Smoked: Drew Estate Blackened S84 Shade To Black

Smoked at: Fairfield, Ohio

Drew Estate Blackened S84 Shade To Black has a Connecticut Broadleaf binder, Nicaraguan and Pennsylvania Broadleaf Maduro filler and a light tan, slightly oily Ecuador Connecticut Shade wrapper with a various size visible veins and seams. It has a narrow primary band stating “Blackened” and a footer announcing the series “S84 Shade To Black.” With so much Broadleaf Maduro tobacco inside it’s hard to imagine this stick tasting like a typical creamy mellow Connecticut Shade. Let’s put it to the test.

Spice, cedar, hazelnuts, toasty/doughy bread (like a baguette taste), earth, hay, and cream – almost like cheesecake Vegetal and steely notes, the latter I assume from the Pennsylvania Broadleaf in the filler, and cream cheese-buttery notes emerge during the second third. There are occasional hints of fresh brewed coffee as well. Pepper becomes more dominant in the spice profile by the final third.

Loose open draw that could have used more resistance, flaky white ash that surprisingly held to a reasonable length before falling off a few times, smoke production was decent, crooked burn line that required several touchups. A tiny vertical crack appeared in the middle of the wrapper. It never caused any issues with the smoke.

You can taste the Connecticut creamy smoothness from the wrapper, but the rest of the tobacco brings out a bolder, darker combination to the flavor profile. Interesting. It’s really not mild or even medium-mild bodied to my palate. I’d call this a medium-bodied, medium strength smoke.