Wow. Interesting how divergent our reviews are. Whether the cigars are inconsistent, our tastes differ, or a little bit of both factors are at work, I'm not exactly sure, although after smoking the 6x60 yesterday, I suspect there's a bit of inconsistency in this line.
6 x 60 Habano
I figured I'd keep knocking this series down, one per day, just so that the profile was fresh in my memory for better comparisons. Going into this, I was curious where the extra inch was going to be found in comparison to the 5x60 reviewed above. Would it be in the supersweet mild segment? The husky, medium-strength outdoorsy stretch? The yuck at the end? We'll see...
Appearance/Initial Inspection: It had a bit of a stubbed toe with a few small cracks at the foot. There was a long, bulging "undervein" in one of the inner layers of the wrapper, and it caused an irregular crack about an inch long up near the head. There was a small hole in the outer layer of the wrapper that looked like it was probably put there by an insect of some sort back when the leaf was still connected to the plant. There was a greenish squiggly line, not unlike a varicose vein, in the wrapper at one point. The wrapper was more consistent in color (light brown) and texture (smoothish) than the 5x60, but the edge of the wrapper was ever so slightly raised on the entire stick. There was a big rodent turd-like stick or stem or nard or something visible at the foot, inconsistent bunching, and a mildly peeling cap on the other end. It smelled a bit like the sausage smell from
the La Gran Fubar, so I suspect that they may have travelled next to each other or something. I think I'll put my remaining LGF into a cigar baggie right now just to keep it from further contaminating anything else.
Taste: I gave it a rather poor cut with my Xicar, and lots of jagged crap was sort of hanging out of the head with assorted crumbly detritus littering my table and ashtray. The prelight draw was sweet and chocolaty.
I lit it up at 1:36 yesterday afternoon. Immediately the Big Nard seemed like it might be an issue--it didn't want to ignite as readily as the rest of the filler. The first draws were sweet with an unidentifiable underlying hint of something else. There was almost a bitterness to the sweetness as well. The early stage was still quite mild like the 5x60, but not nearly as sweet right out of the gate. I was reminded for a few moments of a vaguely bunk Padron Londres Maduro that I had a while ago that just didn't seem right. This cigar holds on to the same mildness, but the sweetness evolves into a much more mellow, understated presence rather than an in-your-face, almost aggressive sweetness like the 5x60.
At 2:07, the ash looked like it was about to jump so I helped it off, and it left a short, squat ember core/cone. I usually prefer to ash my cigars twice (at the 1/3 and 2/3 mark) but this one wasn't going to make it that far. After ashing it was still a much more bland, banal taste than the 5x60. I got a quick scent of a very brief, but very bad odor in the smoke--sort of like an applefart. Boo.
Into the middle third, the mellow sweetness gives way to the same sort of hay, grassy, outdoorsy flavor as I got a glimpse of in the 5x60. I've got a very pleasant taste lingering in my mouth at this point, and it provides a very refreshing twist on plain old water. It's still mild, although it's more irritating to my nose than yesterday's stick. I get another quick, harsh, ripe smell, and the taste turns a little peppery. Although the flavor is changing, it isn't really developing that much, if that makes any sense. Sort of a muted, pastel flavor evolution. A bit later it tastes like an overcooked pecan pie where the nuts were burned and the sugar was carmelized. The smoke begins to be uniformly stinky. This is an outdoor cigar.
I ashed again at 2:32, still a little ahead of my preferred schedule. 2.5-2.75" remain. The ember core was pretty flat and even now. It starts to get a little harsh and yucky tasting, and just a little bit spitty. The back of my throat tastes cheap (make your own joke here). It seems to be paralleling the development of the 5x60, so it seems like they just added the inch to the wrong part--the very end. Like some sort of miracle product that promises to add 10 years to your life--those 10 years wouldn't be added to the years where you're in your prime.
Approaching the final third, it starts tasting a little hot and making my mouth unkindly watery. It got away from the grassy, outdoorsy taste quite a while ago but I didn't notice it at the time until realizing at this point that the flavor is just basically unvarying harshness and yuck.
I put it down at 2:50 with about 1.75" left, making for a 1:14 cigar, but if not for the review aspect of this project, I probably would have set it down at about the 1 hour mark with 2.5-2.75" left before the taste went south. It was just getting obnoxious, both in taste and in construction.
Construction: I noticed plenty of minor flaws and idiosyncrasies before lighting it, but few of them really made much of an impact in terms of construction issues through the life of the smoke.
Very shortly after lighting, I noticed what appeared to be a 1/4" vertical slice in the outer wrapper down from the cut in the head. I didn't notice it when I was cutting it, so it must have burst somehow. I'm not sure. It's only in the very outermost layer of the wrapper, so it doesn't seem to be presenting any problems at this point. Early on, the ash was a very solid white on the outside, and segmented and "bunchy" on the inside. It burns very evenly--especially compared to the constant runners in the 5x60. It burns very, very slowly at first. Barely more than an inch is gone after the first half hour. At that rate, this is a six hour cigar. After ashing (it just plopped off with barely a tap) a little bit of uneven burning develops and I wait to see what happens with it.
During the middle third, the head is starting to get really mooshy and sloppy, and I'm not a particularly wet smoker. There's still 3.5" left, and I wonder what it will look like when I'm through. The Big Nard doesn't seem to impact the burn at all. Later on, the burn takes on some mild scalloping shapes, and the head continues to deform. As I hit the 1 hour mark, I've got about 2.5" left--the burn has been very inconsistent so far. The big, irregular crack up near the head (the one caused by the hidden vein) haven't caused any problems, unless they're somehow responsible for the sloppiness of the butt, but that soesn't seem to be the case.
As I get into the final third, the half inch closest to the head is absolutely black from moisture, it's soggy and tasting bad to boot. The taste begins to really deteriorate, and while it's managed to hang together so far, the butt seems poised to catastrophically fail at any moment, so I put it down to prevent the impending disaster that would have no payoff in the taste department anyway.
Grades:
Appearance: 7.0 Lots of little flaws and quirks. None of them seemed to cause any functional problems, but there were enough of them that they just sort of added up. A smoker who highly values the appearance of a cigar would likely ding it a bit more. I wish my camera weren't on the fritz because I feel like my simple description doesn't do it justice.
Taste: 6.5 The aggressive sweetness never really appeared, and while it was sweet towards the start, it wasn't as interesting of a sweetness, and the grassy/hay/outdoorsy taste didn't stick around for very long. The majority of this cigar was just sort of muted and blah in the taste department--at least until it got ugly towards the end.
Construction: 6.75 All the little flaws added up, and while it burned fine with just a little bit of unevenness, the butt crapping out on me was the real dealbreaker. I expected the Big Nard to cause a problem (it didn't), the faint unraveling of the wrapper to be an issue (it wasn't), for the irregular cracks to leak smoke (they didn't), but it did have other significant flaws. It held together well enough as long as the taste was decent, so no real harm was done.
Total: 6.75 This seems about right. A bit below average, but not a total dog rocket or anything. If given a choice and just based on having smoked one of each, I'd buy the 5x60s before I'd buy the 6x60s (although I don't see myself rushing out to buy the 5x60s either), but they were so inconsistent that I don't feel like any meaningful conclusion can be drawn (especially considering how radically different Kingantz's impressions were--even beyond what is obviously personal preference). In fact, it's a stark enough contrast that I suspect that there is quite a bit of inconsistency in this blend. Otherwise, if an extra inch makes this radical of a difference, I have a world of revisiting to do and a lot of revising and asterisking to do in my journal.