cuppajack
New Member
- Joined
- Jul 24, 2006
- Messages
- 741
Grape White Owl Review.
The Quest.
I’m a firm believer in building and contributing to the online communities that I frequent, and since CP has been a wonderful and welcoming place since the very first day I created an account, I’ve been looking for a “special” way to give back. Since I enjoy writing I figured I’d try hard to write entertaining and informative reviews. Then Moki threw down a gauntlet of sorts when he asked if anyone would review a rare and interesting smoke.
“Am I worthy of such a smoke? Would the people at CP care what I, a newbie of sorts, have to say about such a urbane cigar?” Were some of the questions that arose in my head. But I had a duty to do.
Over the weekend I searched high and low, in two counties, for the elusive White Owl: Grape (hereafter WOG) with no success. I thought, nay, I hoped that perhaps some other intrepid soul had completed the daunting task. But upon seeing no review on Monday I set out, jaw squared and resolve set, to find a package of these sought-after cigar.
I had an easier time finding Hemmingway Short Stories during the heady boom-times of 1997 than I did hunting WOGs yesterday, and after visiting no less that 5 druggists, gas stations, and discount cigarette stores on my lunch break I reluctantly threw in the towel. It seems that here in central Los Angeles the WOG is just too popular of a smoke. The tinderbox had 4 or 5 boxes of Opus, and no WOGs. ESGs but no WOGS. WOAMs but no WOGs. Even the ever-elusive IMUTA* but no WOGs. By now I had burned though all the remaining gas in my tank and was extremely late returning to work from my lunch break as I coasted into a Mobile station to fill-up. As I paid for my tank I spied, half hidden behind a Backwoods display, the glorious imperial purple packaging of the WOG. Ecstatic I paid the clerk for them and returned to work triumphant. I would have preferred to smoke a double corona WOG, or even a Churchill but unfortunately they only had the “Cigarillo” size. It would have to do and I looked forward to returning home to smoke my new found treasure.
The Smoke
I sat down in on my baltio with the back of Owls, my torch, my cutter, and a freshly drawn tall glass of icewater (wtf else could you pair these with?) and broke the seal on the fiver. My nose, which had previously detected a faint grapeyness, was assailed by a cataclysmic wave of purple flavor. I chose my stick and removed the cello to reveal a frighteningly uniform “wrapper” with the texture of a brown paper bag. Construction was uniform, as should be expected in a machine-made, though a little squishy.
My stomach threatened to turn as I tested the prelight draw. Fruity would be an understatement. The sweetened tip produced a stickiness on my lips, and the flavors from the unlighted stick were something akin to Dimetapp and vomit. It tasted like being sick as a child. Notes that would feature prominently in my smoking.
I “put foot to flame,” to borrow a phrase, and that first puff was all heat and acrid smoke. The first real puff filled my mouth with the flavors of a stale Marlboro red and sticky day-old purple Kool-aid. I mistakenly passed the smoke over my soft pallet, though my sinuses and out my nose, the standard full tasting method, and was rewarded with, and I am not in any way exaggerating here, a fierce gag-reflex and a burning in my nasal cavities.
The draw was actually perfect. Firm, but productive, the small ring-gauge stick produced billowing voluminous clouds of (horrible grape scented) smoke. A flaky white-gray ash tipped the smoked and would fall, flit, and flake at the slightest provocation
About ¼ into the stick things started to look up. The initial purple-assault relented a little and I was able to detect, faintly and in the background, subtle notes of tobacco. There was a wet-cardboard and sodden cigarette butt flavor, however behind that a faint pepper and hints of honest-to-goodness cigar.
Without thinking I blew smoked through my nose again. This time however I was able to stifle my gag.
To quote directly from my tasting notes, “As long as I keep the smoke out of my sinuses it is actually not all bad. There is a hint of tobacco flavor and even a little spice right at the tip of my tongue. Or maybe my taste buds have been killed. And hey, at least the burn is perfect.”
The Detour
I’m about ½ way into the smoke when I started fiddling with one of the other sticks in the fiver. When I got it out of the cello I noticed the “wrapper” was peeling up a little bit, so I decided to investigate. Peeling back the “wrapper” revealed an oddly speckled, and even grapeyer, “binder” layer.
The wrapper was thin, moist, and disturbingly homogonous, while the binder was thicker, like heavy paper, and sticky to the touch. Splitting this along its seam revealed a densely packed mass of sticky short-filler.
The filler could have passed for (and I’m sure does) drug-store pipe tobacco and the grape-scent was practically overwhelming at this point. And I returned to my lit WOG, which was still burning perfectly after at least 5 minutes of laying dormant in my ashtrey. The thought of the additives that must be in this “cigar” to keep a mass of filler as damp as that burning made me shiver. As I rounded the final 1/3 things started to go even further south. The overwhelming GRAPE taste returned, along with a subtle creaminess that reminded me of powdered nondairy creamer and an extremely bitter finish developed. I thought I detected more spice and pepper notes but quickly decided that it was in fact just harshness as the stick was heating up. It started tasting very medicinal and even sweeter when I decided to put it down.
And with a final puff that I forced myself to blow-out through my nose, and a final gag for my efforts I stamped the WOG out.
Final Thoughts.
I’ve smoked aromatics in my pipe, even cut-rate ultra sticky drugstore tobaccos, and I have smoked a few swishers and Phillies in the past (always on a lark) so I thought I might have an idea of what I was in for. I also used to smoked the flavored Camel cigarettes that you can find around the holidays and actually enjoyed those. But the WOG was a different beast entirely. Somewhere, in a lab in Kentucky, there is a brilliant but cruel technician who discovered how to create a smoke so foul and so unredeemably grape-flavored as to actually induce autonomic gag reflexes in the smoker. This man is both brilliant and terrible, and I hope that one day he will see the error of his ways and turn his sizable talents to good.
After smoking the WOG I could not help but wonder why such an abomination on upon the leaf exists. Who is the target demographic for these? And why on earth do they smoke them? I suppose one could make a decent blunt (a hollowed-out machine-made cigar re-filled with pot) with one of these, but that market could not sustain an entire product-line of flavored White Owls.
It was, without a doubt, the single worse thing I have ever smoked, or seen being smoked. But the deed is done and I’ll carry the badge of honor that comes with smoking a WOG to my grave.
I hope my review has entertained and enlightened, and I would like to offer a final piece of wisdom: as much as we try to forget it, tobacco is a killer and a poison. We should not, we cannot, abide the consumption of a deadly drug in such an abdominal and unnatural form as these. I can only imagine the number of kids who’s first tobacco experience is with these horrible fucking beasts and who then are led to cigarettes and chews and then deep into the fold of “big tobacco’s” thralls. Only to then end their life attached to a respirator while their family watches them die.
Cigars are a true pleasure of life, and the appreciation for the leaf is a noble and worthwhile pastime, but these American machine-mades are not cigars, not by any stretch, and they are evil.
And speaking of evil, during my quest for the WOG I ran across a package of “Tequila flavored” Philies Blunts. Anybody want to tackle that review?
*I Made Up This Acronym.
The Quest.
I’m a firm believer in building and contributing to the online communities that I frequent, and since CP has been a wonderful and welcoming place since the very first day I created an account, I’ve been looking for a “special” way to give back. Since I enjoy writing I figured I’d try hard to write entertaining and informative reviews. Then Moki threw down a gauntlet of sorts when he asked if anyone would review a rare and interesting smoke.
“Am I worthy of such a smoke? Would the people at CP care what I, a newbie of sorts, have to say about such a urbane cigar?” Were some of the questions that arose in my head. But I had a duty to do.
Over the weekend I searched high and low, in two counties, for the elusive White Owl: Grape (hereafter WOG) with no success. I thought, nay, I hoped that perhaps some other intrepid soul had completed the daunting task. But upon seeing no review on Monday I set out, jaw squared and resolve set, to find a package of these sought-after cigar.
I had an easier time finding Hemmingway Short Stories during the heady boom-times of 1997 than I did hunting WOGs yesterday, and after visiting no less that 5 druggists, gas stations, and discount cigarette stores on my lunch break I reluctantly threw in the towel. It seems that here in central Los Angeles the WOG is just too popular of a smoke. The tinderbox had 4 or 5 boxes of Opus, and no WOGs. ESGs but no WOGS. WOAMs but no WOGs. Even the ever-elusive IMUTA* but no WOGs. By now I had burned though all the remaining gas in my tank and was extremely late returning to work from my lunch break as I coasted into a Mobile station to fill-up. As I paid for my tank I spied, half hidden behind a Backwoods display, the glorious imperial purple packaging of the WOG. Ecstatic I paid the clerk for them and returned to work triumphant. I would have preferred to smoke a double corona WOG, or even a Churchill but unfortunately they only had the “Cigarillo” size. It would have to do and I looked forward to returning home to smoke my new found treasure.
The Smoke
I sat down in on my baltio with the back of Owls, my torch, my cutter, and a freshly drawn tall glass of icewater (wtf else could you pair these with?) and broke the seal on the fiver. My nose, which had previously detected a faint grapeyness, was assailed by a cataclysmic wave of purple flavor. I chose my stick and removed the cello to reveal a frighteningly uniform “wrapper” with the texture of a brown paper bag. Construction was uniform, as should be expected in a machine-made, though a little squishy.
I “put foot to flame,” to borrow a phrase, and that first puff was all heat and acrid smoke. The first real puff filled my mouth with the flavors of a stale Marlboro red and sticky day-old purple Kool-aid. I mistakenly passed the smoke over my soft pallet, though my sinuses and out my nose, the standard full tasting method, and was rewarded with, and I am not in any way exaggerating here, a fierce gag-reflex and a burning in my nasal cavities.
The draw was actually perfect. Firm, but productive, the small ring-gauge stick produced billowing voluminous clouds of (horrible grape scented) smoke. A flaky white-gray ash tipped the smoked and would fall, flit, and flake at the slightest provocation
About ¼ into the stick things started to look up. The initial purple-assault relented a little and I was able to detect, faintly and in the background, subtle notes of tobacco. There was a wet-cardboard and sodden cigarette butt flavor, however behind that a faint pepper and hints of honest-to-goodness cigar.
Without thinking I blew smoked through my nose again. This time however I was able to stifle my gag.
To quote directly from my tasting notes, “As long as I keep the smoke out of my sinuses it is actually not all bad. There is a hint of tobacco flavor and even a little spice right at the tip of my tongue. Or maybe my taste buds have been killed. And hey, at least the burn is perfect.”
The Detour
I’m about ½ way into the smoke when I started fiddling with one of the other sticks in the fiver. When I got it out of the cello I noticed the “wrapper” was peeling up a little bit, so I decided to investigate. Peeling back the “wrapper” revealed an oddly speckled, and even grapeyer, “binder” layer.
The wrapper was thin, moist, and disturbingly homogonous, while the binder was thicker, like heavy paper, and sticky to the touch. Splitting this along its seam revealed a densely packed mass of sticky short-filler.
The filler could have passed for (and I’m sure does) drug-store pipe tobacco and the grape-scent was practically overwhelming at this point. And I returned to my lit WOG, which was still burning perfectly after at least 5 minutes of laying dormant in my ashtrey. The thought of the additives that must be in this “cigar” to keep a mass of filler as damp as that burning made me shiver. As I rounded the final 1/3 things started to go even further south. The overwhelming GRAPE taste returned, along with a subtle creaminess that reminded me of powdered nondairy creamer and an extremely bitter finish developed. I thought I detected more spice and pepper notes but quickly decided that it was in fact just harshness as the stick was heating up. It started tasting very medicinal and even sweeter when I decided to put it down.
And with a final puff that I forced myself to blow-out through my nose, and a final gag for my efforts I stamped the WOG out.
Final Thoughts.
I’ve smoked aromatics in my pipe, even cut-rate ultra sticky drugstore tobaccos, and I have smoked a few swishers and Phillies in the past (always on a lark) so I thought I might have an idea of what I was in for. I also used to smoked the flavored Camel cigarettes that you can find around the holidays and actually enjoyed those. But the WOG was a different beast entirely. Somewhere, in a lab in Kentucky, there is a brilliant but cruel technician who discovered how to create a smoke so foul and so unredeemably grape-flavored as to actually induce autonomic gag reflexes in the smoker. This man is both brilliant and terrible, and I hope that one day he will see the error of his ways and turn his sizable talents to good.
After smoking the WOG I could not help but wonder why such an abomination on upon the leaf exists. Who is the target demographic for these? And why on earth do they smoke them? I suppose one could make a decent blunt (a hollowed-out machine-made cigar re-filled with pot) with one of these, but that market could not sustain an entire product-line of flavored White Owls.
It was, without a doubt, the single worse thing I have ever smoked, or seen being smoked. But the deed is done and I’ll carry the badge of honor that comes with smoking a WOG to my grave.
I hope my review has entertained and enlightened, and I would like to offer a final piece of wisdom: as much as we try to forget it, tobacco is a killer and a poison. We should not, we cannot, abide the consumption of a deadly drug in such an abdominal and unnatural form as these. I can only imagine the number of kids who’s first tobacco experience is with these horrible fucking beasts and who then are led to cigarettes and chews and then deep into the fold of “big tobacco’s” thralls. Only to then end their life attached to a respirator while their family watches them die.
Cigars are a true pleasure of life, and the appreciation for the leaf is a noble and worthwhile pastime, but these American machine-mades are not cigars, not by any stretch, and they are evil.
And speaking of evil, during my quest for the WOG I ran across a package of “Tequila flavored” Philies Blunts. Anybody want to tackle that review?
*I Made Up This Acronym.
