Cigar review No.1 - Don Tomas Maduro Robusto

My first cigar review already! It seems almost arrogant to be writing a review of what was only the third cigar of my life, but then I'm going to be sharing my own subjective experience, not an expert opinion based on years of experience. As I'm very new to cigars my equipment isn't the best you could get, and I wanted to show some pictures of my kit. There seems to be a fair bit of posing in the cigar world with all kinds of fancy accessories (which do look pretty awesome so it's fair enough I suppose) but I'm aiming to keep it about interesting flavours and aromas. Maybe it's because I'm British and traditionally cigar smoking in Britain has been about pleasure not status. Anyway, this is my setup at the moment:

This is my cutter. It's half a double edge razor blade. I stuck it in the top of a cardboard box to make it look less fancy for the picture.

This is my ashtray. Yes, it's an old sweetcorn tin. It does the job.

This is my humidor. It's a tin that used to have a miniature of Jack Daniels in it and a keyring. Not my favourite whisky, but very nice to taste something I wouldn't normally buy. An educational gift and very much appreciated. Nice tin too. Fit's a robusto but probably nothing longer.

Of course proper humidors have to be humid. They have little devices inside that you put distilled water in. The water slowly evaporates and creates the humid environment needed to properly store cigars. Mine has a slice of potato.

This is what I use to light my cigars. Handmade cigar matches from the Dominican Republic. This is the fanciest bit of kit I've got at the moment. It came free with my first cigar order. I also got a free cigar which was awesome. It tasted better than the one I'd actually ordered too, so big thanks to Håkon from sigar.com. I would have bought some long matches anyway, apparently the flame affects the flavour so this part of the setup seemed worth taking care of properly.

My humble apologies to all the cigar aficionados for putting you through that ordeal. On to the review...

Bit of an intro

I got the cigar from a little shop in stavanger for 133 NOK. That's about £13 or about $22. Apparently these cigars are available in the US for around $4 but that's Norway prices for you. I was hoping to find Padron cigars in the shop but they don't carry them. I cant remember where I heard of Padron, I think Ralfy Mitchell of ralfy.com mentioned them in a video. So I had a little chat with the owner and eventually settled on the Don Tomas Maduro. I basically chose it because it had a dark wrapper and was a sensible size and price. It was made in Honduras. The filler's Honduran and Nicaraguan, with a maduro Connecticut binder and a Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper, all of which means almost nothing to me. So far I've learned that maduro means matured or ripened and seems to taste good. Of the three cigars I've had two were maduros and the other wasn't as nice.

I took the band off because I'm from England. I know the US cigar smokers like to leave is on as a salute to the guy who made it, but I just couldn't leave it on. To a British mind it seems more like showing off, especially since the guy who made it can't see you saluting him, and unless it has the guy's name on it the band just salutes the company he works for. For me, I'll take the bands off and try not to be too influenced by branding. If I want to salute the cigar maker I think it's better to buy another of his cigars.

Appearance

Sorry, I smoked it before starting the blog so this was the best I could do for a picture. I'm taking my tasting notes from the skype conversation I was having with my old friend Mr. Tiffen as I smoked it. It was the same conversation in which he suggested this blog.

Anyway, it came with it's own individual plastic wrapper which at first looked like it was stained brown from the cigar. It turned out it was just brownish plastic. The wrapper leaf was dark drown but with darker and lighter patches. It was fairly rough to the touch, which I suspect might be what's known as "toothy" and comes from aging the tobacco. I heard that if a leaf is "toothy" is has little bits of oil developing inside which gives it lots of lovely flavour. I have no idea if that's true. It had a few veins on it. The filler that was visible at the end was a nice dark brown. Nice to my eyes, not nice relative to any other cigars of course. I don't know what the colour really tells you, but I enjoyed looking at it.

Pre-lit Smell

Wrapper - Really nice earthy smell. Quite woody smelling, with hay and a kind of hamster cage wood shavings smell which I think is cedar. Manure smell in there too, but think nice fertile farmland, not pile of crap.

Foot - At the foot the smell was very similar but with more manure and hay. Again manure sounds unpleasant but it really wasn't. Just a really organic earthy farmy, stable kind of smell smell.

Pre-lit draw

I didn't do a pre-light draw because I used the three match lighting technique. I heard the technique of slowly toasting and lighting the cigar with three long matches one after the other and then cutting it is the best way to taste a cigar. Apparently, if you cut the cigar before lighting it, smoke and fumes get drawn up into the cigar as you light it, kind of like a chimney. Leaving it sealed is supposed to stop that and prevent the tobacco from being tainted. I haven't tried lighting a cigar any other way yet, but one day I'll get two identical cigars and try in both ways and maybe post something about it. The only drawbacks of the 3 match technique that I can see are that it takes a bit of time and that you don't get to explore the flavour of the pre-light draw.

Lighting

A bit tricky to get lit, although I was using the three match method outside and it was a little breezy so I think it was that rather than anything with the cigar. I did get it going eventually. The first thing I noticed on the fist puffs as I was getting it going was dark chocolate. It very clearly tasted of good dark chocolate in a way that surprised me. After a second some spice started coming in that was like chili and combined really nicely with the chocolate. The smell of the smoke was like sweet leather but that smell didn't really translate into taste. I also got a whiff of tropical fruit in the smell of the smoke.

First Third

Mainly the chocolate and chili flavour to start with but then with a hazelnut taste. I would say it was more like the taste of the dark brown skin on the nut, or the inside of the shell. Also white pepper. About halfway through the first third I started getting dry earth and a hint of something kind of metallic tasting.

Second Third

A lot of the flavours from the first third continued into the second but there were a lot of flavours that seemed familiar but that I couldn't quite identify. I did identify the cigarettes my grandad used to smoke which I think were Benson and Hedges. There was something in there that reminded me of the place I used to get my hair cut as a kid. Maybe a kind of stale tobacco smoke mixed with men's hair products.  It got more and more peppery as it went on too, but never became overpoweringly spicy. To me is was quite a nice amount of pepper. Towards the end of the second third the peppery taste was more like black pepper but also quite meaty or leathery. Almost like a well cooked steak with a good crusty coating and lots of black pepper on it. The pepperiness increased but lost it's complexity a bit. The hazelnut taste increased too and felt quite dry.

Last Third

Started losing the earthy flavours a bit as the pepper and nuts took over. That metalic taste started coming back. I started getting a nice dark roast coffee bean flavour too, which at first I thought was the dark roast coffee I was drinking with the cigar. It was definitely in the smoke though.The peppery taste was more like black pepper but also quite meaty or leathery. Almost like a well cooked steak with a good crusty coating and lots of black pepper on it. After that the pepperiness increased but lost it's complexity a bit.

Ash

I hear the ash tells you a good deal about the quality of the cigar so I thought I'd comment on it. It was fully half the length of the cigar before it fell, I reckon two to two and a half inches. I think if Id been more careful I could have kept it longer. After that the ash held til I finished the thing, which was when I got scared of burning my fingers. It was flaking off on the sides a little which I'm told is not what you want, but it was only a very little.

Burn

Well, it burned. I would call it pretty even but I don't really have much to compare it to. I didn't light it as evenly as I thought I did, so there was a little bit on one side that burned slower than the rest for a while but it caught up.

Draw

Again I don't really have much frame of reference for comparison. I was able to suck smoke thought it quite easily and there seemed to be a lot of smoke coming through. Not sure what else to say here, other than that it just occurred to me that cutting the cigar before lighting would maybe give you a chance to check the draw before lighting up and to adjust the cut if necessary.

A few more comments

I thought I'd messed up the cut, but I could see a thick bit of stem right inside the head, so I'm pretty sure it was that which caused the problem and not me being a total know-nothing amateur. I heard Don Tomas cigars quite often go a bit wrong with the cut even with a really good cutter. At first I thought if might unravel, but it was just the very end bit of the wrapper leaf that came unstuck. I was quite careful, but it turned out to be no problem. My razor blade worked really well on the first couple of cigars I had, but they didn't have stems just inside the head. I am looking at getting a decent cutter if I can find a good price. Norway is a crazy expensive place. I had a nice dark roast coffee with this cigar and some dark chocolate, but was so taken with the cigar that I forgot about them. The coffee went cold, which I discovered by having a large mouthful. Once I'd got some hot coffee and opened the dark chocolate they went very nicely with the cigar.

Conclusion

On the whole this was very enjoyable. Of the three I've tried this was the one I identified the most flavours in. I'm not sure if that's because of the cigar or if I'm just getting a bit more used to tasting smoke. It was my first robusto, the other two were coronas I think. Maybe that accounts for the bigger range of flaavours. It was a nice size of smoke for me. I took an hour and fifteen minutes over it and wouldn't really want to smoke for much longer. Not that the end was unpleasant, I smoked it til I couldn't hold it anymore. It was just time to do something else. Would I buy it again? Probably. I wouldn't bother getting the train to stavanger just to get one, but if I was in Stavanger anyway I'd be willing to go a few minutes out of my way to get one. The price was pretty good for Norway at 133 kr, but add another 158 kr for the train ticket and it suddenly looks a lot less appealing. Especially since shipping from sigar.com can be as little as 49kr and they have cigars in the same price range which tatse as good. My first two were from there, what's how I know. For a second it seemed like I had some actual cigar knowledge didn't it? So, final score on the standard one to ten scale: Very pleasant. I would go out of my way for one, I just wouldn't pay to go out of my way for one.