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So now all I have left is the "dog rocket" ?
This should be interesting . . . going into it KNOWING that.

I'll try to be as unbiased as possible.

Just caught a nice buzz with bgz 's #1 mystery cigar
Size 5x50
Wrapper med brown, toothy, few minor veins with triple cap
v-cut
Paired with DogFish Head Pilsner beer
The cigar starts off very smooth and creamy. Perfect burn and draw throughout. Flavors I picked up in the first half include carmel with notes of graham cracker sweetness. First half was medium strength. Around the half way mark I got hit with spice on the tip of my tongue. The strength has built to full and the nicotine is given me a high. Glad I ate dinner before smoking this guy. Put it down with about an inch remaining. Wow
Very good cigar. I never had any impromptu cigars but my guess is a pepper creme soda.
Thanks bgz
Chazbo

DCLOVER your package landed yesterday, thank you very much for that great looking spread!

hitting me with a six pack, three mystery cigars and three labeled: a my father lancero, god of fire series b looks like a robusto gordo and a LFD tubo Maduro 6 (NH).

im gonna be lighting up number three tonight. my pre light guess is a Hemmingway signature just going off the shape of the cigar. but am going to keep an open mind and am looking forward to it!

thank you again for the great selection brother!

frozenphoenix im slacking on my notification for you sir, your box was sent Friday and should be arriving today.

You nailed it Ryan, Hemingway maduro. Good job. Sucks you got a dud. Thing's been in the humidor over a year.

I don't know what it is about the Hemingway, they do this to me a lot. Still love them thought! Thank you again!

by no means, its still a great cigar. i might be able to light up the next one tonight or tomorrow, excited to see whats next!

\


Here's what SMOKE magazine says:
"Four out of five panelists agree: this is a cigar for everyone. Its mildness and subtle tones of spice and wood, bequeathed to the palate by the Connecticut broadleaf wrapper, make the Don Rafael an excellent all-day smoke for the novice and an excellent morning smoke.

Here's CI's take on it:
Don Rafael is the ultimate everyday smoke. Handmade in the Dominican Republic, this solidly-crafted cigar features a smooth Connecticut wrapper and aged Cuban-seed long-fillers from the Dominican Republic. The bouquet is mild to medium at its core but long on flavor, coating the palate with toasty tobacco nuances, sweet cedar, and a subtle creaminess that lingers after each puff.

Yard Gar it was. Good call.

Got my fiver from frozenphoenix.

AF Queen Bee
Tatuaje HCS (NH)

and 3 unbanded beasties.

Looks like a corona and a couple churchills, none of which are recognizable to me just on how they look. All of them have lighter brown wrappers (not Connecticut).

I look forward to trying one this weekend.

Thanks Joe!

Jespear no 3. The oval maduro Churchill that isn't an Oval Maduro.

Vcut the head, cold draw is nice n open.

First light, a little pepper on retrohale, otherwise noting an earthy flavor. This is my first deck smoke of the year, and it rained today so that may be playing into it.

An inch in and its burning unevenly. Could be my fault, could be the breeze, not laying blame on the cigar. Picking up a lot more woody qualities. Not necessarily a cedar spice, something a little closer to splitting oak logs. Draw is perfect, just enough resistance to keep it slow, but provide ample volumes of smoke. Tail end of the finish reminds me of a mild pipe tobacco i had a while back. Its good. Lingers.

Almost halfway at 45 minutes and there's not much change in the way of flavors noted, but definitely richer than the start. Strength is creeping up on me. Got half a pizza n a couple beers in my belly and im still feeling it. Leather, wood n spice are the predominant flavors. The finish lasts for days.

I almost never smoke anything over 5". This is good, but starting to be a chore, like an eating contest with good food. Feel like I cant really give much more evaluation at this point. Flavors are solid, unchanged. Construction is perfect. Save for the initial burn unevenness that self corrected, has been even the rest of the way down. Got at least 3" left but the strength is getting to me and I have some reports I need to type up yet tonight. Ill give it until the chickens go in to roost and I close the coop, but calling the review here.

Guessing midrange cigar, but thats all I've got. Nothing I've had before. Probably not something I'll buy, not quite my preferred profile but it was good. Churchills are just too damn long. Hour n a half when I closed the coop. Now I need to lie down.

Wow. Did not get any hint of Cuba in that one. But with a few exceptions, I am not a huge fan of Cuban tobacco.

Tatuaje Verocu Tubo. Needless to say, it had a few years under it's belt. I think I split a box with someone on here when these came out. That was my last one.

Dan,
That would have been my Upper End entry, the Tatuaje Nicaragua Cojonu 2012 Habano.
I love this cigar, and have willingly paid retail for it, (on occasion), at the local.
So all you have left now is the mid range stick. (FTR . . . I am crazy about this cigar.)

I've had one of those before and enjoyed it, but recall it differently than this one.

It was good, thank you

Will be doing the last one in the morning after work.

Well you started off on the right foot! You chose the CLE signature series PLdM and the top shelf for this review

Dan,
That would be an Asylum 13. ( $6 at my local. )
Strange that you picked up all that pepper. I don't get that from this cigar. I AM NOT a pepper fan in the least.
I understand your feeling about the TAT "pepper". I felt the same way about them in the beginning, and then all of a sudden my feelings changed. I am still not a big TAT fan, for the most part, but I do like their "MIAMI" line quite
a bit . . . but I digress.
Back to the Asylum 13,
Don't feel bad about not finishing the cigar. It doesn't matter if it's a yard gar or a top shelf stick . . . If you don't like it, you don't like it. I've put down a few "top shelf" stogies over the years.
I can't see smoking something that I just don't like.

jes

Alright my fellow cbidders... you are going to witness my first cigar review... ever!

And it's a blind one, so please excuse my noobishness.

I'm reviewing frozen phoenix's Cigar #1, it was a monster, a Churchill size, but the ring gauge seemed to be a little over 50, the cigar was huge.

To start out, took the wife out to dinner and had a giant margarita and we went back to the house to have a drink, and I wanted to do my first review. I wanted to do one on a cigar I wanted to thoroughly enjoy so I did the smell test, and I picked the one I thought smelled the best. I picked the one that had that "it" factor that I tend to look for when I pick one to smoke, you know, the Padrons, the Pepin mades, the CC's ya... this one had it.

So I chopped it with a slim straight cut (it's the kind I prefer and almost all my cuts are this). Analyzed the cigar a bit, it had minor size veins, nothing dramatic, the smell was fantastic, but the prelight puff, I caught a note of fish, I know, that's weird, but it's what it had. There was a few soft spots on the cigar, so the construction didn't catch e as top notch. so at this point I was a little worried. I poured me some Dickel 12, and was ready to go.

So I fired this monster up, and it is usually a size I dedicate to smoking on the golf course, normally I smoke robusto or smaller when I'm just chilling on my porch... and then I caught a slight pepper blast. It wasn't anything major, just a slight blast that you get from most cigars. It quickly mellowed out into a more medium profile. Draw was a little bit tight of perfect, but was good, and the first ash held to about an inch and a half.

So as I puffed the first third, like I said, it mellowed quickly and seemed to be burning a little quick at the start, so I slowed down my puffing a little bit and it slowed down as well. When it started mellowing, it started to gain a little sweeter profile which lead me to believe that this cigar was going to be alright after all.

As I started rounding out the first third and moving into the second, the sweetness was still there and I started catching some notes. I'm no pro at this, so I was trying to write them down as I experienced them, and some of the first notes I started to catch were a more nutty flavor that reminded me of almonds. I was catching several notes in the mean time, but couldn't really put my finger on some of them, but then the cigar became really creamy... at this point, I was thinking Cuban for sure.

At about the half way point through the second, I was about an hour in and caught some Graham cracker notes, YUM! ... And as I got deeper through the second, that special spice/twang started kicking in and getting more pronounced.

Going into the third, the spice started kicking in, and it was still creamy and sweet so I was pretty much just enjoying the cigar and knocking down my whisky.

Then I went into the "Oh Yeah" phase of the cigar, you know that point where all good cigars suddenly just get better, and better it got. I thoroughly enjoyed this smoke and nubbed it, the only way I could describe it is I smoked it to the bone. It took me about an 1:50 to smoke this monster and I enjoyed every minute of it.

I'm still kind of a noob, not as noob as I was a few months ago, so still a noob. I'm thinking this cigar was definitely Cuban, if not, a really good Pepin rolled cigar, because from what I've smoked so far, the only one who gets close to that Cuban flavor is Peppin, but I'm pretty damn sure it was Cuban. If not, I'm really rooting for it to be the yard gar of the bunch. I mean, I'm really really hoping it's the yard gar, because if it is, I'm going to buy like 5 boxes of them, rofl.

I'm pretty sure though that this was the premium of the bunch, and I'm pretty sure it was Cuban, the cigar was on point from start to finish. I don't know all my Cubans, so I'm just going to guess it was a damn fine Cuban, and that's it.

I have to know... what was that I smoked, because I can see this going with me to many golf courses in the future.

Thanks Joe for this fine smoke!

BGZ, I'm glad you throughly enjoyed the dog rocket of the group. Sorry for the size, I keep these around to satisfy the under educated cigar smokers that think a churchill is cool to smoke. You smoked a Torano Circa Vega Dominicana, and buying 5 mazos will only run you about $100-110, well that is what i usually get them for is the $1 per.

I personally have had good luck with Toranos for being a cheap smoke that im not afraid to throw if they burn like carp.

Now i may have to set aside 2 hours and see if these have gotten better in the last couple months, as the one i had to test these got pitched at the halfway point from over humidification in their original storage location.

Looking forward to the other 2 reviews.

This is fun to read! Maybe we can put together a round II when ya'll are done!

Ya, that was quite fun. My wife is all picking on me as she drank her wine watching scribble notes on a piece of paper. It was the first time I ever actually thought about what kind of notes I was picking up in a cigar. I think the process of doing this actually made the experience more enjoyable for me, as I usually don't particularly like a 2 hour smoke.

Didn't remember it being all that peppery. But yes this was the yard gar and was a foundry sodium

Oh, and it was also a Churchill... thinking frozen was just dumping his Churchills on me, lol.

Bgz, well this review session is acting the opposite of what it is supposed to be. That was a God of Fire churchill from a few years back, so Im really sorry it blew out on you.

Enjoy the last one as it will be the best one of the bunch and a better size.

Love blind reviews so much.

Can't wait for the summer blind review

Yes... the torano is a pig of a cigar and much larger on the rg.

The rest in your humidity might be best the next time, but i do keep mine around 65 so if you like them higher it could have caused the split.

Dont let Dr dan get to you. Ive had the high end cigar split on me from lack of rest as well.