BLEND: Mortal Coil
WRAPPER: American Broadleaf
BINDER: American Shade
FILLER: Honduran, Nicaraguan, Dominican Andullo
FORMAT: Toro
ORIGIN: Nicaraguan
INTENSITY: Medium/Medium-full
NOTES:
Cherry cola | Dark chocolate | Prunes
I feel like maybe a soda jerk rolled this stick with a day's work worth of syrup on his hands. Heavy cola notes. Big wild cherry additions there, and also a bit of prune (just what the 'Dr.' ordered). Black pepper, smoothly but with a presence announced with authority. What makes a cherry wild? Maybe it's the caffeine. Then there's the dark chocolate, fudgily-so.
Silky but solid. That chocolate note bridges the gap twixt the primary and secondary notes underneath. Down there is all rich dark earthiness which catches all the drippings-down and adds a bit of its own savoriness. Manure. This is quite, quite a good smoke. Well-structured in and of itself, maybe some roasted nuts and shells lend a hand there. At the half, our soda jerk becomes also a barista.
I have an impediment of sorts. Whenever I mean to say 'barista,' out comes instead, 'barrister.' Then I chuckle at the powdered wig imagery in my mind's eye. I digress. The band confounds me, I finally pull it off and as it unfurls I think aloud "Oh, coil; I get it!" Then I laugh again at powdered wigs. I already digressed. The slow burn needs a re-touch at mid-point.
Performance-wise, have I been groomed by 60 ring gauges to the extent that this fifty feels slim? Maybe, but it does. It's rolled tight-tight but the draw is smooth and easy. The seams and leaf are a bit rugged cosmetically--no issue in the smoking. The ash ain't a grower and is as dry as my palate is not, and it is in a big way not. Smoke out-put is voluminous on the draw and calm between. The smells of each of our man's workplaces fill the air around me.
The bakery down the block just put a loaf of pumpernickel in the wood-fired brick oven.
TASTE: A
DRAW: A-
BURN: B+
BUILD: A-
FINAL GRADE: A-
A 90-100 B 80-89 C 70-79
::: very :::