CAO Vision #067890

Posted By Elvis on August 17, 2007

Tonight I was really in the mood for a special cigar. My wife left me with my two girls as she does one of her quarterly “Girls’ Weekend Out”. She deserves it, and I earn valuable leverage points for the next time I want to go out and get stupid with the guys. But the hidden secret is that I enjoy having the house to myself for a few days. Once I get the kids to bed around 10pm, the night is all mine. Guilt free and no one wil know if I go to bed at 3am or I smoke 5 cigars or have a whole six pack of beer.

Tonight, I had no need pent up to be wild…instead I opted for a relaxing night…no TV…a little poker….and for the first time in a long time, I was going to focus on a cigar and do a review. You see, I’ve spent nearly every night for the last couple of months trying to start up a business with a buddy. And as anyone who’s tried to write a business plan knows, it stops being fun after about the first week when you are giddy with excitement about your idea. Once you start trying to learn the ins and out of a business if you are a rookie like me…and once you start crunching the ugly numbers….it gets stressful and a little scary. So, I was really looking forward to my special cigar tonight. Now normally, I would have just popped into my local cigar place, Robert’s, and picked up a nice spendy cigar, but as I’ve written about here before…Robert’s closed back in July. So, there’s really not a cigar shop anywhere within a reasonable driving range of my place. I was pissed….I mean, I have a good stock of cigars, but I’m kind of tired of smoking the same thing lately, and there hasn’t been anything catching my eye on the internet retail sites that I’ve wanted to try lately.

So, I peered into the humidor at home and spotted something that IronMeden bought me back when we spent a rare Saturday day visiting a shop a month ago. The CAO Vision.

Now if any of you readers visit this site with any regularity you might recall I swore off this brand because of the ridiculous price point, even though I’m a CAO nut. It still bothers me greatly that they’ve added what is supposed to be a new everyday line to their offerings, yet I can’t afford it. I really pray to the CAO gods that the “America” coming out soon falls in with the Brazilias and Italias price-wise.

Anyway, I swore on these pages to never smoke another Vision. But c’mon….if a friend buys you one, what can a guy do? I suppose I could’ve flushed it down the toilet….or used it as kindling in a bonfire in the backyard. But at $20 per stick, I just didn’t have the heart.

I had a plan in mind for this Vision. I’ve only smoked one of these and I remember really liking the spiciness. But I’ve watched Iron smoke several of these as well as other people at local shops and more than the taste what sticks out to me is the shitty-ass burn this thing puts out. I mean….it’s not just off a little….I’ve seen it literally burn a half inch up one side or more. And no matter what you do, it just can’ t be corrected.

So, my plan was first to age it in my summer-time home humidor which stays around 76-percent humidity. I did this for the last month or so. I kind of thought if it was nice and spongy, it might burn slower and have a better chance to burn evenly. Second, I was going to smoke it at a snail’s pace. I achieved this as well..even putting it down for several minutes at a time.

I lit up the cigar with a wooden match. The pre-light aroma of the tobacco was nothing special…very light hint of cedar. The first few puffs of this cigar were extremly peppery and I was not liking this second Vision experience. My throat was burning with a spicyness that was too much too soon. I let it burn on it’s own a bit and this spicyness settled down almost right after a couple of minutes. The aroma when you take it right into the sinuses full force is heavenly, but even as you smoke the cigar down, that background taste of pepper kind of ruins the aroma. I don’t know….sometimes I just can’t adjust all my senses to tell me the truth….looking at the cigar you wouldn’t expect pepper because of it’s reddish brown hue. I normally think of that taste being associated with a deep maduro. So, maybe I was focusing on that back of the throat sensation too much. As for the burn…..I was able to keep it under control. Don’t get me wrong…it’s nowhere near razor sharpness….but the entire circumference (I KNOW I spelled that wrong…been quite awhile since high school Geometry) kept up with itself within an eight of an inch the whole way through. But it took work and time. This is not a cigar you want to be chatting away with someone while smoking or drinking a lot with….and certainly not working in the yard or the garage with any kind of wind swirling. It’s a delicate little flower. I do like the zip and the overall taste…..but c’mon CAO….this amounts to a good…at times great…everyday smoke. This is not anything special and I just don’t get the price. If the crop of Corojo wrapper on this was so rare, then make it a limitada of some sort. I understand the specialness of the Soprano and the name, etc and I get that it should be a smoke you would only buy for a special occasion or something. In fact, tonight I was in the perfect mood for a nice fat Soprano….but the Vision just didn’t live up to the hype or the pricetag.

And since I only had one to smoke, I don’t even get to open the Vision humidor box and let it shine blue consolation neon light at me.

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