A Productive Friday afternoon.

This Friday, Geoff and I got a bit burnt out at the end of the day. Sometimes you push through. Sometimes you just give up and smoke a cigar. We lit up a Tabak Especial Red Eye. This 4.5 inch maduro has an open foot and two bands lovingly wrapped around it's 54 ring gauge. (Remember to remove the lower band before smoking . . . People forget and it tastes nasty when it burns)

This is from Drew Estates and is technically a coffee infusion, so the tip is a bit on the sweet side, but you really can't taste any coffee. As smokes go this is pretty much middle of the road. It's well crafted and burns well. No harsh notes but you don't get much beyond campfire and leather until the second half, when there is a touch of pepper and, well, straight tobacco. Almost a pipe tobacco.

We paired it with 2 fingers of Sauza Tequila. It's an inexpensive brand ($16 for a fifth) and I would normally have never gone after it, but the liquor Cabinet needs restocking.

It is--if anything--sweet, but really there's almost no flavor at all. A least it's clean ...

The pairing, however, was not half bad. The sweetness of the cigar tip complements the Tequila and when the cigar becomes a bit more full bodied, it starts to pull out some of the pepper that one expects in a Tequila. Not half bad really.

One aspect of the cigar that does stand out is its construction. One sign of a well made smoke is how well the ash holds together. The cigar pictured below went for another 5 minutes before the ash finally broke.


I'd give this cigar a 4.25. It's not something I'm going to write home about, but I'd never be embarrassed to hand one out either. I would be slightly apprehensive about giving it to a cigar newbie. It is a medium bodied cigar, and not one of the light weight sticks people normally start with, but with the right pallet it might be a huge hit.