El Baton
The El Baton is made in Nicaragua by the J.C. Newman Cigar Co. Apparently they are made in a small factory dedicated to this particular line. They claim it to be medium to full bodied with “Notes of spice.” Tonight I am pairing up with water and a few sips of Glenfiddich 18 year scotch. Let’s see how this goes…
Wrapper: Nicaraguan Corojo
Binder/Filler: Nicaraguan
Size: Robusto 5 x 54
Price: Around $5.00
Pre-light & construction:
You guys know my routine by now… believe it or not, I do this inspection before smoking every cigar. Overall, the wrapper looked nice, with a few bumps and veins. Squeezing the cigar revealed no soft spots. The cigar was firmly packed, yet had a good draw. The pre-light draw had a simple taste of sweet earth. Sniffing the wrapper, I noticed a hay like smell with a tinge of poo (Yea, I said poo). Don’t let this distract you. I’ve had many cigars that initially smelled like poo that turned out to be great smokes. Sniffing the foot revealed peppery notes that actually tickled my nose. I did no burn corrections, and the ash held for a little over an inch.
Flavor:
As advertised, the first third did start off with easy notes of spice. At first is was a peppery spice, but after about a half of an inch, it evolved into a sweet spice. A slight caramel flavor mingled with earthy notes.
The second third continued with caramel flavors overtaking the earthy notes. The earthy flavors remained, they just weren’t consistent or strong. The spice remained, with nuances of pepper and sweetness.
The last third saw changes in a few things. First of all, the earthy notes fell back even further. The caramel became mocha, switching back and forth every now and then. The smoke texture became a little smoother, making for an enjoyable experience.
Conclusion:
Not a bad medium to full bodied cigar. It wasn’t exceptionally rich, but it was by no means bad. I think I’ll revisit this cigar when I run across them. Overall, the El Baton is definitely worth a try.
This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 12:00 am 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.
. On a side note, I just want to keep on mentioning that the video reviews that you, and you/Ed, do are great. I know that they take a lot of time to compile and edit, but I hope we can see them keep coming at an increased pace! Keep up the good work. It’s nice to see some new sponsors joining the tomscigars site!
Tom June 29th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Cool glad you like the content and vids. For now we’ll keep with a full length review, and a “Quick Smoke” review each month.
As for keeping up with comments, that’s easy since this site doesnt generate a lot. Emails on the other hand… I tend to fall behind.