Montecristo #4 Review

I want to preface this by saying that it has been quite a while since I've written a review.  Also, this is my first Habanos.  

I had been debating how long I want to wait before smoking this, and it has been calling me all week, so I reached in to my little humi and took it out.

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It was a brisk day and I sat outside with a cup of coffee with a bit of hot chocolate mixed in.  

Prelight draw was full of sweetness, almost clove-like.  There was also a deeper earthy flavor to the cigar.

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1/3

The first third had strong flavors of earth and hay.  There was more earthiness than hay, however.  I am not a fan of cigars with light wrappers, because many times, the hay flavors is so strong that it is tangy, and overbearing, but this cigar didn't have that problem.  I was kind of hoping that there would be a bang of the bat, but there wasn't.  I wasn't disappointed, however, because there was a good enough balance that I wasn't feeling the need to wash away the flavor with my coffee.

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2/3

This is where the cigar really started to become interesting.  It never became overly complex flavorwise, but the earthiness did give way to more of a hay taste.  Rather than being tangy, however, the flavor has a hint of sweetness.  It was quite pleasant.  The hay was also joined by a leathery taste that took me by surprise, but it was very welcome.  It was in the second third that the cigar developed a bit of an uneven burn that carried through to the end of the stick.  It never got terrible, and because there was a breeze, I didn't really bother to do much touching up because when I did, the breeze just upset the balance again.  Toward the end of the second third there was the ghost of cocoa sneaking in to the flavor, but I think that was because of the cocoa that I had mixed in to my coffee.

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3/3

At the beginning of the final third I was feeling a tiny bit of bite of spice on the tip of my tongue.  The cigar was burning coolly because I wasn't trying to fly through the cigar, and the bite wasn't coating my tongue.  Throughout the final third the earthiness came back stronger with the hay and leather as well as a stronger hint of the sweetness.  It honestly tasted much like clove.  It was very pleasant, and I smoked it down until it wouldn't stay lit anymore.

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Although I don't ordinarily like lighter wrapped cigars that much, I have to say that this was a very enjoyable experience.  It was extremely mellow.  The scent of the smoke was surprisingly sweet and coupled with leather.  I probably could have coupled it with a better drink that the coffee concoction that I made, but it worked, non-the-less.  the aftertaste was hay and leather mixed with my coffee.  Many times I put a stick of gum in after I've smoked a cigar to deal with some of the tastes left behind, but this cigar didn't really need that as I am still enjoying it and I finished the cigar almost an hour ago.

I don't know when I'll have another Habano, but this is definitely a stick that I wouldn't mind trying again!

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