The Velvet Cigar

Posted By ironmeden on June 10, 2008

I love new technology. I’ve now had Vonage for about 2 years now and it has worked pretty good. I have no complaints regarding the service I have had, but i’m always looking for the next best thing on the market.

Over the last year i’ve seen TV commercials for this gadget called MagicJack. It’s supposed to work exactly like Vonage which is Voice Over IP. You plug the USB device into your computer and then your phone and off you go making cheap phone calls. I finally pulled the trigger on this a few weeks ago. If it worked correctly, I would have phone service for 5 years for only about $100.

I got the device last week and it took about 15 minutes to setup and I got a dial tone and I was on my way. Sounds to good to be true? Well the next few days after the install, I started believing this deal was not what it’s cracked up to be. Two days into my service I couldn’t make calls out or in. I performed their MagicFix and it still didn’t work. A reboot of my computer got the service back up. I thought, its a minor setback. Well the next day it did the same thing, I had to reboot to restore the service. At this point i’m angry. I had to admit the service was not going to work. I went to their website and got my RMA and I shipped it back today within the 30 day trial period. What a piece of crap.

I guess if I took the time to troubleshoot it more, I could of found something, but I think this type of technology just isn’t advanced enough yet to work for everyone. So back to Vonage for a little while. We may end up dropping the service and just use our cell phones for our primary service. I guess I could use that extra $20 a month to put in my gas tank.

So to celebrate the return of the MagicCrap, I pulled out a cigar I purchased a few weeks ago at a local shop, Golden Leaf on West 7th in St. Paul. I’ve seen the Oliva Master Blends 3 in a few local shoppes but it never really interested me. What a fool I was to pass this stick up!

The Master Blend 3 series is a premium line from Oliva. The wrapper is a dark Broadleaf Sun Grown wrapper, Nicaraguan Habano Binder and Nicaraguan Ligero Filler. The size I smoked was a Churchill which is 7×50. The cigar is a rectangular box press, its not a perfect square, but with a slightly rounded edges.

The band is quite colorful as you can see by the picture on the left.

I made a V-Cut to the head and lit the foot with wooden matches. From the start I had a little bitterness. I’m not sure if it’s just me or the cigars I’ve recently smoked, but I tend to be getting a little bitterness at the start of my cigars. I did get a light leather and nutty flavor right away with the bitter flavor.

About 1/4 of the way through the bitter flavor went away and it developed into quite a delicious cigar. The leather flavor ramped up and the complexity of the cigar just opened up. I smoked the cigar way to fast, because it was going away quite quickly, but I couldn’t help it, the cigar tasted just fantastic. At the halfway point I slowed down to savor the flavors.

At the 3/4 point I started getting some spicy notes with the leather. The middle of my tongue was enjoying the challenge. The spicy note wasn’t always there as it reached the end, but it did appear occasionally.

I smoked this one down to the very nub, unlike their Nub line, this cigar is worth the burning of the fingers to the very end.

This cigar ran me about $12 and it was worth every penny. If you have tried previous lines from Oliva such as the Series S, which I wasn’t impressed with, this cigar will certainly let you know that Oliva can put out a premium cigar. This is a highly recommended cigar which I give a 4 out of 5 on our scale. If I could taste Corinthian Leather in a cigar, this cigar would be the perfect example.

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Categories: Ligero, Nicaragua, Sungrown, habano
Tags: broadleaf, churchill, habano, Ligero, master blends 3, nicaraguan, oliva, Sun-Grown