The KC/DW Review Series

[King Catfish]

New Year's Day

My sweet sister bestowed upon me a very much appreciated Christmas gift....

(snip)

Nice gift, and nice review. How was your holiday otherwise?

[DeeDubya]

Nice gift, and nice review. How was your holiday otherwise?

KC,
Everythings great here. We've been blessed with mild weather this winter so far excepting that we are in an extreme drought. 2008 was the 5th driest year on record back to the early 1800's. Our normal rainfall is around 32", this year less than 16".
It's a good year for tumbleweeds and goats. The tumbleweeds like it dry and the goats don't give a shit about the weather.

How are things in Hatfield, PA? Did Santa find your house?

Have a safe and prosperous new year.

[DeeDubya]

These have been hibernating in my humi for around 5 months now. I opened a box and have smoked 5. I am impressed enough to bring them to the round table of BOTL's. They look much like a Gispert and do have a soft, leathery, toothy, Cuban like appearance. They are considered to be medium to full-bodied. Introduced in 2002 they seem to be now hard to find. I'm not sure why the unavailability.

They consist of a Nicaraguan filler and binder, are wrapped in a unique cross-bred Habano 2000 and Criollo wrapper and then box pressed. All 5 that I smoked drew and burned exceptionally well. I could detect a nutty (almond), toasty and earthy (aged) essence that made for a very flavorful yet not too robust cigar. The larger 52 ring guage certainly helps them burn a little cooler with clouds of thick rich smoke. Average smoking time for me is about 45min, but I usually smoke in the evenings and sometime tend to rush. One could easily last an hour.

At only $3/stick they are a good deal and worth every penny. We'll see where the price is if they again become available.

One a scale of 1-10 I rate this cigar 8.8.

[mrtr33]

I had my first Savinelli when I met up with Silencei2 just before Christmas a few weeks ago. I asked the shop owner for a strong, full bodied Nicaraguan and that was what he suggested, after I turned down the Padrons and LGC's. Nice smoke. It didn't look like the one on the picture. I want to say it had RyRY on the wrapper. Haven't been able to find it, but haven't looked too hard, either.

[DeeDubya]

Well I now have a new "quick break" cigar that is replacing my beloved Hemingway Short Stories and Oliva Special G's. While the Short Stories will always have a special place in my humidor and I will always keep some on hand, it always seems like a waste to puff down a $5 cigar in 15 minutes. When I have time, I can stretch them out to 20 or 30 minutes and truly enjoy all the earthy flavors. But I'm talking about when I don't have that much time yet still have to have a cigar. Along came the little Nesticos.

The Plasencia Nesticos consist of the same 3yr aged 100% organically grown Nicaraguan tobaccos as their larger cousins. I have several boxes of the larger vitolas and smoke them one on occasion always enjoying the truly natural flavors. It's kinda cool thinking that this may be close to what cigars were like a couple hundred years ago, no pesticides, old world traditional drying and aging and best of all they were puros, as blending, especially with foreign tobaccos was not as prevalent.

The little Nesticos have all the good qualities of their big brothers but of course burn just a little hotter thereby slightly changing the flavors with a little more dry grassiness. Still, they are spicey with a good finish, burn evenly, hold a good ash and are less than half the price of a Short Story and slightly less than a Special G.

[logan37]

Nice review DW! I may have to look into these a when my RP Juniors are gone.

[craig]

Thanks for the review! I have a box tucked away from about a year ago, from when Famous was blowing out the Reserva Organica 2001's - I'll have to see what they're like now.