La Cabana Corojo

Well, it was Sunday night after 7 days of working straight (plus a training gig and a website project) and the last thing you'd think I'd have wanted to do was go out. But as I rolled home from work around 9 last night, I decided to reconnoiter at O'Dowd's on the Plaza. It had been awhile since I'd seen Eddie Delahunt play, and so I decided it was a good chance to get a smoke and a few Boddington's in before the weekend was through.

I brought a gift stogie that my baby had picked up for me from a cigar shop in Omaha. The store is La Cabana, and the cigar is a house brand bearing its name. I have two more I'm looking forward to as well - a maduro and an habano.

The singlemost peculiar thing about this cigar was that it had been rolled into a tapered wrapper nipple at the end. Although I admit to being a little thrown off by this, I was also intrigued. Even more so by the fact that when you cut it off, it's as if it was never there. Why was it there, I have to ask myself. Is someone screwing with me on this? Was it ever there? But yes, it was, and I have proof!

So, to business. Here were my scores:

• Appearance - 5 \ I just found the look impressive overall. I liked the medium brown wrapper, the respectable size and the plain label with a distinctive font, considering it was a house brand. Still, I have to admit that the nipple freaked me out a little, even as it piqued my curiosity.
  
• Draw - 4 \ For the first half, it was a little tighter draw than I prefer, but doable.
  
• Burn - 8 \ Terrific. Never fought it once on the evenness of the burn.
• Plummage - 6 \ Until perhaps the last third, the smoke this baby produced was average. It increased towards the end - but smelled very good throughout.
  
• Flavor - 8 \ For some reason, I was never able to nail down a useful adjective for the flavor or the smell. I just liked it generally. And both the flavor and the aroma got better that last 20 minutes.
  
• Overall - 7 \ This was a worthy smoke, and a pleasant discovery. I'll have to stop by this shop in Omaha sometime.

In other news, Eddie Delahunt and his Mexican bodhran player Gabriel kept things flowing with lots of great stuff I hadn't heard before. They even had a pipist named Rashid who sat in for a song and added a cool "medievalish" feel to things. And towards the end of the evening, Eddie gave an awesome and soulful rendition of "The House of the Rising Sun"... Quite powerful, and a great way to finish my weekend with Kellie.

Cheers!