Originally published at Tiki Bar Online
Toro, 6.5” x 52 ring gauge / approx. $8.50 MSRP
Today I will be finishing up this second series of Wild Bunch releases with the Honest Abe. He is one of the two Wild Bunch “characters” I’ve actually recognized. Abe Dababneh is the owner of Smoke Inn Cigars in Florida. I met him last year at IPCPR while passing though a booth. You might have even heard my horrible (completely MY fault) interview on his radio show a couple months ago. Anyway back to the cigar. Today’s cigar is comprised of Nicaraguan fillers and binder with an Ecuadorian Habano wrapper. This was the first one of these I smoked.
The wrapper on this sample was a nice medium milk chocolate brown in color. Looking more closely at the wrapper you can see a lot of tooth as well as some fairly prominent veins. Those veins didn’t detract from it’s appearance though. It also had a slightly oily sheen to it as well. Putting my nose to the wrapper brought about an intense leather aroma with leather and nuts coming from the foot. After clipping it and taking a cold draw on it I got notes of leather, wood with a light sweetness.
The first thing I tasted after lighting it up was a creaminess coating my tongue. After a few puffs some leather, maple, wood, green herbal notes and spice started to come through. Fairly shortly the spice faded out. I did start getting some saltiness on the sides of my tongue. The cigar was firmly in the medium bodied range. The draw started off great and it produced a large volume of smoke, however the burn was fairly wavy. This could have been due to the gusty wind that was blowing while I smoked this.
As I moved into the second third I noticed that a tunnel started to develop. I didn’t need to let it go out to burn through it, but it took almost the entire third to completely go away. The spice decided to come back and fade away at seemingly random intervals throughout the third. Throughout this third I tasted flavors of leather, wood, coffee with a sweet finish. It never really got out of the medium range to me.
In the final third the flavors were more of the same that I got in the previous third. The spice would continue to come back for a couple puffs and then fade away. The construction issues did work themselves out and the burn straightened out.
Overall while it was an enjoyable cigar it really didn’t wow me like the Dandy McCoy or Big Bad Mike did. It was a solid medium bodied cigar. I do think that most of the readers out there should give it a try seeing as it wasn’t too strong and the price is very reasonable. I would like to thank Eddie again for sending me these samples to try!
Body: 7/10
Strength: 6/10
Complexity: 6/10
AFP Scale
Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 1.5/2
Flavor: 4/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 8.5/10
