Smoked: La Aroma de Cuba Mi Amor

Smoked at: West Chester, Ohio

It has been a while since I lit up a La Aroma de Cuba Mi Amor – a box-pressed Nicaraguan with a medium brown Mexican San Andres wrapper with tight seams and very few veins.

Draw is a tad tight. It did open up a bit with a toothpick poke, but never quite hit the sweet spot for me. The tight draw did interfere with my enjoyment of the smoke. I hadn’t had this problem previously with the Mi Amor. The ash held on well past the one-inch mark and tapped off easily. The smoke output was more than ample. The burn line was fairly even. Besides the issues with the draw, the construction was pretty good.

Cedar, leather, spice, pepper, walnuts & cashews, hints of caramel and some creaminess and chocolate. Background flavors include mild coffee, a doughy bread and generic fruit sweetness. The flavors dart back and forth around the nuts and pepper making for interesting transitions. It’s balanced although not terribly complex. It’s one of those cigars with plenty of flavor notes that never quite blossom into the overall experience you expected. The retrohale is mild – peppery but mild pepper.

La Aroma de Cuba Mi Amor is a medium-full bodied, medium strength cigar that was a pleasant experience, but it never really took off running as anticipated. I sound like an interview with a sad track and field coach whose athletes were left out of the medal chase at the Olympics.