Smoked: Dunbarton Red Meat Lover's Filet Mignon

Smoked at: Fairfield-Hamilton, Ohio

Dunbarton Red Meat Lover’s Filet Mignon’s filler includes Nicaraguan and Pennsylvania tobacco. Interesting. It’s cloaked in a brown marbled toothy box-pressed Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper with minimal veins. It’s a full body, full strength cigar that is supposedly meant to be smoked after a heavy red meat meal, hence, the name.

This is a very woody, earthy cigar. Call it hickory, earth, molasses or toffee maybe ginger-mild spice, sryupy sugar, coffee, chocolate – like mocha, some pepper, charred oak, faint fruit notes. The chocolate transitions into a chocolate mousse flavor with a few puffs of herbal notes and chalk during the second third.

There is a lot of mind over matter with tasting notes, in my opinion. When a cigar is called Red Meat Lover’s, it’s understandable that your brain has preconceived notions telling your palate “steak, beef.” So is the cigar savory? I suppose. It is bold and I can imagine the body, strength and flavor notes would make for a satisfying conclusion to a steak dinner. The retrohale features pepper, wood and earth.

This is a weighty, solid cigar with very little resistance to a squeeze. The draw was perfect. The ash was light and flaky. It fell off 3 times. The burn line was uneven, especially by the final third. Touchups helped temporarily each time.

I didn’t pair it with steak, but I did pair this with 3 single malts at our weekly whiskey and cigar club get together – Glenglassaugh, Hearach from the Isle of Harris and Lagavulin 12 (as expected, excellent scotch). It IS a good scotch pairing cigar. I would also imagine it pairing well with Hennessy or d-Usse cognac.