A New Cigar...

[Neuromancer]

Last week I attended a Rocky Patel cigar event at Macabi Cigars in Plantation, Florida, and won one of the door prizes given out by the RP Rep....he told me it was a sample of a cigar they will be coming out with in the next few months, to retail in the $10-$12 range, called the ROCKY PATEL OLD WORLD RESERVE (at least I think that's what he said it would be called)...I smoked it tonight...what a cigar...first of all it is way too rich (and I don't mean strong...I favor maduros and other full-bodied smokes) to be an everyday cigar even if you could afford to smoke it daily...it's really a special occasion cigar..it was a box pressed torpedo shape (about 6" X 48/50) and the wrapper was a beautiful dark chocolate brown color and was essentially flawless...there was nary a vein visible, let alone the visual seams from winding the wrapper around the binder...it had a smooth, silky, satin feel to it, almost to the point of being erotic...lighting it, the first impression I had was that it had a very spicy, peppery flavor to it that mellowed out a bit as I got about an inch into it...the construction was impeccable, the burn slow, and the draw extremely easy...basically I sipped at it...the flavors were subtle...not mild, not full-bodied...somewhere between...about halfway through I thought I tasted just a very mild, elusive hint of vanilla (it wasn't a flavored cigar) and at that point it began to change again and flowed into an oaky taste...as I got near the end of it the oakiness flowed into a grassy flavor like that of a good merlot, and it finished up back at the spicy, peppery flavor it started with, and the draw didn't begin to get hot until I had less than 1-1/2" left...should be interesting when this hits the market...