Quite a while ago, a BOTL from another board (QBear (Bob)) sent me this well aged stick suggesting a review of it. Well it took me a while to get around to smoking it, but smoke it I did.
As you can see from the first photo, this thing shows its age with very yellow cello. The wrapper is in amazingly great shape considering it is 12+ years old and had been in my singles portion of my humidor for a long while. Of course, keeping it in its cello helped.
I clipped it with my Palio and tested the draw. Perfect. Not any prevalent predraw flavors. I poured a bit of Rhum Barbancourt 8 yr to accompany the cigar.
First Third: Burn is impeccable. The predominant flavor I pick up is graham cracker. Very pleasant aroma, great flavor and perfect construction. So far I am impressed.
Second Third: Construction wise still drawing great, but a wrapper tear develops. Since I've had it it has been properly maintained, and I'm sure it was by Bob before me. During the winter this happens to me occasionally and I am pretty confident the relatively dryer air is the culprit. The tear has no effect on the flavor, still picking up graham cracker, and notice flavors I think are similar, ginger bread and molasses.
Third Third: As worrisome as the wrapper tear was, it never got worse and the cigar recovered nicely. The flavors described above are still there but now am picking up a bit of nuttiness (walnuts?) and a pleasant earthy/fungal flavor, like a mushroom. And at the very end, a toasted vanilla was noticed.
My thanks go out to Bob for the opportunity to smoke such a great cigar. I thoroughly enjoyed it!
Sorry for the size of the pictures...first time posting photos from my iPad (Christmas present from my wife
)