As a member of the Elks one of the things I look forward to every summer is the opening of the tiki bar. To be outside, with drinks flowing, and good friends is a great way to smoke a cigar. One of my friends at my lodge is a fellow cigar smoker, and Dennis and I play a game of one upmanship when it comes to cigars. He tries to give me a cigar that he thinks I have never smoked, and in turn I do the same for him.  Two weeks ago he gave me the Sol Cubano Artisan.

The Skinny:

Cigar: Sol Cubano Artisan
Origin: Nicaragua
Size: 7.1 x 58
Wrapper: Connecticut, Habano and Broadleaf Maduro
Binder: Unknown
Filler: Honduras and Nicaragua

Pre-Light: At first glance this looks like a beautiful cigar, but at closer inspection you can see the leaves aren’t cut clean, and the maduro striping is just added to the outside of the cigar, and it peels very easily. In fact if you look at the picture you can see that it is missing on half of my cigar. When I saw these cigars sell for $20.00 I was shocked at the poor craftsmanship. The scent of the wrapper was very field like, I would liken it to the scent of straw/hay while at the foot there is some pepper added to the hay. The cigar itself was packed with tobacco and felt great to the touch.  On the draw I got some notes that I never got before, and I liken it to fermented wine. It was not pretty.

Smoke: I was ready to put this cigar down a couple of times, but I wound up sticking with it fro the sake of the review. I picked up notes of leather and earth, with some pepper thrown in. It was quite bitter at times, and it just did not work for me. On top of that the cigar needed to be touched up numerous times.

Overall: This cigar is not worth the price in my eyes and was very disappointing. The notes of leather, earth, and pepper create a very bitter combination, and if you do decide to smoke one make sure you have some water handy.

My Local Price: Gift (Retails for about $20.00)
Rating: 84 (Out of 100)

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 12:31 PM and is filed under Cigar Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.