Hi everyone. I'm relatively new to cigars and stumbled onto this site while doing some internet searching. It looks like a great community and I'm looking forward to hanging out here.

Lately I've just been trying out a wide variety of cigars to figure out what I like. I recently picked up an Oliva Serie G Maduro at the suggestion of a friend. I've gotta say I was pretty disappointed. The experience I had was much different from what my friend described, and from the reviews I've read online.

The first inch or so tasted terrible. Very spicy, very harsh, and tasted like butt... Like I had taken 4 or 5 stale cigarette butts out of an ashtray and rolled them up in a maduro leaf.

Then, after the first inch or so, it started getting a lot better. It was very smooth and creamy, with a great flavor, just like others have described. The farther down I smoked it the better it got. By about the halfway point I was really loving it... and then it went out on me. One minute it was blazing away and putting off a ton of smoke. Then, less than a minute later I tried to take a puff and it was completely out. Nothing. I re-lit and continued to smoke. It tasted bad again for a little while, then started getting better again.. then went out again about 3/4 of the way through. At that point I just put it down.

When it was burning it kept burning unevenly and getting runners. It didn't hold much ash, maybe an inch or so at a time at the most, and the ash cap was very split and uneven. I'm not sure if I got a bad one or if I'm just used to smoking Ashtons which always burn perfectly no matter what you do. Maybe I just need more experience to learn how to keep a "normal" cigar burning evenly.

What do you guys think? Was it over or under humidified? Did some Nicaraguan prankster dump his ashtray out in the middle of my stick before he rolled it up? I really enjoyed the brief glimpses I got of what it was supposed to taste like, so will probably try one again at some point, but I'm hesitant to if they're often bad like that.