The Velvet Cigar

Posted By ironmeden on October 28, 2008

Its a sports crazy evening here at Vino and Stogies. One TV has the World Series and the other has the Minnesota Wild playing the Chicago Blackhawks. I’m also flipping that TV between Monday Night Football. Though I have won my fantasy football game, I would really enjoy seeing Dominick Rhodes get a few TD’s and 100 yards.

Now as I mentioned before in my previous blog, its the Christmas season for cigars. The cigar manufacturers are wrapping up their new cigars and sending them out to local lounges where we get to unwrap our gifts. If your lounge has been good, you should be getting all the new goodies.

Rocky Patel Autumn

The newest cigar that Vino and Stogies received last week is the new Rocky Patel Autumn. This is the second in the series of their ‘seasonal’ blend. Rocky Patel released a Summer blend earlier this Summer. From what I’ve read this is going to be a tradition for RP where they release a seasonal blend, much like Samuel Adams does with its seasonal beer.

Now my one concern about the release of cigars in this fashion would be the quality of the sticks. It’s my opinion that RP has his hands in way too many blends such as online exclusive cigars, his traditional lines, new lines and now these seasonal releases.  Now like beers, there are some fantastic seasonal releases and I enjoyed the Summer RP release, though it didn’t blow me away, it was a decent cigar. I wish sometimes people would stick with what they do well and continue to improve on that instead of releasing to market something half-assed.

The band for the RP Autumn is pretty much the same as the Summer except the primary color is Orange instead of the Red the Summer release displayed. The rest of the main band has the year 2008 and the Autumn Collection notation. The secondary band just lets you know its a RP.

The cigar has a Connecticut Shade grown wrapper, its a toasty golden brown appearence. The cap looks to have a triple cap and the rest of the wrapper does have some long prominent veins. The rest of the cigar consists of Honduran, Dominican, and Nicarguan binder and fillers. If you look at the picture above at the foot of the cigar you’ll see a lot of darker filler. Could this be a spicy cigar? The size i’m smoking is the Churchill which is 7 x 50.

I punched the head of the cigar and lit with a Perdomo table top lighter. The first few intial puffs are smooth with notes of almonds, toast and paper. Its a mild smoke.

The 1/4 mark of the cigar doesn’t bring any different flavors. I get a little ash taste with each puff. Still very mild and tasting more like paper at this point.

Come on now its the halfway point and I’m not getting any deeper flavors, maybe a little pumpkin, spice, turkey with gravy, I’ll even accept cranberry loaf, yet still nothing much going on. The wrapper started to come apart at the head of the cigar. I took the bands off and on the larger band it took some of the wrapper with it. The cigar looked quite destroyed at this point.

Now at the 3/4 mark it started to get a little creamier with a hint of pepper.

Overall this is a decent cigar. Compared to the Summer release, this was a more mild cigar. It didn’t turn into the spicy meatball I hoped it would, but if you enjoy a smooth and mild smoke then I recommend the cigar. I don’t think the wrapper issue I had with this cigar is a trait of this line. I had one earlier in the week and i’ve seen others smoke them and there has been no wrapper issue. I give this cigar a 3.5 out of 5

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Categories: Cigar Indulgence, Conneticut, Honduras, Nicaragua
Tags: autumn collection 2008, rocky patel, summer collection 2008