In Which We Deviate From Our Normal Practice

Frequent EIP readers may have noted our tendency to provide favorable reviews on the contents of our humidor, what with us never having published a single solitary "this cigar sucks!" sorta review of anything, ever.  Well all that comes to a screeching halt today.  I've had the opportunity to sample not one but two 5 Vegas Gold Maduros over the past couple o' weeks and I'm of the opinion this cigar should be avoided at all costs.  My issues?  Just two...

1. This cigar is poorly constructed.  Both sticks I sampled burned unevenly and required numerous touch-ups, including cutting off unburned portions of the cigars... both cigars... and repeated re-lights during the process of smoking them down to a nub.
2. The taste is rough, biting, and abrasive... above and beyond that of a "full-flavored" body one normally expects from a maduro.  "Rough" is actually bein' quite kind... the taste and mouth-feel is more like what one would expect from a smoking session hosted by the CIA in a dank cell somewhere at a Polish rendition site.  The cigar burned my mouth and left a rough feeling in my nose, both of which are unacceptable.  That's torture, to put it bluntly.

I guess ya gotta expect losses every once in a while, and this would be one of those.  It's entirely possible I received two examples from a bad batch of these sticks, but a negative two-out-of-two experience would lead me to think otherwise.  YMMV, Gentle Reader (and cigar smoker).

I mentioned somewhere in the recent past that we're conducting an experiment of sorts, what with us storing a small quantity of Acid Deep Dish cigars to see if they actually get better with age, as I've read.  I pulled one of those sticks out of the humidor today and smoked it while enjoying our first two beers out on the verandah.  The bottom line?  There's no noticeable difference.  The cigar remains one of my favorites... it's tasty, well-constructed, and smoother than smooth.  But aging... in this case a mere six months... doesn't seem to improve the smoke.  Mebbe I need to buy a new box of Deep Dishes and smoke two of these back-to-back... one aged, one new... but my superficial experience reveals no marked improvement by aging the sticks.  We'll continue the experiment and save a few up to the one-year point.  Stay tuned.

(Full disclosure: the photo is a close proximity of today's Happy Hour beer and cigar, but it's actually a re-run from two years ago.  But that IS a Deep Dish and we DID drink a Mothership Wit [along with a Newcastle Brown Ale].  We're nothing if not predictable.)