WRAPPER: Ecuadorian Sumatra
BINDER: Honduran
FILLER: Honduran, Nicaraguan
FORMAT: Robusto en Vidrio
ORIGIN: Honduras (HATSA)
INTENSITY: Mild-medium
NOTES:
Cedar | Lemon candies | Graham cracker
"Wearing a turtleneck is like being strangled by a really weak guy, all day. Wearing a backpack and a turtleneck is like a weak midget trying to bring you down." - Mitch Hedberg.
Add to the above-italicized notes: turtleneck | backpack. A muted, muffled blend--dustily dulled. Apologetic? Cedar is super-soft and buttery-forward, not lending much to structure, but much to the malaise. Little to no delineation throughout. Lemonheads candies under a layer of sunlit dust. Honey graham crackers, sparingly and in/out. A malted honey note is rather nice but as with the rest, quite hard to single-out. Chicken coop and pale suede under-belly. Smokes like blurry vision looks.
Somewhat of a cloyingly-sweet flat-fest which one could take as calm but registers to me as tedium. Not helping its case is a 2/3 and onward cardboard addition which happens in the wake of a failed exotic spice and white peppercorn gambit. Balanced and nuanced but in unentertaining ways. Lacks complexity and character. A profile everyone will sorta like but, unfortunately, no one will adore. Lackadaisical. The finish is perhaps the best aspect, where suede savoriness shines thru with a honey malt nod.
Burn-line needs a few light re-directs and pacing seems up and down, fast and slow, probably on account of that. A slight amount of smoke out-put off the foot, coupled with a lazy draw, leaves little to no room-note beyond a vague sandy sweetness. Packing softens about 3/4" ahead of an at times thick-ish line. Seams and cap hold well. Ash is dry, clumpy not flakily-so. In the end, by which I mean the mid-point (although I soldier-on to nub) I taste what mainly can be summed up as a pleasant-enough smoke taste.
TASTE: B+
DRAW: B
BURN: B
BUILD: B+
FINAL GRADE: B
A 90-100 B 80-89 C 70-79
TASTE: B+
DRAW: B
BURN: B
BUILD: B+
FINAL GRADE: B
A 90-100 B 80-89 C 70-79
::: very :::