Re: Gurkha Hate
Gurkha hate is a somewhat silly phenomenom if you ask me. So much of what bothers people about Gurkha has little to do with the flavor and construction of the cigars.
Many Gurkhas have unreasonably high MSRP's -- So do CAO's, RP's, many others. Just because a Titan has an MSRP of $20 bucks doesn't mean anything to me if I can get them for $3. Gurkha puts out time, money, effort into some incredible packaging. Doesn't do much for me, but I've seen empty Gurkha boxes sold for quite a bit of scratch, so somebody likes them. Gurkha contracts out their manufacturing, but so do many, many other cigar companies. Gurkha puts out a LOT of different cigars - so do Pete, Pepin, Padilla...... Perhaps a little more identification and/or differentiation on the bands would help, but again - so what. Lots of stories about exploding Gurkhas out there. I've had some issues in the past, but I don't write off the whole line. I will avoid the Fuertes or whatever they were called, but by and large, I haven't had a lot of construction problems.
I'd bet that many Gurkha haters got sucked into ad copy by some of the large internet retailers promising incredible smokes at 50% of MSRP. I did. Had some pretty crappy Gurkhas over the years. But there are good ones, too. If anything, all the hate allows me to grab pretty good cigars on the cheap at cigarbid.
I think that if most haters came across any of these in a blind taste test, they'd be pleasantly surprised:
Black Dragon
Nepalese Warrior
Ancient Warrior (Purple Band)
Micro Batch TPB-1 - Corojo Box-press Lancero
G5 Avenger
Master Select
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