Wednesday, May 22, 2019

PDR Cigars Flores y Rodriguez Connecticut Valley Reserve Figurado | Cigar Review by Kaplowitz

“Have you Kaplowitz’d to-day?”


PDR FyR CVR
WRAPPER: Connecticut Broadleaf
BINDER:  Ecuadorian, Nicaraguan
FILLER: Dominican Corojo, Nicaragua Criollo

FORMAT: 6.5x52 Figurado
ORIGIN: PDR Cigars, Dominican Republic
STRENGTH: Med. Full

NOTES: Earth. Dark, fertilized, rich. Earth. Let's call it barnyard. Some slight attachments of tropical floral & fruit bits. Let's call them hibiscus & papaya. Stiff leather & black pepper brace, but there's not a lot to brace against. Very little in the form of undertones unless you take the aforementioned attachments as such. Straight-forward though not unpleasant, just no "wow" factor. At the mid-point, a French roast cuppa gets added, then some cream, to fill out the profile a tick more fully.

Performance begins roughly with a bulging binder cracking the wrapper of the opening 1/2 of the 1/3. Thankfully this crack gets smoked through as fast as the crack at a Whitney Houston party in the late 1990s. The char-line eventually evens on its own at a moderate+ rate of speed. All along, though, the top-leaf seems to fit less than snuggly around the stick. Ash builds loosely but makes an inch of growth at most times. The smooth even draw is a highlight of the construction, & copious cumulus clouds are that of the burn. The resulting room-note shows an anise lilt not seen on the draw.

FINAL GRADE: B+
A 90-100 B 80-89 C 70-79 D 60-69 F 0-59

Stock photo.