brothers from different mothers
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I scored a box of Nestor Reserve 2000 robustos at my local B&M Adore them little moody rascals. Wish I woulda scored more before they all got snapped up. Called the owner of the mother store asking whether there were any in the pipeline. He promised to stock the baby store with boxes of NR Churchills. Figured these long sticks would make excellent Christmas bombs. So I've been hitting the local from time to time hoping to see them come in. Then the mother store got all caught up with their new web store partnership with Cigar Federation, and now a month has gone by without result. Dropped by again yesterday -- no dice. I'll have to trek to the mother store, I guess.
All this is by way of explaining how I wound up with a Partagas Black Label Clasico in my motorcycle tail bag: Cause, I dunno about you, but I find it real difficult to walk out of such a well-endowed walk-in without grabbing something. Grabbed a Camacho and a Partagas Black Label Clasico. No good reason. Liked the box. This is how I stumbled onto two brothers from different mothers.
Back home, found a part for the BMW K75 project waiting in the mailbox. Donned my shop clothes, fired up the heater in the garage, yanked a Modelo Especial from the fridge, turned on Arkansas vs LSU on the garage toob, sorted steel tools, haroof roof roof ruff ruff ruff. Peeled the Partagas Black, took a sniff...
Damn! I know this odor!
Look at the flat black sheen on this wrapper. Look at the contrasting brown filler in the foot. That wrapper, the taste was identical; that brown foot, the odor was identical. that unlit draw was identical. I fire her up, the smoke was..., Wow be go dell! Identical.
Bout an inch in, I ran upstairs, pulled one of the identical from a coolidor, brought it down and fired up. Yep. Identical!
Partagas on the left. Comes in a beautiful box. Sports an ornate band. Boasts an established Spanish name. Made by hand in a Latin American sweatshop, the way we all prefer. A seven buck price, just enough so that we know we are smoking a premium cigar. Smithdale Maduro on the right. 5 1/4" x 54 fat robusto on the left; 4 7/8" x 49 box pressed double perfecto on the right. Comes in a pasteboard box. Sports no band at all. Bears a proverbially ordinary English name. But humblest of all, made by machine in Pennsyltucky, exactly the way we all disdain. With a nine bit price, just so that we know for sure we are only smoking a mere yard gar.
But the flavor? Absolutely identical. Toasty black bread. Delicious. Love it. Smooth. Rich. Aromatic. I'm drinking espresso and eating toasted black bread with cranberry honey as I write this. Love it. Even the dog loves it. Toasty and tasty, smoke retro and finish. And the thing is, as you get halfway thru a cigar with this toastiness, they taste better and better. Once you have your whole head smoked and basted really, then you thoroughly get into it. You're done, you want to fire another one up right now. I have a Partagas 1845 in the humidor someone gifted me. I may have to fire that up this afternoon. Golly. Soon as I get back from handball, I'll turn on college football, uncork a drink, spark that Partagas, and finish the bike project. Life is just delicious in the man cave. Steel, smoke, sport, and barley.
Yes of course there are differences between these cigars. The Partagas probably has half again more tobacco. Not only is the ring gauge five ticks larger, but it is packed tight as a drum from end to end. One of those cigars that feels so hard and tight that you have to wonder how it manages to draw so well. The machine made Smithdales are firm, but never tight. The amount of filler and binder and wrapper are precisely controlled by weight so that they never canoe, never tunnel, never burn funny. You can say what you want to, but the art of the torcedor mostly consists in achieving a machine like consistency. Consistency is an inherent virtue of machines, isn't it? That's why screws and nuts are made by machine. I have a hand-tooled belt and buckle I scored at a gift shop outside Jellystone. That's your typical artisanal product. Nobody cares if this buckle does not exactly match the next. Screws and nuts are a different deal. They have to fit each other. So are cigars, for some odd reason. They don't have to be; but we demand it anyway. To make up a box of cigars, each must match color, shape, weight, firmness, as exactly as possible. That's why they use molds. Inconsistent sticks get knocked down in bargain mazos. Another difference: The typical Smithdale will give you from three quarters of an hour to an hour. The smoke volume is identical. The draw of either is about the same. Then you have diffs like how Partagas tells us they use a "medio tempo" wrapper created by leaving the leaf on the stem a couple extra weeks, whereas FXS tells us they use wrapper subjected to a five day maduro process which is a family secret they won't tell you. You google the PBL for reviews, you get answers all over the freakin' map, far as what's in them.
The biggest diff is this: You can get a box of fifty Smithdales for sixty bucks. Twenty Partagas are a buck twenty. In the one instance, you like the smoke. In the other instance, you enjoy the cachet.
I offer you this challenge: Ping me a PM, let me shoot you one Partagas Black Label and a cheapo Smithdale (and maybe some other Merry Christmas dunnage). You fire the two up simultaneously. You tell me.
All this is by way of explaining how I wound up with a Partagas Black Label Clasico in my motorcycle tail bag: Cause, I dunno about you, but I find it real difficult to walk out of such a well-endowed walk-in without grabbing something. Grabbed a Camacho and a Partagas Black Label Clasico. No good reason. Liked the box. This is how I stumbled onto two brothers from different mothers.
Back home, found a part for the BMW K75 project waiting in the mailbox. Donned my shop clothes, fired up the heater in the garage, yanked a Modelo Especial from the fridge, turned on Arkansas vs LSU on the garage toob, sorted steel tools, haroof roof roof ruff ruff ruff. Peeled the Partagas Black, took a sniff...
Damn! I know this odor!
Look at the flat black sheen on this wrapper. Look at the contrasting brown filler in the foot. That wrapper, the taste was identical; that brown foot, the odor was identical. that unlit draw was identical. I fire her up, the smoke was..., Wow be go dell! Identical.
Bout an inch in, I ran upstairs, pulled one of the identical from a coolidor, brought it down and fired up. Yep. Identical!
Partagas on the left. Comes in a beautiful box. Sports an ornate band. Boasts an established Spanish name. Made by hand in a Latin American sweatshop, the way we all prefer. A seven buck price, just enough so that we know we are smoking a premium cigar. Smithdale Maduro on the right. 5 1/4" x 54 fat robusto on the left; 4 7/8" x 49 box pressed double perfecto on the right. Comes in a pasteboard box. Sports no band at all. Bears a proverbially ordinary English name. But humblest of all, made by machine in Pennsyltucky, exactly the way we all disdain. With a nine bit price, just so that we know for sure we are only smoking a mere yard gar.
But the flavor? Absolutely identical. Toasty black bread. Delicious. Love it. Smooth. Rich. Aromatic. I'm drinking espresso and eating toasted black bread with cranberry honey as I write this. Love it. Even the dog loves it. Toasty and tasty, smoke retro and finish. And the thing is, as you get halfway thru a cigar with this toastiness, they taste better and better. Once you have your whole head smoked and basted really, then you thoroughly get into it. You're done, you want to fire another one up right now. I have a Partagas 1845 in the humidor someone gifted me. I may have to fire that up this afternoon. Golly. Soon as I get back from handball, I'll turn on college football, uncork a drink, spark that Partagas, and finish the bike project. Life is just delicious in the man cave. Steel, smoke, sport, and barley.
Yes of course there are differences between these cigars. The Partagas probably has half again more tobacco. Not only is the ring gauge five ticks larger, but it is packed tight as a drum from end to end. One of those cigars that feels so hard and tight that you have to wonder how it manages to draw so well. The machine made Smithdales are firm, but never tight. The amount of filler and binder and wrapper are precisely controlled by weight so that they never canoe, never tunnel, never burn funny. You can say what you want to, but the art of the torcedor mostly consists in achieving a machine like consistency. Consistency is an inherent virtue of machines, isn't it? That's why screws and nuts are made by machine. I have a hand-tooled belt and buckle I scored at a gift shop outside Jellystone. That's your typical artisanal product. Nobody cares if this buckle does not exactly match the next. Screws and nuts are a different deal. They have to fit each other. So are cigars, for some odd reason. They don't have to be; but we demand it anyway. To make up a box of cigars, each must match color, shape, weight, firmness, as exactly as possible. That's why they use molds. Inconsistent sticks get knocked down in bargain mazos. Another difference: The typical Smithdale will give you from three quarters of an hour to an hour. The smoke volume is identical. The draw of either is about the same. Then you have diffs like how Partagas tells us they use a "medio tempo" wrapper created by leaving the leaf on the stem a couple extra weeks, whereas FXS tells us they use wrapper subjected to a five day maduro process which is a family secret they won't tell you. You google the PBL for reviews, you get answers all over the freakin' map, far as what's in them.
The biggest diff is this: You can get a box of fifty Smithdales for sixty bucks. Twenty Partagas are a buck twenty. In the one instance, you like the smoke. In the other instance, you enjoy the cachet.
I offer you this challenge: Ping me a PM, let me shoot you one Partagas Black Label and a cheapo Smithdale (and maybe some other Merry Christmas dunnage). You fire the two up simultaneously. You tell me.
“It has been a source of great pain to me to have met with so many among [my] opponents who had not the liberality to distinguish between political and social opposition; who transferred at once to the person, the hatred they bore to his political opinions.” —Thomas Jefferson (1808)
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Comments
I like Oliva and Quesada (including Regius) a lot. I will smoke anything, though.
That's true! I got called away to a sick kid and forgot to send the PM as well as make the post.
I like Oliva and Quesada (including Regius) a lot. I will smoke anything, though.
Looking forward to the other BOTLs notes on comparing/contrasting these two cigars.
* I have a new address as of 3/24/18 *
I like Oliva and Quesada (including Regius) a lot. I will smoke anything, though.
Wait a minute, that's not just two cigars to compare side-by-side...what the.
I like Oliva and Quesada (including Regius) a lot. I will smoke anything, though.