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La Aurora 1495 Belicoso (Original Release)

mjolnir01

El Cañón de Latón
Joined
Jun 1, 2008
Messages
2,654
Today’s cigar is an Original Release La Aurora 1495 Belicoso gifted to me by Wayman Coulter at the Pipe & Tobacco Shop in Little Rock, AR in June 2006.
 
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I clip the torpedo’s tapered head using a dickman cut.  On the cold draw, I get a little grassiness and barnyard flavors.  Carefully, I toast the foot with a long-stem match and gently light the 9+ year old cigar.  The wrapper has a nice oily sheen to it, and is very toothy.
 
The first third gives a light herbal favor, along with some more exotic spices and leather.  I think I’ve been tasting too much cumin in my cigars lately, or at least overusing that as a flavor descriptor, but I’m picking it up here quite a bit.  The black and gray ash shows the wrapper’s tooth well, and clings on through the entire third.
 
On into the second third, the ash falls into my H. Upmann ashtray.  The flavors turn a little more peppery at this point, but the core is still leathery with some cedar hints.  It’s smooth as you’d expect an aged Dominican cigar to be, but there’s enough going on here to keep it interesting.  Given the age, the pepper is surprising, but going into the final third, the spice abates and the cigar exhibits a little vanilla sweetness.  Leather is still the underlying and overall name of the game here, however.  Unfortunately the wrapper starts to split a bit, so I let it go out with about an inch left.
 
The La Aurora 1495 Belicoso is a very good cigar.  It aged better than I expected it to, and I’m curious what a fresh specimen would taste like today.  I don’t gravitate to La Aurora much as their cigars’ profiles usually aren’t in my wheelhouse, but I really enjoyed this smoke.  Part of that may stem from the fact I’ve carried this cigar for so long because it’s special to me.  It reminds me of a great time in my growth as a cigar smoker and of an old friend.
 
So why did I carry it across two continents and for so long?  What makes this stick special?  A background story:
 
In early 2006, I left my homestation in North Carolina on temporary duty to attend C-130 Aircraft Commander’s school in Little Rock, AR.  I had been smoking cigars seriously for a year and the course had some seriously large amounts of down time, so I found myself hanging out at the Pipe & Tobacco Shop down on University Avenue. 
 
Located in a strip mall across from the University of Arkansas Little Rock campus, the shop appeared like so many across the U.S.—glass display cases full of accessories and knick-knacks, a wall of pipe tobacco jars, drop-tile ceilings, wood paneling on the walls, and, of course, a well-appointed humidor in the back.  There was also a smaller humidor for rarities and hard-to-find stuff.  Most memorably, however, there was a large round table in the middle of the shop, cluttered with newspapers, puzzle books, ashtrays, and a coffee pot.  Appropriately, it was dubbed “The Table of Knowledge.”  That moniker proved more apt than I’m sure anyone realized at the time.
 
It was at that table that I got to really know the cigar.  How to cut it without circumcising it.  How to light it without charring it.  How to savor it without huffing it.  How to purge in the final third so I could nubb it.  How Padron 2000s pair amazingly with Coke.  How a fresh Opus X Reserva D’ Chateau on an only a sushi lunch is a terrible idea.
 
The number one thing I learned at the Table of Knowledge, though, is that rolled-up bundle of rotten leaves can be pretty damn special with the right company.
 
It was the people at the Pipe & Tobacco Shop that kept me coming back for the five months I lived in Little Rock.  At the core were Greg and his staff.  Greg could be found most days chomping a young and full bodied cigar.  With his long gray pony tail, round glasses, and Hawaiian shirt, he looked like he’d be more at home in Margaritaville than Razorback country.  Matt was charismatic and always cheerful; the perennial college student and young family guy was a fixture.  My last day there, he and I smoked some Monte #2s--which today I’m sure were fakes, but at the time I remember them being awesome—that afternoon he gifted me a Padron ashtray I still treasure to this day.  There was also Michael, the skinny bespectacled guy who went about the day-to-day grind of the little things that are key in running a tobacco shop.  Sam, the youngest of the lot, rounded out the front end staff.  Oh, there was also a fat black cat appropriately named Maduro who freely ambled about the place as cats do.
 
The cast of characters that congregated at the Pipe & Tobacco Shop were no slouches either.  Like any good shop, they came from all walks of life.  Will was a Northeast transplant who had spent several years in the Southwest as a tobacco rep.  His knowledge of pipe tobacco and cigars was encyclopedic and his love for the city of Little Rock was infectious.  The other regular Greg was a doctor, who often came in during his lunch breaks wearing scrubs for a quick Carlos Torraño.  He taught me the term “Island South of Miami.”  Brian did yardwork and stump-grinding for a living.  He’d hang out at the shop regularly like Norm spent time at Cheers, even though Brian didn’t even smoke cigars—he simply liked the company.  David J. Sanders would often drop by, smartly dressed in a suit with his laptop in hand, working a deadline in his gig as the sole conservative writer at the Arkansas Democrat Gazette or for the local TV show he co-hosted.  I’d revel in political conversations with him, when he had the time of course.  He’s a state senator today; I expect he will be a U.S. Senator sometime in the not-too-distant- future.  Keith Jordan was a regular as well—a gentleman from Kentucky, he often tell us with stories from his interesting childhood while enjoying an old-blend La Aroma de Cuba.  When Ashton changed from the Flor De Copan blend to the Pepin blend, I remember angrily thinking, “how dare they change Keith’s cigar!”  He also introduced me to the joy of the Villazon El Rey del Mundo, a cigar I still have a soft-spot in my heart for.  Keith passed on in 2007 and I am sure is still missed at the Table of Knowledge.
 
Another absentee from the table is Wayman Coulter.  An older gentleman with long gray hair and keen whit, Wayman loved the good things in life.  I fondly recall discussions ranging from cigars to whiskey to science fiction to the very fate of Western civilization.  He gifted me this original release La Aurora 1495 in June of ’06 shortly before I completed my upgrade training and returning to North Carolina. 
 
I went on to fly my fourth and last deployment as a slick C-130E pilot later on that year.  Greg and the gang sent along a care package for me and my crew, complete with some El Rey del Mundos.  On one sortie, I carried a few American flags in my helmet bag to give out to friends and family, along with a suitable-for-framing certificate.  As of 2011, Greg tells me that the flag I gave to the fine folks at the Pipe & Tobacco Shop is still there, in a case beside a plaque commemorating members of the P&T regulars who are no longer with us.
 
Sadly, Wayman passed in September 2008, joining Keith on the plaque.  As I slowly savored the La Aurora today, I’m reminded of him and the entire gang at the Pipe & Tobacco Shop.  If Cigar Pass is my current cigar home, then the P&T Shop is the cigar home where I grew up.  I’m indebted to Wayman, Keith, Greg, Matt, Will, and the entire crew in Little Rock.  I miss them and the camaraderie I had with the guys there in the few short months I called the Pipe & Tobacco Shop home.
 
Nice of you to share the review and story with us. Well done.
 
Nicely done had to put my cheaters on for that one.
 
What a touching story and a great review. I loved these when they first came out. I just sort of stopped buying them. I do that far too often. I felt that they did have good aging potential due to the complexity of tobaccos.
I do not know how the current runs are but, I've been seeing them heavily discounted. Make me wonder if the blend changed, if LaAurora is still selling these as their own brand (i.e., did not sell it, as often happens). I'm going to see if I can find and read their website and what they are saying current brands are.
 
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