The Velvet Cigar

Posted By ironmeden on May 15, 2008

The sounds of silence, this is what you hear when a cigar blog hasn’t been updated in 10 days. Paul Simon doesn’t care, but Art seems to find the time to let you that hey you need to review a damn cigar!

Both Elvis and I haven’t had the time recently to review cigars. We both have smoked them, but none where we could sit down and fully give a cigar our attention for a spine tingling review. Elvis has been stricken with the plague again and I recently went to the doctor to find out why the left side of my jaw felt like somebody got one in when I wasn’t looking. I as the doctor said have an infected gland in my neck. I’m now on antibiotics for 10 days, but he did stress that the infection didn’t come from cigar smoking. I like it when the doctor then strikes up a conversation about cigar smoking! He didn’t have a hint of concern that I smoke 3 to 5 cigars a week. Ok that number at times is on the conservative side, but it is a good average.

So tonight I plucked through my good humidor and found a cigar a friend gave me earlier this year. He purchased a bundle of the Gurkha Grand Envoy’s from CI. Being a huge Gurkha fan I was elated to get this gift.

The size he gave me was the Toro 5×56, which reminds more of a chubby Robusto then a Toro. It also comes in the Presidente’ size which is 7×52.

The cigar has 2 bands, the traditional Gurkha band and a second band at the foot of the cigar. Its a thicker band then what most cigars will have at the foot. It’s inscribed with the Grand Envoy name in red scripting with a dark green background.

The construction is solid, but it doesn’t have that glow that most of the premium lines of Gurkhas display.

At first light with a match and a V-cut to the head, I got grassy notes which led to the floral Gurkha flavors. I usually describe the Gurkha flavor as ‘Floral’. There just seems to be a rich leathery tones to Gurkha that I find in most of their cigars. For example, their G3 doesn’t seem to give off these flavors, but the new G5 certainly shows off these flavors.

The cigar seems to give off the rich smooth flavor more as the cigar burns down. I did have a problem with the burn until about 2 inches in where I ashed the cigar, then it seemed to even out. Also the ash as it burned gave a look of a hooked nose. It appeared that the cigar ash had a hump in the middle.

The cigar is constructed with vintage mixture of Dominican and Honduran long-leaf tobaccos with a Connecticut seed wrapper. I wonder what they mean by ‘vintage’ tobaccos? Being this appears to be an internet only sold cigar, there isn’t much more information on the tobacco.

The cigar, though it is a rich, leaves the palate dry. Most of the flavor is on the front and sides of the tongue, but by the time it gets to the back of the throat there is a bitter, but not terrible taste.

At the end the flavors appear to ramp up and flavors in the mouth linger a little longer. This is a wonderful smoke and something that should be added to their premium lines and should be sold mostly in the local shoppes.

I give this cigar a 4 out of 5 which would give it the Corinthian Leather rating.

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Categories: Conneticut, Dominican Republic, Honduras
Tags: Conneticut, dominican, grand envoy, gurkha, hondurous