Cigar Review: Foundry Cigars Auburn

Vitola: Auburn
Size: 6” x 50 ring gauge
Price $8.99
Purchased from Burns Tobacconist

Background

One last time (at least for now), I will dip into the madness of Michael Giannini and his Foundry lines of cigars, a brand owned by General Cigar. While I was skeptical when they released more than 20 new blends (most limited release) at IPCPR last year, it has proven to be quite useful to me; whenever I am running short of other cigars to review, I can pick up a few different Foundry releases and fill in a day or two on my calendar. By spreading them out over several months, I don’t exhaust the blends or the patience of my readers. So, from a “blogger perspective”…great job!

I’m looking at one of the limited editions that is banded like the second core line today. This can get confusing, so I’ll try to be as plain as possible. Foundry: War of Currents is divided into two segments. The core lines that will be staying around are “The Laboratories” while the limited release that will eventually sell out and go away are “The Inventions.” All of these releases revolve around the war between Nikola Tesla (brilliant and ahead of his time) and Thomas Edison (overrated cheat and thief), specifically between their methods of delivering electricity: Direct Current versus Alternating Current. While I’m a Tesla fan (bet you could tell after the sentence above!), the cigars that we had in the shop when I bought were “Edison”-oriented. Today I’m looking at the “Auburn” which was named for the location of the first use of the electric chair, an invention of Harold Brown and Arthur Kennelly, who were working for Edison at the time. The decision was made to use Tesla’s Alternating Current to power the electric chair because Edison propagandized at the time that it was more lethal than Direct Current. It’s also said that he used AC to electrocute stray animals in front of crowds to try to sell the idea of DC.

The top of the box lid shows a man strapped into an electric chair with the title, “NY Committee To Explore A More Humane Execution” and a caption of “Execution by electricity, shortly to be introduced in N.Y. state.” No blend details were given about this release…just smoke it and enjoy! (At least that’s the hope…)

Now time for a little musical interlude…put on Tesla’s (the band) Psychotic Supper, and what they had to say about Mr. Edison…

You’re guilty of crime in the first degree, second and third as well
My jury finds you’ll be serving your time when you go straight to hell

Prelight

This cigar is a figurado with a tapered pointy end that reminds me a lot of some of the longer Fuente Hemingway releases, and a head that has an extra wrap of dark leaf around what could be a pigtail, but turns out to be a shaggy, dreadlock-looking splay of leaf. Looks almost like the cigar was electrocuted and some leaf squirted out of that end. The foot tip was also wrapped in a darker leaf segment and there was a small strip of dark leaf around the middle of the body. All in all, with the band, this is all a striking look. If it were a smaller or “hipper” company, people would rave about how artistic this looks, but since it’s one of the “big boys” most people probably wouldn’t mention it. I will, though…this is just plain cool. For the most part, General isn’t known for their innovative or artistic shapes and rolling (La Gloria’s Artesanos de Obelisco being an obvious exception), but this cigar is just dynamite looking. I certainly hope it tastes as good as it looks.

Giving the wrapper a sniff, I picked up a faint earthiness, a hint of chocolate, some cedar and some hay. The tip, with the dark wrapper segment, smelled sweeter and richer. The pieces of darker (Maduro?) leaf are so small that they will undoubtedly have little impact on the overall taste, and that could be a shame, since that leaf does smell very rich. The prelight draw was good, tasting mostly of wood and hay.

Flavor

As is typical with this shape of cigar, light up was extraordinarily easy. Within seconds of applying fire, I was puffing and bring through…well…some smoke. That’s also typical of this cigar shape…the first four or five (or ten or twelve) puffs will have less smoke than you really think you want. If made properly, though, once you get past the tapered part the draw will really open up. The flavor as it started to open up was of earth, dark coffee, and a bit of dried fruit sweetness. The nose had a medium dose of pepper to it. As I burned past the tapered part, which was also the part with the Maduro (?) leaf pasted on, the draw did open up tremendously, but the sweeter flavors went away very quickly as well. Instead I got peanuts, cedar and cayenne pepper on the palate, and the smoke was medium-plus in body. By the time I got to the second third, I would say it was flirting with the low end of full-bodied.

In the second third I got a lot more woody elements and pepper spice, making me think this cigar had a relatively high proportion of Corojo. It could have been just the wrapper, I guess, but it did seem to have that flavor profile I’ve come to expect from Corojo leaf. As I got into the final third, I picked up more earthiness and some sweeter notes coming back into play and mixing well with the cedar flavors.

Construction

I could find no issues with the construction; the draw was great, the burn line was even enough, and the ash wasn’t flaky.

Value

About $9 for a figurado of this size, and a limited release stick at that, really isn’t a bad price.

Conclusions

The Foundry War of Current Auburn was a very nice cigar, delivering plenty of flavor and body on the low end of full. I enjoyed it more than the West Orange vitola and found myself wishing that this was going to be a full-time production cigar. But, since they are limited production, get them while you can.

By-The-Numbers

Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 2/2
Flavor: 4/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 9/10