Short Smoke: Jericho Hill Shots by Crowned Heads

Vitola: Shots (box-pressed petite corona)
Size: 4” x 42 ring gauge
MSPR $5.95
Purchased from Burns Tobacconist

Background

Jericho Hill joined the Crowned Heads line-up back in mid-summer 2014 at the IPCPR show. As has been CH’s M.O. to date, several months (but not a year) after the original release, a vitola has been added to the mix. This time around, it takes the form of what they are calling a “seasonal release” which is somewhat perfect: a short, fairly quick cigar for cold winter months. The plan is for 1000 boxes of 50 to be released every winter. Now they just need to come up with a compact, round package that holds six of these little beauties and call that a Six-Shooter.

To review, the Jericho Hill is made for Crowned Heads by My Father Cigars in Nicaragua. It is composed of Nicaraguan filler and binder, with a Mexican San Andres wrapper.

Notes

As I sat down to smoke my second of these and read about how they were designed to be a quick smoke for winter months, I recalled my first JH Shot…which lasted about 40 minutes while I drove home from Burns last night. I don’t generally slow-smoke any cigar, but that first Shot seemed densely packed and easily lasted most of my drive home. If this one turns out the same…that kind of shoots down the idea of a short winter smoke.

Shots fires up with a blast of dark earth and black pepper. There was some cedar on the finish and after a few puffs I got a bit of sweetness.

Jon Huber has mentioned to me a couple times that one of his “favorite” descriptions of a cigar flavor was of “gun metal.” With a name like “Shots” it was a little disappointing to not get any gun metal flavor in this little smoke.

What I did get was a continuation of earth and pepper, along with a healthy amount of cocoa powder and some raisin sweetness.

I still contend that the Jericho Hill blend is more like the Padron 1964 Maduro blend than like previous My Father San Andres blends like La Aroma de Cuba Mi Amor. To me, that Padron and the Mi Amor represent about the best and worst of Mexican wrapper blends.

I could definitely get into smoking these on a regular basis in the winter. While they don’t necessarily fit my definition of a short winter smoke (I’d prefer somewhere in the 20 to 25 minute range), they are good enough to warrant the 30+ minutes I would have to seek shelter and warmth. This second Shot that I smoked for this write-up didn’t last as long as the one from last night, but it still topped the 30 minute mark.