WRAPPER: Brazilian Mata Fina
BINDER: Brazilian Arapiraca
FILLER: Brazilian, Honduran, Mexican, Nicaraguan
FORMAT: Robusto (552)
ORIGIN: Nicaragua
INTENSITY: Medium-full
NOTES:
Earth | Molasses | Nuttiness
Quite dark and deeply-nuanced earthiness with big looks at vegetal notes within. Composted earth, topsoil, sweet grass, and alfalfa. Rich af profile does thin-some after the opening act. At that point, a nutty peanut-almond melange, shells and all, begins to offer stricter delineations. Molasses is a thing gate-to-wire, picks up as the smoke progresses. Not particularly spicy but there is a bit of black pepper which ebbs and flows.
Middlings show a bit of waxy dark chocolate, Italian roasted coffee beans, and a touch of cinnamon and clove on the back-end moving into a nice lingering finish that's mainly an extension of top-notes. Well-balanced and almost particularly if not singularly sating. A good meal. Evolves in a complex, easy fashion--again quite nuanced and slowly transitional towards the better. Ticks many boxes in a simplistic, hearty way.
Built notably solid and thus builds ash that way, as well. Draws smoothly with perhaps a half-tick of lag here and there. Puts out a lot of smoke and said smoke smells of floral bits that hit the palate finally in the second-half. Big tropical things that leave something like papaya in their wake in ye olde smoke-hole. A robust profile that never weakens but does become more subtly dimensional throughout. A boxer-puncher, say.
TASTE: A-
DRAW: B+
BURN: A-
BUILD: A-
FINAL GRADE: A-
A 90-100 B 80-89 C 70-79
::: very :::