Kid Montana
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2010
- Messages
- 1,346
I recently departed beautiful Iraq for beautiful Australia for a 15 day R&R and while in transit I was fortunate enough to acquire a couple boxes of high quality cigars one of which was a 10 ct box of the Romeo y Julieta 2009 LE "Duke" Robusto Extra from an island south of Miami. I may be mistaken but this might be the first Duke review on CP so I'll try to make it a good one.
Temperature: 89.8 degrees Fahrenheit
Wind: gentle breeze from the NW
Sunny, blue sky from horizon to horizon
Ambient RH: 32%
The cigars had a tough trip in my backpack so I let them rest for about two weeks before finally giving in to temptation this morning. The wrappers are a tough chewy texture, not perfectly smooth and uniform but slightly rustic with uneven color throughout the ruddy brown with prominent veins running through most of the cigar. Pre-light olfactory examination of the foot doesn't reveal a whole lot, just a hint of rich tobacco. A punch through the nicely made triple cap reveals a firm but acceptable draw, not requiring further molestation.
Lighting with my off-brand triple tip torch produced an initial punch of pepper which subsided quickly. My experience with ISOMs has demonstrated a slow start with a fantastic finish and this cigar is no exception. The first 1/4 inch was mild with little complexity, just a hint of sweet tobacco and cedar with a subsiding presence of pepper. Further into the first third the tobacco begins to warm up and gain complexity producing volumes of rich, slightly sweet smoke and aftertastes of leather and wood. Intermittent vanilla notes begin to appear, much to my delight though they don't persist. The burn is a bit choppy due to veins and imperfections in the wrapper and the ash begins to slowly curl one way. I'm making a note to rotate the cigars and wait another couple of weeks before smoking the next one, to possibly alleviate the uneven burn. The end of the first third brings increased richness and complexity as I'm rewarded with a very rich mouth feel and increasing boldness from the initial mild flavors.
After the first ash I discovered the cause of the uneven burn: unevenly bunched filler and a bit of a tunnel on one side. I sincerely hope this is not a representative sample of this LE. I haven't had many RyJ before so I don't know where the fall compared to the other ISOMs I've smoked, namely Partagas and Cohiba. In the middle third the boldness subsides a bit post ash and the sweetness with it. The profile stays with leather and wood, not at all unpleasant though not intoxicatingly rich like a VSG or Padron anni. The burn issues continue through to the last third, possibly attributable to improper humidification and I think this cigar would benefit considerably from more humidor time.
In the last third the evenness of the filler seems much improved, uniform though a second correction was necessary after the middle third. The wrapper had copious amounts of adhesive and took a bite out of the quick thick and chunky wrapper when I delicately worked to remove it, another ding on the quality control. The flavor profile didn't vary much towards the nub, remaining slightly peppery, medium to full bodied, with enough complexity to call good but not quite enough to call great. The very end began to taste of a cool menthol, possibly due to a need for more aging.
After calculating the exchange rate I paid about $150 for the box which is on par with the pricing offered at some of the sponsored cigar retailers I browsed through. At $15/stick, this cigar needs some improvement to get top marks. Without the burn issues I'd give it a 4/5 but when taken as a whole I was slightly dissapointed and will reprise this review with an update in October.
K.M. Score: 3.5/5
