HdM Sabrosos: Sometimes it's the little things...

Cigar Name: Hoyo de Monterrey Sabrosos (5 x 40)

Cigar Description: Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper around long fillers from Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominican Republic

Cigar Strength: Full

Review of the Cigar itself: March is always a bit of a fun month for me. It's my birthday month and I tend to treat myself to a new toy of some sort. Last year was the Canon XSi camera. This year: 32GB 2nd Generation iTouch. It arrived yesterday and has already given me many hours of fun with it. One of the things I did find was something called Tasting Notes ($4.99). Basically, as I did a search for some "must have apps" I ran across this one. I thought it'd be worthwhile to describe it as I wrote about the HdM Sabrosos I was enjoying in the background.

A smaller cigar, almost a big cigarillo, it comes with a huge amount of flavour. The wrapper was a deep rich chocolate that was nearly perfectly smooth that gave off a faint sheen of oily wonderfulness. As I took my first draw I got a light creamy with a hint of earthy-ness from the cigar. For a little cigar, it packed quite a lot of flavour. The aroma that danced with the smoke was filled with a gentle hint of pepper and spice. As I smoked the cigar, I played more with the Tasting Notes app.

Most of the apps that appeared when I did a search on the word "cigar" were about quitting smoking. This was the only app that was about keeping track of cigars tasted. It is, for someone like me, a perfect app. Given that I'm on the road a lot, this allows me to make notes wherever I am for later reference. This would mean I can upload a cigar review after I've done for the evening. I can even add a picture to the note so I remember what the cigar looked like (my iTouch doesn't have a camera but I can upload photos from my camera to the iTouch through iTunes). I even to a WordPress app (free) so I can upload reviews on the fly if I wanted to (although I have found an odd bug in it that's not fully consistent). The Tasting App is nice in that it includes, in addition to cigars, wine, beer, whiskies, tea and coffee lists. This is great since often these drinks are paired with a cigar (or two).

I pause for a moment, watching the twinning of the two smoke colours dance out the window: blue from DR and brown from Honduras/Nicaragua. The unusually warm spring arm grabs the smoke as I check outside to see what birds are happily chirping away in the sun and gentle breeze. I tap my iTouch to see what the temperature (free) is: 66F/19C. It is near perfect cigar weather: not too hot, not too cold. As I get deeper into the cigar, I get richer leather tastes as I search for more apps.

I'm amazed as to how many good apps exist out there that are either free or cost next to nothing. I recently got addicted to WordFu ($1.99), have some fun with iBowl (free), Tweetie ($2.99), FileMagnet ($4.99 -- allows me to read PDFs and other files), Blocked ($0.99), Topple (free) and recently, the Kindle Reader (free but books cost the Kindle/Kindle2 price). I can see this rapidly becoming a regular gadget affixed to my body as I travel. Of course, it still does the standard music, podcasts, movies and the like. I even got an Apple headphone with a microphone so I can record notes (usually blog thoughts or ideas). As I continue to search, I notice my cigar is nearly done. I check my Movies app (free by Flixster) to see when Watchmen is playing in the area.

I make a few additional notes in the Tasting Note. It occurs to me that the cigar is like the new iTouch: able to take many things and create a single, wonderful experience. I notice still have a couple of hours before we head off to the theater. Hrmm.. maybe time for one more, eh? Or maybe I should play a few rounds of Blocked. So many wonderful little things in life to do, so little time.

Enjoyed with: water

Smoke time: approximately 45 minutes

Final Review Rating: 8.3/10

[alley00p]

Nice review!

I appreciate seeing reviews of both the cigar, which is new to me, but also of the various apps for the iTouch/iPhone! I'm always looking for new apps, but I hate to pay good $ for an app which I may not like or won't suit my needs.

I enjoyed all of your comments - Keep up the good posting!

[shvictor]

Thanks for the review

[BlackIrish]

Nice review(s)!

[duckmanco]

great review, and I too love my itouch, if you like music you need to get the slacker radio app (free) and absolutely unbelievable.