I finally decided to smoke the Micallef Leyenda No. 2 that I had picked up at the Micallef event I went to just over a year ago at the Cigar Cigars store in Phoenixville, PA. That reminds me, I need to reach out to my friends at CigarCigars and inquire about the status of their stores. When I passed the Phoenixville shop the other day it looked like it was open, and similarly with the Frazer shop. I haven’t had a need to stop in, but I need to drop a ew people a note or two. Anyway, the Leyenda No. 2 was one of several cigars I had bought at the event, and I hadn’t gotten around to it because it was in a really cool little coffin sorta thing, and I tend to hold on to those too long, mostly because I don’t know what to do with them when I smoke the cigar. It seems a shame to toss the coffins out, but I haven’t worked out what to do with them. Stupid, I know. This is why I have a shelf in the wineador tied up with single cigars in coffins. This one is unique because it’s open in one side, and it’s form fitting to the torpedo shape. This poses another ethical dilemma in my mind as I see it as something that a lot of time and energy went into making. Clearly it’s something I need to work through. I did take the first step and smoked the cigar, so that’s something. The cigar was brilliant, I must say. the wrapper is a 5 Year Old Ecuadorian Habano, with a 5 Year Old Nicaraguan binder and 5 Year Old Nicaraguan, Dominican, and Honduran fillers. This was a torpedo with a sharp taper and measured 5½” x 52. It should come as no surprise that it has some woody flavor, having been surrounded by wood on three sides for quite some time, although there was a layer of cellophane as a buffer. It had some slight citrus and spice too, and was quite enjoyable. It burned perfectly and was a fun cigar to smoke. Considering the presentation and the quality, I don’t recall these having been terribly expensive. I’d buy more if I could figure out what to do with the little coffins!

Last year Drew Estate re-issued a cigar that they made for the web forum BOTL around 2010. I had the pleasure of going on Cigar Safari in 2011 with a few guys from BOTL, and I remember hearing about this cigar, although I was rather ignorant of it at the time, not having been a BOTL forum member. Tim seemed to have been the guy who worked with DE to make this happen back then, and it wasn’t something that was widely available. Never having smoked one, I can’t make a comparison between what was then and this new iteration, but I have smoked a few of the newer ones over the last year and really quite enjoyed them. They only have what I would call “connoisseur” sizes: Corona, Lancero, and a long Corona Gorda, which is what I had on hand to smoke. There were a couple included in the PA Barnsmoker cigars that I smoked, including the Lancero. The Corona Gorda is 6″ x 46, not a bad size, and has a Broadleaf wrapper, Ecuador Connecticut binder and Nicaraguan fillers. It’s a little bit “Liga Lite” to me, it’s got the Broadleaf sweetness, and is full bodied, and it falls somewhere in between a Liga and an Undercrown and I really like it. It’s still a $10 stick, and, for the money, I’m still going to Nica Rustica for my Broadleaf fix, but the BOTL doesn’t have the rough edges that the Nica Rustica has. So if you want something more elegant, in those elegant sizes, this is a great choice.

I smoked a Joya Silver this week, and I had every intention of following it up with a  Joya Cinco Decadas, just to compare, because I think there’s some commonality between the two. I backed off for a few reasons. The dumb reason was that I didn’t feel like I deserved to smoke a $20 cigar at that particular time. The better reason was that the particular evening I thought about doing it happened to get cold and rainy. I’ll get to it one of these days. Anyway, until the next time,

CigarCraig