Cigar review No.2 - Hawk 1968 Robusto

Here's another rather ill informed cigar review for you. I was going to wait a little while before ordering another cigar, maybe til my next payday, but I got a bit over-excited and before I knew what was happening I'd made another purchase from sigar.com. I enjoyed the Chess Maduro Corona I got for free with my last order and I read that fatter cigars have space in them for more leaves (makes sense) and can therefore have a more complex blend of tobacco. That sounded pretty interesting to me so I ordered a Chess Maduro Robusto. You get a small fee if your order is less than 300 kr (Håkon has to make a living after all) so I added another cigar to the order. I read somewhere that robustos are a good size to go for since pretty much every company produces a cigar in that size, it's thick enough to get a good mix of leaves and not the most expensive. I decided that's the size I'm going to try to stick with for now so I can explore the difference in the tobacco flavour and know it's the tobacco and not the size or shape that's causing the different tastes. Went for a Hawk 1968 because it's made in the same factory as Chess cigars, so the biggest difference should be the tobacco itself.

Only the fourth cigar of my life and my second cigar review. I still don't feel right calling it a review, it makes me sound like I have a clue. I've done a bit of homework and read up a bit about cigars but I'm by no means an expert, and barely even qualify as a novice. Let's face it, as much as I hate the word, I'm a "newbie". However, I can still share my own subjective experience, and here it is...

Bit of an intro
I think a little disclaimer is in order here: I got most of this information from sigar.com, but it's a Norwegian website and all the text in Norwegian. I was kind of lazy about reading it and used google translate, which doesn't always translate things with complete accuracy.

The Hawk 1968 range are made in the Dominican Republic in the Chess factory. I'm pretty sure both companies are owned by Håkon Aanonsen, who picked up the nickname "Hawk" from some Americans who couldn't quite pronounce Håkon. I assume he was born in 1968 since this line of cigars is like his personal brand, but I'm guessing there.

The robusto I ordered has a natural filler (which is supposed to be the most expensive tobacco in the Dominican Republic. Costly is probably a better translation, it makes it sound like it's valuable rather than a rip off) and a Brazil maduro wrapper. It seems to me that if it says "maduro" in it anywhere then it has a decent flavour. Of the four I've tried the only non-maduro was the one I liked least. Also, it's 5 inches long with a ring gauge of 54 (diameter of 54/64 of an inch), or in Norwegian terms it's 12.7 cm long with a diameter of 2.14 cm.

The website said it tastes of toasted nuts with nice sweetness and complex flavours. I find descriptions like that frustratingly vague at times which is part of why I started this blog. So i'm to expect toasted nut flavour, something sweet and some other stuff as well. But let's be fair, taste is incredibly subjective and depends so much on so many different factors it can be very difficult to say what people will experience, so "complex flavours" could cover a whole range of things that official cigar testing people described differently.

Just as an example of how different things can affect the sense of taste, I had a couple of beers at the weekend. That, however, is not the end of the story. I had the same beer from the same brewery two nights in a row. Even from the same six back, so I think it's safe to assume it was the same batch - two identical beers on two consecutive nights. On the first night I'd just had chili con carne for dinner and the beer (a dark ale) tasted a little of chocolate, a little of dark roast coffee, but mostly just plain bitter. I found it rather one dimensional and uninteresting. The following night I decided to give it another chance after a dinner of pizza and salad. This time it was very chocolatey, with rich coffee, complex dried fruit flavours, christmas cake and some woody notes. Still a little too bitter on the finish for my liking but the experience was much more pleasant than when I hadn't just obliterated my taste buds with chili. Just as an aside, I'm thinking of reviewing the beers from that brewery. They're decent beers for the price and I'm looking for cost effective content. Lervig Aktiebryggeri. Look them up.

Oh yeh, it cost me 155 kroners.

Appearance

This should be a better picture than the rest. It turned out the pictures were really tiny if you clicked on them because I'd messed something up. I tink I got this one right and I'll rectify the rest later if I can. Thanks to my old friend Mr. Tiffen for pointing that out.

The outer wrapper was a matt, chocolate brown, with some very small patches of darker brown, like dark chocolate. It very much put me in mind of posh dark chocolates dusted with cocoa powder. The band is fairly plain compared to some cigar bands, but I rather like the hawk design. It was some kind of foil too which pushed it up a couple of points on the fancy scale. The band's just part of the packaging anyway, and I can't imagine it says much about the quality of the tobacco. Incidentally, it arrived in an individual plastic wrapping like most seem to.

The tobacco visible at the foot looked the same colour as the rest of the wrapper. Not sure if that means anything.

Pre-lit Smell
I particularly enjoyed this part
Wrapper - kind of composty smelling, old wood shed, a bit rotten and earthy in a really pleasant way, something not quite like manure but kind of fertile farmy smelling, rotting grass but not quite silage, sort of leafy, again an earthy smell but somehow more muddy this time, mixed spices (possible cinnamon, vanilla and clove but it was hard to be definite)
Foot - cocoa powder, hay, kind of muddy or pondy (bit like a muddy pond of all things), very nice mix of earthy spice aromas that I couldn't help thinking would be nice powderred and sprinkled on a cappuccino.

Pre-lit Draw
I didn't do one this time, as I was trying to use the fancy three match lighting method again. It's very difficult to do it outside, especially when there's a little wind. I think next time I have a cigar I'm going to cut first, I feel like I'm missing out on a flavour experience without a pre-lit draw. After all, how much difference can the fumes from burning tobacco make to the taste of burning tobacco?

Lighting
Bit difficult to light, but mainly due to the wind and my insistence on doing it in a fancy way. Once I found a spot out of the wind I was able to light it with no probalems. I did think the cigar might be a little dry at one point as I was examining it. I think I gave it a gently squeeze and it felt a bit crispy inside or something. It actually lit a bit easier than I'd expected which I suspect confirms it's dryness.

As I was lighting I got leafy tastes with cocoa and medium to light roasted coffee beans. The smoke smell of the smoke was quite like toast.

First Third
The toasted nuts mentioned on the website's description of the taste were definitely there. I also got toasted bread, some bitterness like dark roasted, bitter coffee beans (not good quality ones), charcoal or the remains of yesterdays campfire, something sweet and spicey, fragrant wood (my Norwegian friend and I'm privilaged to say former housemate Mr. Bjelland could probably say what wood), dark toffee, and a kind of mustiness towards the end of the first third.

Second Third
It started getting a bit more spicy in the second third, by which I mean flavour of spices rather than that slight stinging tingle you sometimes get, although that started creeping in too. I got maybe pepper, a dry earthy sensation (not just a taste) that seemed to leave a musty aftertaste, old wood store, a touch of vanilla, charcoal again, a kind of beany flavour (not coffee beans or the nuts that had been in the background most of the time so far), kind of meaty hay (maybe horse), something powdery that I might be willing to call talc, wood again (maybe oak this time but not sure, it was slightly bitter wood), cookies, toast, bread crusts (like the crust of home baked white bread when you've left it in the oven just a little longer than you should), a general baking smell, some kind of sweet toasted nutty flavour that seemed very familiar (it put me in mind of something like marzipan but made with hazelnuts, maybe like chocolate coated nougat), then came marzipan and almonds.

Last Third
The nougat, marzipan and almond flavours lasted a bit into the final third, but then it started getting a bit hot and stingy, the wrapper fell off and it started raining so I decided to call it a day.

Ash
The ash was pretty white, but slightly grey and was kind of flakey. It dropped just as I was getting into the second third and again not long before I stopped smoking it. Not sure what that means really, but I think flakey ash isn't what you want and the Don Tomas I smoked held its ash a fair bit longer.

Burn
Pretty even I'd say. I didn't light it perfectly but it corrected that by itself. No tunneling or canoeing or any of that. It burned a bit quicker than I would have expected, but I think it was a little on the dry side.

Draw
I guess it was good. I still don't have much to compare to, but I was able to pull smoke through without having to try too hard, so it wasn't tight. I'm not sure what the opposite of a tight draw would be like.

A few more comments
I have a decent cigar cutter on the way but I wasn't patient enough to wait for it to arrive and cut this cigar with the razor blade. I messed it up a bit and was holding the head end of the wrapper in place for most of the smoke. It unraveled towards the end and I lost the wrapper completely, but I was about ready to stop then anyway. I've already mentioned a couple of times that I think it was a little dry because of seeming kind of crispy when I gave it a little bit of a squeeze. I read it's supposed to feel spongy and it was definitely more crispy than spongy. I think I need to learn a bit more patience with cigars, but they're still so new and exciting it's hard to hold back.

I was smoking this outside in the night and it was pretty cold and quite windy. I think that detracted from the overall experience, although I did still enjoy exploring the flavours with this one. The most enjoyable cigar I've had so far was the Don Tomas, which I smoked on a fairly warm, still day during daylight while chatting to my old friend Mr. Tiffen on Skype. Just goes to show that there's much more to the experience than just the taste and smell of the cigar. I think I'll be a bit more careful of that stuff in future.

Conclusion
I did enjoy it, but I got quite cold. It has a lot of complexity which is always something I enjoy, and it had some flavours I hadn't tasted in a cigar before. I preferred the experience of the Don Tomas Maduro Robusto I had before, but to be honest it could have been more about the environment than the actual flavours or quality. I forgot to check how long it took, but I was ready to finish when there was still roughly an inch and a half left. If it had been a warm summer afternoon (and if I'd cut it properly) I might have smoked it right down, but who knows. Would I buy it again? Maybe. I didn't find anything really wrong with the flavour or anything, but the Don Tomas was a little cheaper and was as good in my opinion. I might get another at some point and smoke it under more favourable conditions and see how that goes. So, on the standard one to ten scale, this was about as good as the next best cigar I've smoked but cost a tiny bit more.