Footbag
03-26-2009, 04:20 PM
It been a long while since I've smoked anything from the Dominican Republic. My preferences have been moving away from Dominican smokes, and I just wanted to give them another shot. I've got a bunch of Opus's that I've been accruing, and decided to roast one up.
Pre-light draw was a bit tight, but I got whacked with spice before it was even lit up.
After lighting, the first few seconds were amazing. Some cigars need to warm up, this needed no time. I immediately got tons of pepper. Wow, I was surprised. After the immediate shock of the pepper, a deep raisin, or even molasses flavor dominated the finish. Rich and full flavored. At this point, I was loving the smoke.
Within an inch of lighting, I noticed a split in the wrapper beginning to develop. Funny, this happened with my last Opus. The burn also began to go a bit crooked. I struggled with it for a few minutes before deciding to go ahead and do some manual repairs. Tried to straiten the burn with a lighter. As I was doing my repairs and smoking the cigar, I noticed it wasn't putting out the volume of smoke that it was earlier. The spice disappeared, the raisin flavors were gone, I was struggling with the burn; not what I was hoping for.
There was a considerable amount of nicotine in the smoke and I did get a bit of a buzz. But without those full rich flavors that the smoke started out with, it was just flat. This is how I remember my last opus X to be, but at least this one had some excitement at the beginning.
The rest of the smoke involved me going through every technique I know to straiten or fix the burn, but I struggled with it right up to the end. It did smoke slowly, but slowly in a bad way. Like it just wasn't lit well enough. And it never regained it's beginning flavors. I smoked it down to about 1.5" only because it was an Opus X, not because I was enjoying it.
Well, I was hoping to be able to eat my words and say this was a great cigar. If it had stayed on it's original track, it would've been a 9.5. But it didn't and I'm not sure I could even fairly rate it considering the great original flavors and terrible construction issues.
My conclusion... I'll have try it all over again.
Pre-light draw was a bit tight, but I got whacked with spice before it was even lit up.
After lighting, the first few seconds were amazing. Some cigars need to warm up, this needed no time. I immediately got tons of pepper. Wow, I was surprised. After the immediate shock of the pepper, a deep raisin, or even molasses flavor dominated the finish. Rich and full flavored. At this point, I was loving the smoke.
Within an inch of lighting, I noticed a split in the wrapper beginning to develop. Funny, this happened with my last Opus. The burn also began to go a bit crooked. I struggled with it for a few minutes before deciding to go ahead and do some manual repairs. Tried to straiten the burn with a lighter. As I was doing my repairs and smoking the cigar, I noticed it wasn't putting out the volume of smoke that it was earlier. The spice disappeared, the raisin flavors were gone, I was struggling with the burn; not what I was hoping for.
There was a considerable amount of nicotine in the smoke and I did get a bit of a buzz. But without those full rich flavors that the smoke started out with, it was just flat. This is how I remember my last opus X to be, but at least this one had some excitement at the beginning.
The rest of the smoke involved me going through every technique I know to straiten or fix the burn, but I struggled with it right up to the end. It did smoke slowly, but slowly in a bad way. Like it just wasn't lit well enough. And it never regained it's beginning flavors. I smoked it down to about 1.5" only because it was an Opus X, not because I was enjoying it.
Well, I was hoping to be able to eat my words and say this was a great cigar. If it had stayed on it's original track, it would've been a 9.5. But it didn't and I'm not sure I could even fairly rate it considering the great original flavors and terrible construction issues.
My conclusion... I'll have try it all over again.