Smoked: The Black Label Trading Company Porcelain

Smoked at: Sharonville, Ohio

The Black Label Trading Company Porcelain features a light brown, slightly coarse, yet shiny Ecuadoran Connecticut pigtail wrapper with relatively few veins. I V-cut it anyway. Pigtails always make me nervous. It probably began with an experience sitting behind a girl with pigtails in grade school, but I digress. The rest of the tobacco is from Nicaragua and neighboring Pennsylvania. I think the Pirates Double-A farm team is in Esteli and that would REALLY make it a farm team. Right?

There’s sweetness from the first puff – sweet spice (cinnamon?), cashews/hazelnuts/peanuts (OK mixed nuts – never tasted a filbert in a cigar – still waiting for that note), hay, leather, pepper, bready/doughy, toasty, buttery. As we progress into the second third, the flavors are drifting, changing – nice complexity. There were a few puffs of additional sweetness in the caramel or nougat range. It starts out very mild and builds slowly, but never gets beyond medium-mild in body and strength.

Construction is top notch. Open draw, the ash held on super tight, hard to ash the cigar with a tap or roll off, although eventually the ash just fell off. Go figure. This stick produced volumes of smoke. I like to challenge the Clean Air Act with my cigars’ smoke production. I expect a knock on the door from the EPA soon.

A mellow, mild to medium-mild Connecticut – smooth as silk. This is an excellent morning coffee cigar. If you’re so inclined, pair a cup with the Black Label Trading Company Porcelain. This is the second BLTC I’ve smoked. Also really like the Royalty. So far, their cigars have impressed me.