Vitola: Toro- 5.625” x 52 ring gauge
- Received as part of 2020 SnS Member Kit
Background
Time for part 3 of this 5-part look at the 2020 Saints & Sinners Membership Kit cigars. If you missed parts 1 or 2, it’s a good time to go back and check them out. I explained more fully what these cigars are and how you can get them…you probably can’t if you haven’t already…in those articles.
Cigar #3 in the 2020 Membership Kit is the obligatory Connecticut Broadleaf wrapped cigar. I say “obligatory” because Pete Johnson is a bit of a Broadleaf freak…and he has turned me into one, too, over the last decade or so of smoking his blends in the Tatuaje, L’atelier, and Surrogates lines (he may not be lead blender on every stick in each of those lines, but he definitely has some influence on all those brands).
As with ever other release in these SnS kits over the years, we really don’t know for sure what’s in them for filler and binder, but they are Tatuaje blends made at the My Father factory, so it stands to reason that they are likely Nicaraguan filler and binder. There also isn’t official word on the wrapper here (there has been some information some years in the group’s forum), but this looks, feels and smells like Connecticut Broadleaf, so I’m going with that.
Notes
The dark chocolate brown of the Connecticut Broadleaf Maduro wrapper is always one of my favorite sights. Even thought it’s an unlovely wrapper aesthetically, with the usual veins and tooth and ruggedness, it fills me with joy because I know how it’s going to taste when it burns. This one had a nice oiliness and smelled of rich, ripe earthiness with a touch of sweetness. The foot was closed, but there was an additional note of cedar coming through on it, anyway.
After clipping the head, I got a cold draw that was a great mix of semisweet chocolate, dark roast coffee, and earth. Firing it up brought stronger coffee into the mix, along with black and red pepper, and cedar.
In honor of the wasteful and pointless proceedings going on in the US Senate this week, I decided to pair this cigar with some Filibuster Boondoggler whiskey, which I did a full review of a while back. After some of the Bourbons I’ve been sipping on lately, as well as that amazing Zaya rum, this whiskey suddenly does not seem that sweet…which isn’t really a problem since the cigar itself has a great deal of sweetness in it.
Overall, the SnS 2020 #3 was a fairly typical Tatuaje Broadleaf blend…full-bodied, sweet, spicy, earthy, with side notes of espresso bean, dark fruit, and cedar. The whiskey played well with it without bolstering the sweetness too much. Great cigar and great pairing.
