Monaco Connecticut
Posted By ironmeden on August 2, 2008
I spent half the day on a search. The search was for a bottle of scotch. You see, I’m quite dedicated to the cigar club I am President of. I will go out of my way to get what the group needs for the monthly meetings.
We originally were going to be drinking McCarthy’s Oregon Single Malt Whiskey. Well we had a local liquor store search for it and came up empty. Then we turned to the internet and found places that sold bottles, but they wouldn’t ship to Minnesota. We had to come up with then an alternative to drink with our Gurkha Black Dragon Robusto. I’ve thought that we never had an Isle Of Jura, but I didn’t want to get the 10 year old. My local liquor store had a bottle of the Superstition and one bottle of the 16 year old. I purchased the Superstition and asked the owner to find another bottle earlier in the week. I hadn’t heard from him so I went searching for another bottle of Superstition. I went to the some of the biggest liquor stores in the Twin Cities and none of them had it, not even the 16 year old. I called the biggest scotch store in the cities called Blue Max. Elvis and I had been there before and we were quite taken with the amount of different scotches they had. They didn’t have either of them.
Well after 3 hours of searching, I ended up at the liquor store a mile from my house and I purchased the 16 year old bottle. I thought then the club members could sample 2 scotches that are rare here in the Twin Cities. Rapids Liquor in Coon Rapids, MN could of sold these bottles for $100 a piece if they new how scarce these were in this area, but for both, it came to about $90.
After this frantic day it was certainly time to relax with a new cigar. The cigar I am smoking tonight is the Monaco Connecticut Torpedo which was sent to us by a Velvet Cigar Sponsor Tex Cigars.
There isn’t much info on the net about these cigars, but I think they are made by a company named Brown Leaf Cigar Company. Their website appears to be currently under construction.
I can’t give you specifics of the make up this cigar, but my smoking experience I can certainly give you.
The cigar is a dark brown in shade, the wrapper had no visible defects, but one side of the cigar had a large vein running up the side, whereas the rest of the cigar was quite smooth in texture. The band is simple which is accented in bronze, red, grey and white.
I smelled the foot of the cigar and I got a hint of cedar and mint. It’s very rare I get the mint smell, but it was defiantly there. I cut the head of the cigar and lit it with a Xikar lighter. The first few puffs were a little bitter with notes of cedar and grass.
As the cigar continued on to the 1/4 mark, the bitterness went away and I was really starting to enjoy this smoke. There were notes of woodiness and of course the cedar were still prominent.
When I reached the halfway point, this is where it got interesting. I started getting a toffee flavor and stronger wood notes. I was quite intrigued by the cigar now. It had pulled me in and wasn’t about to let go.
To the 3/4 mark, the hint of toffee was lighter, but it would come and go, keeping the interest in the cigar going. I took the band off the cigar which pulled a little bit of the wrapper off. At this point also the cigar seemed to burn a little hot, I had to put it down at times to finally finish the cigar.
The cigar over all was a mild cigar with a lot of flavor for a Connecticut. I’m giving this cigar a 3 out 5. If your a mild cigar smoker that wishes for some flavor at times, this might be a decent stick to pick up. You can find them at Tex Cigars.
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Hiya,
Living in Portland, I actually work about a 3 minute walk from the distillery, I can tell you finding the McCarthy’s can be a chore. At the distillery they sold out within 3 days for their March bottling, sounds like their July bottling is already sold out too.
Is it possible to ship liqour? If so I can if I could find a bottle. Their is one liquor store locally that tends to buy a few cases.
Thanks for stopping on by and for the inside scoop on McCarthy’s!
I know a few of us in our cigar club was looking forward to sampling something different. We are so used to having whiskey from Canada, Tennessee and Scotch, most people don’t know that there are other distilleries in different parts of the country.
It is nice to try what small craft distillers are doing. Apparently we have quite the distillery subculture starting up here, though most are doing brandy’s and such.
The McCarthy’s is great, very much an Islay style whisky, though I find it more complex and drinkable than a lot of the actual Islay Whiskies. I’ll see what I can find about shipping and if there are any left around here. Definitely check it out if you can find it, or any other Clear Creek liqours, they are all very good.