moki
el Presidente
I'll be honest, I had no idea what the hell this cigar was before I smoked it. I'd heard that C.A.O had some decent cigars, but I'd never had any of them before, and I'd certainly never had one of these special "anniversary" cigars. The official name for the cigar is the CAO '65th Anniversary' Moda (52x6).
The CAO 65th Anniversary cigars come in a square gold-colored "tube" (which I promptly discarded), and are lighter in color than the CAO Maduro Anniversaries I've seen around. I handed off a Padrón 1964 to a friend of mine, and lit up the CAO alongside his.
It initially lit well, and although it suffered with some canoeing burn issues throughout, it always recovered to burn straight through without assistance, and it is highly possible this was because of how I stored it. I was very impressed with this cigar, minor burn issues aside.
The taste was wonderful -- it was relatively mild on the draw, but the aftertaste was really a wonderful symphony of coffee, carmel, which led up to a spicy crescendo. Unlike the Ashton VSG I had recently, however, it was not bitter at all. I half expected it to leave a bitter taste in my mouth, but it went from smooth to coffee/carmel to spiciness back to semi-sweet, with no nasty bitter phase anywhere to be found.
A test for me is how my mouth tastes a minute or so after I puff on a cigar. With this CAO, it tasted wonderful, and I couldn't wait for another draw. Incidentally, the draw on this cigar was a bit tough. It's possible I didn't punch it well enough, but it took come effort to smoke it through, but it was worth the puffing effort.
I had most of this cigar on its own, but toward the end paired it with a nice hefe weizen beer, which it mingled well with. I smoked this sucker until it wasn't possible to draw any more out of it without burning my fingers, and I would have been happy to have had a few inches more of it.
My experience with this cigar was overwhelmingly positive; the best way I can characterize it is a cross between a Padrón 1964 and an Opus X. It had some of the smoothness of the Padrón, and a bit of the bite of the Opus X. Both qualities of the respective smokes were muted and married rather well in this cigar.
It's quite likely I'm going back to my local smoke shop to pick up some more of these, before they are sold out. Because it is a "boutique" anniversary cigar, I'm not sure how long they'll be selling it, but I'll be buying. Recommended if you haven't tried it.
Random link containing the cigar:
http://www.bonitasmokeshop.com/CAO%20Cigars.htm
