Originally published at Tiki Bar Online
Salomon, 7” x 56? ring gauge / $12.00, Maxamar’s
The owner of my regular shop, Ammar, and Phillip Wynne, the owner of Felipe Gregorio Cigars, have a very good friends so I get the opportunity to try most of the Felipe Gregorio cigars. Unfortunately his cigar do not have a wide distribution but Maxamar’s would be glad to ship out any of his cigars you’d like to purchase. Today I will reviewing the Silencio cigar. It comes in four figurado shaped sizes and one parejo. This salomon is the largest size of the five. They are comprised of Dominican Corojo and Mata Fina and Nicaraguan habana fillers, a Nicaraguan habana binder with an Ecuadorian habano wrapper. I have smoked a couple other sizes in this line but this was the first one of this size I have smoked.
The wrapper on this sample was a nice ruddy brown in color. There were a good amount of oils in spite of the fact that the cigar came sans cello. There were some medium sized veins but they didn’t detract from the look of the cigar. It was slightly lumpy as well. When I gave the cigar a squeeze I couldn’t detect any soft spots and it was fairly firm to the touch. The wrapper gave off the light aroma of leather while some barnyard notes came from the abbreviated foot. After clipping it and taking a cold draw on it I got notes of cinnamon and sugar with a good draw.
The cigar starts off with red pepper spice, leather and a sugary sweet finish. The draw started off good, but it took a little more effort to get the smoke out of it than I like. After a few more puffs I started to get some green herbal spice from it as well. The burn was slightly uneven but since I have the worst luck getting a salomon cigar to light up straight it probably was me. By the end of the first third the spice had toned down and a slight sourness started to creep in. The first third was firmly in the medium range in regards to strength.
As I moved into the second third the cigar didn’t change a whole lot. The draw was still a little tight and the burn almost evened itself out. About halfway through the cigar it was almost like a switch flipped. The cigar opened up nicely and produced a large volume of smoke. I started to get some flavors of cinnamon, cream, leather and earth. The spice started to make itself known again, and was even stronger than the start. Another thing I noticed as I finished this third was that the ash fell off in nice firm chunks and didn’t make a mess.
Once I moved into the final third the spice and strength really ramped up into the medium-full range. I even started to get a slight nicotine hit from it as well. The flavors of cinnamon, leather, earth with a sweet finish carried over from the previous third.
To me this cigar was almost two different cigars. The first half was a little boring, with a slightly tight draw and some unpleasant bitterness. The second half was very enjoyable with pleasant flavors and a great draw. I will also say that this was noticeably more enjoyable that the couple others I had. I do think I will pick up a couple more of these to see if it was the cigar or me that caused this cigar to smoke like that.
Body: 7/10
Strength: 8/10
Complexity: 6/10
AFP Scale
Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 2/2
Flavor: 4/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 9/10
