Smoked: CAO Nicaragua

Smoked at: Wetherington, Ohio

A waste of time Friday evening, lighting up a CAO Nicaragua Granada. It’s a CAO I had never smoked and I felt adventurous. My mistake. It features Nicaraguan filler with a Honduran binder and a brown Honduran wrapper with some visible small veins and seams. So it’s actually as much Honduran as it is Nicaraguan. But I digress.

I spend a half hour trying desperately to determine flavors beyond undefined charred wood, musty flinty earth, day old coffee, some leather notes, and bitter almonds (if they were almond bitters I might to be able to consider pairing it with a mixed drink, but again I digress). There was an occasional touch of sweetness, although I could not put into words exactly what I was tasting. Maybe dried fruit.

The retrohale has some spice – mostly pepper (which is lacking in the flavor profile), the musty earth, nuts, floral and wood. It’s actually more interesting than the flavors on the palate. The cigar stayed in the medium strength, medium to medium-full bodied range.

The construction is lacking – decent draw that did need a few toothpick pokes to open up, minimal smoke output, ash that held on usually to an inch or more, and a wavy burn line that required several touchups. The cigar went out on me once after a little over a minute resting on the port.

I have never been much of a CAO fan. With the exception of the Flathead, Amazon Basin and to a lesser extent the Brazilia and La Traviata, I have found them dull, listless cigars lacking flavors and any complexity. The Nicaragua is in the latter category. It’s not a terrible cigar, but it’s close. It certainly is not a good one. I couldn’t finish it. Well, I could have, but why bother? Sorry, CAO. As George Constanza might explain: “It’s not you…it’s me.”