Monday, July 28, 2014

Staying Busy... Time to Relax With a Cigar Review

Things have been relatively hectic over the past few weeks.

Lots of work.

Bad weather in the area yesterday.

Civilian planes being shot of the sky, Israelis and Palestinians lobbing bombs...

Now seems as good of a time to sit on the front porch rocking chair and enjoy a cigar!

Cigar Review: Gurkha Beauty

Gurkha Cigar
Gurkha's Beauty - a pretty good smoke for the money.
I'm definitely not a cigar aficionado... at least not yet.

I often don't taste the creamy notes a lot of folks report when they talk about cigars.

The leather, oak, and other assortment wood flavors are often lost on me.

But I'm getting better at it.

This past weekend I had a chance to sit down and catch up on my reading while checking out the Gurkha Beauty cigar. Good stick, great packaging. I'm a sucker for Gurkhas branding, I admit it.

This cigar was a pretty large stick that took me about an hour from start to finish and I tend to take more drags than the average cigar smoker. I did struggle at first to get a nice even burn line with this cigar and early on, I didn't have a ton of smoke coming out of the cigar.

About 15 minutes in, things started to really get cooking. The cigar was medium-to-strong in my opinion. Frankly, I picked up more pepper than I expected.

At about the half hour point, the Misses brought out some vanilla ice cream. That, was fantastic paired with the cigar. The cool ice cream paired with the burn brought in with each puff was absolutely delightful.

As for breaking the cigar into thirds, I must admit the flavor profile didn't change a whole lot to my untrained palate. If you're a novice, like myself - I definitely would recommend this cigar. Although, if you're REALLY new to cigars, you might want to try something more mild.

Oh, and fun fact: You know the cigar that Bill Clinton used when he... umm... well with Monica Lewinsky. Yeah, it was a Gurkha. Ha!

Any suggestions for cigars I should try out? I'm hoping to make this a Saturday ritual. I won't write about them all the time but I found it was a nice way to draw down my Saturday evening.