearing at first to glance to be a robusto, but identified as a Nicaraguan after a quick sniff. The wrapper is incredibly smooth with a few tiny veins, capped with a perfect triple cap. 90/100
Construction: There is a slightly spongy give that is perfectly even over the whole cigar, promising a nice burn. Indeed, the primary light sufficed for the entire hour of smoking without the need for a single touch up from the lighter, a rare pleasure for this Habano lover. The ash was light grey, and clung tenaciously to the foot well into the second third of the cigar. The burn was perfectly even, and the draw neither too firm nor too loose. The cigar produced large amounts of cool smoke in the first third, but then died down to a more average amount (still cool) for the remainder. All in all, a beautifully constructed cigar.
Score: 95/100
Flavor:
This is where the cigar disappoints. Pre-light aromas of chocolate syrup, raisins, vanilla, and oily tobacco promised flavor, a promise which was not kept. The first few puffs were rather pleasant, a balance of sweet creaminess and delicate earthiness. Into the first third, however, the dominating flavors started to become an even split between burnt, cheap tobacco and a chemically sweet creaminess. I would describe it as halfway between the French vanilla drink from the machine you would find inside of a gas station, and the Black & Mild that you might smoke outside of one. This flavor profile continues throughout the second third, with very little development other than an increase in intensity of the Black & Mild flavor over the chemical coffee drink flavor. Transitioning into the final third, the good news is that some overtones of dark chocolate come into the mix. The bad news is that there starts to be a lingering, dank aftertaste, which I can only describe as reminiscent of wet dog.
Finally, with an inch left, I had to send it the way of Old Yeller. The target market of this cigar is obviously the rather large group of people who used to smoke cigarettes, but now want to be seen smoking a cigar as some kind of validation of their relative success. These people will be right in their comfort zone flavor-wise. 49/100, representing that I’d just barely rather not smoke at all than smoke another one of these.
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