Cienfuegos Aged Piramide

[JFellows]

I got this as part of CI's CigarFest 'sorry you missed it' sampler. It came to me with a nice crack in the wrapper, near the head of the cigar. CI's shitty customer service is a different story....but, on to the cigar.



This is a beautiful looking behemoth of a cigar, measuring 6.7" x 64 I believe. It has a glossy brown wrapper with absolutely minimal veins. It does feel like it is packed too loose, though; there are soft spots all over the cigar, and it feels relatively light despite its size. This theory was confirmed when I cut it; the pre-light draw was about the same as a 2" wide PVC pipe would be. The draw was so loose I could have used this thing as a snorkel. I couldn't taste much of anything before I lit it, but it absolutely reeked of leather and spice.



Here is a picture of the cracked wrapper. I knew this would be a problem towards the end of the cigar, but I put it out of my mind, held the stick carefully, and lit it up.



The flavor started out EXTREMELY mild, with flavors of very sweet spice and cream. It reminded me of a milder version of CAO's Brazilia Amazon, with less spice and more cream flavors. It wasn't producing a whole lot of smoke, and I had to either double puff it or take super long and slow draws in order to get anything substantial. The ash was cement-colored and very flaky, which proved to be annoying; it was a windy day, and tiny bits and pieces of the ash kept flaking off and sticking to my shirt. The burn was surprisingly good; I figured that it would be absolutely abysmal due to the less-than-perfect construction, but I was pleasantly surprised. It was able to correct itself the whole way through with minimal help from me.



At 1.5 or 2" into it, I started to pick up on leathery notes in addition to the spice that stayed with it from the beginning. However, the flavor and body are still incredibly mild. I had brought out a large glass of ice water, since I figured this would be one powerhouse of a smoke. At 2" into it, I donated my water to a few of my plants outside that looked thirsty, thinking that I'd be fine without it. This turned out to be a mistake...



The cigar ashed quite well at just past 2". The draw was still too loose, but I began getting a much higher volume of smoke. Also, the flavor REALLY turned up a notch. I tasted all the same flavors as the first third of the cigar, but much more pronounced and with a much heavier body. I began wishing for a water refill, haha.



The cigar is quite majestic looking at this point. It was really a shame that the wrapper had cracked, because it would have looked absolutely beautiful otherwise. The flavors remain strong, spicy, and creamy. The draw eventually tightens up slightly, which is a nice change.



With maybe 1.5" or so left, the wrapper took a turn for the worse and made it almost impossible to smoke. I hung onto it for as long as possible, before finally chucking it.

Overall, this was quite a good smoking experience. I hope that mine was a dud in terms of construction, because these cigars are fairly expensive. If you can pick one up at a local B&M and make sure that the construction is up to par, I'd highly recommend them.

[heftysmokes]

Nice review.

What happened with CI? Sounds like you had a bad exp. with CS there.

[JFellows]

There was a topic about it in a different thread, but they're just ultra-stingy when it comes to refunds. My sampler had several expensive cigars with cracked wrappers. They refused to replace the cigars themselves, and offered only to pay UNDER the average price of a cigar in the sampler. The total pre-shipping cost of the 25 cigar sampler was $60, the damaged sticks all had MSRPs of $5-7+, yet they only offered me a refund of $2 per damaged cigar.

[CgarDan]

Great review. You are right on with the profile I think. By the way a few that I have smoked also had flaky ash and very loose draw. I think they all are constructed that way.

Sorry about the shity Customer Service from Ci. I always got cigars properly packaged and in good condition from them. Although once they did forget to include something and resent that to me without any problems.

[HersheyWalker]

Funny coincendence, a ceinfuegos I smoked a couple days back also had the cracking wrapper action near the head. By the time I handled the monstrous stick down to it's finally 4 inches, the wrapper had fallen, crumpled, and desinigrated in my mouth. It got so bad that I finally just ripped off the damn thing and smoked it without the first layer of wrapper! Still drew in well.

I also noticed that the draw was very minimal for the first third and gradually became a decent drawing stick with a bit of power. It took forever to smoke, couldn't say how long as I didn't time it, but it must have been about 75 minutes. In the end I smoked less that was far more memorable, but if you are looking for a casual long lasting smoke with medium body, this one isn't bad.

I wouldn't buy a box.

[chefchris]

smoked one last nite. was not impressed. very bland and couldn't get any smoke out of it.

[Lopaka]

I smoked one a while ago that I had in my humi for about a year. I wasn't to impressed, especially for how much I paid for it. I'm glad your experience was better then mine.

[JFellows]

smoked one last nite. was not impressed. very bland and couldn't get any smoke out of it.

How far down did you smoke it? As I said, mine was bland and didn't produce very much smoke for the first 2-3", but after that it improved drastically.

[chefchris]

How far down did you smoke it? As I said, mine was bland and didn't produce very much smoke for the first 2-3", but after that it improved drastically.

smoked the whole thing. i really don't remember if it opened up later on or not. I also had wrapper problems, but it was at the very end of the cap so I just cut it off.

[forgop]

I've got a birthday party to go to this afternoon, so all the buzz has made it necessary for me to light one up tonight as well.

[forgop]

Ok, so I just finished smoking one of these bad boys. Construction is pretty good and smells really nice before lighting it. You can tell it's rolled pretty loosely and makes for an easy draw. I was sitting on the patio and was consumed with playing some games and struggled to keep it burning evenly. It started off pretty mild and without a whole lot of flavor, but after getting halfway through the cigar, it got pretty nice. I smoked it down to an inch or so and it turned into more of a medium bodied smoke.

Not a GREAT cigar by any means, but if I can keep picking them up at <$2/stick on cbid, I'd keep buying them. I've certainly smoked a lot worse cigars at 2-3x the price.