La Gloria Cubana (well-aged)

ejr postback: 2010.02.04

Likely-years-aged La Gloria Cubana (from 2009 kc aficionados holiday party raffle).

• Appearance - 8 \ nice but length makes (robusto?) thickness seem thinner. Dark brown wrapper. Looks like maybe a hint of blume? Funny sweet cloying aroma before lit.
• Burn - 10 \ perfectly even.
• Draw - 6 \ a little tight, but if it was too much looser, it would have smoked too fast.
• Plumage - 9 \ above average, plus the aroma was also thick with the flavor described below, which added to it.
• Flavor - 10 \ initial flavor really caught my attention... It had a whole different layer of flavor on top of the normal cigar flavor. Good. Different. Sort of more 'herbal' or 'dusty' or 'deep'. In a way the normal flavor-adjectives often fail me and with this especially, these words capture the whisp of recognition better than food or wood flavors. It did have something of an aftertaste of mild old pepper, that's the only way I can describe it. It really tasted very much like it had been blended with another type of plant than tobacco entirely. Having very limited experience with bloom, I wondered if it was related. The spicy undertones built slowly but progressively, providing variation and an extremely satisfying rhythm that built to a peppery powerhouse crescendo.
• Overall - 10 \
• Rt scale - 4 \

Smoked while reading technical manual on an Adobe product at Mulligan's. The picture doesn't do the gray spots of suspected bloom justice, and I know it's not really replicable, but definitely a worthy smoke worth mentioning. Possibly one of the best cigars I've ever smoked, though certainly different than most other greats.