Well this little girl is getting harangued by the furball for a walk, so adios, mofos.
Will, any final thoughts on the cubao maduro?
Still plenty of cigar left, actually. I smoke slowly and it has a pretty decent burn rate, unlike the Cubao Churchills (every batch of that vitola I had was underfilled, so I stopped getting them). Just a bit passed the middway point.
No touchups, moderate amount of smoke. Overall sticking with the creamier presentation. Earthy/coffee/cocoa, a little dry/leathery, mixing in some cedar accents and a small amount of pepper on the back of the throat. At times it is semi-sweet, other times unsweetened/slightly bitter.
With 4-5 years of age on it, I like it. Not my favorite. I'd have to back to back it with a Jamie Garcia to see if I preferred one Pepin broadleaf over the other, I guess. Mostly, I'd say that the two sticks are different and maybe in 3 years I'll think differently about a JG that has the same age on it. For the $85 a box Famous has them going for, assuming they're the same quality construction/tobacco, sure, worth a gander.
I don't know when those boxes are from though. My newer batches of 601 Blues (from 2012, so not really new), right after they switched to the blue and orange labels after the baby blue ones, are nowhere near the same quality as the original release 601 Blues. Wrapper shade is all over the place, clearly a lower priming (some of them are pretty rough and are barely Colorado, much less the dark maduro of the original release) and burn/flavor left something to be desired. So who knows other than CB's fault.
