LT Intrepidos from a March 2011 box. Been a while since I smoked one of these.
Punch reveals an effortless draw. Quick toast and light. First few puffs taste like an LT.
The LT did not age poorly or anything of the sort. Very rich, full flavor, but exceedingly smooth. Subtle spice/pepper so far. definite Cameroon notes coming through. Really excellent. Best cigar CAO ever made, imo, and by a long shot.
Much the same into the middle third. Some sweet spices and sweet tobacco, chocolate, cedar, maybe a whiff of citrus notes here and there. General spiciness has gone up but still a subdued, secondary component. White pepper on the retro. Medium-full, rich, smooth. Tastes like a Ecu Hababo and Cameroon got together and made a good fucking cigar.
sounds interesting. I'd agree, not a big CAO fan, but the LT's were a nice line. I hear the new Sinister Sam is a solid smoke. Stupid name, but I may end up trying one.
3 years of age hasn't changed it up all that much, from what I can remember. Less fresh sweet/hot Hababo spice, of course. But the LT wasn't ever particularly unbalanced in that regard, so marginal.
Mostly it is just impressively smooth without having lost any of the flavor complexity. Maybe not as effortlessly smooth and full as the top tier smokes out there with MSRPs 2 or 3 times larger than the LT, but certainly close enough for government work.
Nuts, chocolate, cedar, white pepper, touch of citrus, subdued Habano spiciness. It also has that certain undefinable (for me, at least, I can't come up with an equivalent for it) flavor that Cameroon gives mixed in with just the right proportion to be a major component of the profile, but not dominate the smoke.
I can't help but feel this would be a significantly inferior smoke if it had some random Honduran binder to give it an earthier character--no, there are a lot of cigars out there which already do that, but really only 1 or 2 other cigars that quite do what this cigar does. The Guillermo Leon comes to mind but not much else.