My first journey through the living smoke of Arutro Fuente began in their Las Vegas signature lounge with the Opus Forbidden X.
First Impression
Wicked looking black label covering the cigar. Churchill cigar, with this gorgeous light brown wrapper. The cigar guy that I was talking to for a while (who after 15 minutes of discussion I decided knows his shit) said it was made from shade grown tobacco on the Fuente estate in the Dominican Republic. Rolled by a LEVEL 6 ROLLER (whatever that means) it is their lines premier cigar sold only there. The tobacco leaves were 10 years aged to what they deemed was perfect.
Upon purchasing the cigar, he used these guillotine scissor things to prune the cap to perfection. After cutting and making sure the cap was cut off perfect he noticed the cigar was a little dry and that had caused some of thee wrapper towards the cap end to come off. He noticed this and then immediately discarded the cigar for another one. He actually went back and handpicked one out that he thought would be perfect and proceeeded to cut the cap and gave the second one to me to smoke. I was really impressed by this.
The Smoke:
The cigar was lit with a 4 flame torch lighter that lit the business end of the cigar evenly and did not blacken the tobacco. It was a good light. The first puff was taken with the lighter to the cigar, and it was a burst of flavor. Imagine the burst of flavor at the beginning you get with a Padron 2000, but with a completely different set of flavors. The flavor was mostly that of a variety of spices but with the kind of rustic aged taste you get with the P2. I'm assuming this is partly due to the aging process.
For the first 4th of the cigar the drag was lacking somewhat and required a small prepuff before the full puff in order to maximize smoke. I attribute this to the length and one other thing. For a cigar of churchill size, this cigar seemed to take much longer to smoke. That is to say a single puff on this cigar did not seem to advance the burn up the cigar as fast as a normal churchill. Thus it took me somewhere around 2 hours to smoke this puppy. Because it took so long to smoke, it makes me wonder if the tobacco was more densely rolled and therefor not get as good as a drag when smoked.
The flavor as I smoked through the cigar stayed fairly constant. Where in a P2 you get that initial burst of flavor only for a little bit, this flavor stayed strong and constant throughout the smoke of the cigar. While being very potent in taste, it was not overpowering in the slightest. On the contrary it left me wanting inbetween puffs.
The Fuente Bar disappointingly only had two rums to choose from, but the 12 year aged one I had (the name escapes me but it starts with an "M" [gonna have to help me on this one Diamond E]) was a good rum. Not quite as good as the gold standard that is Captain Morgan, but good. I sipped on this on the rocks with the cigar. It was a perfect combination. Whenever I would sip on the rum in order to cleanse my pallet the spiced flavor of the rum and cigar would mix for a split second and create this entirely new and delicious taste. I can't express how awesome of a combination this was.
And then after my pallet was cleansed, the next puff of the cigar would be like starting the cigar over again. And damn it was good.
The Burn:
For being rolled by a level 6 ninja jedi master cigar roller, the burn was not perfect. At one point during the cigar, the filler burned faster than the binder/wrapper forcing me to relight the cigar. In addition twice during the smoking of the cigar one part of the wrapper would not burn in unison with the rest which I fixed by assisting the burn with my torch.
While the preceeding sounds like a negative, I found great pleasure in tuning and detailing the cigar over the course of a smoke. I analogize it to owning a ferarri and working on it as a hobby to ensure it is running in perfect condition.
CS Rating 4.5
The Oil Baron
No comments:
Post a Comment