Caldwell Lost & Found Buck 15

Caldwell Lost & Found Buck 15 is supposedly a Dominican puro. You never know for sure with Lost & Founds. I’ve been looking for these for some time and finally secured one. Let’s fire it up and see what it’s got.

Flavor profile: earthy, leather, floral, grass/straw, mild pepper, a touch of spice – generally fairly toned down flavors, none of which overpower the others making for good complexity. This changes in the second third. There’s some bitter taste mixing with the flavors. It’s not a terrible transition, but somewhat unexpected and not as enjoyable flavor-wise as the first third.

At the beginning of the second third we run into construction issues. There was a tight draw to begin with that now is unacceptable. Out comes the cigar reamer. Now my cigar reaming skills could probably use some remedial lessons – or someone should develop a reamer with millimeter-accurate GPS and a gyroscope to hit the head dead center, but I digress. The ream caused a slight crack in the wrapper. I could chalk it up to “my bad,” but I have had miserable luck using a cigar reamer to open draws on Caldwells. And tight draws happen too often with Caldwells. So now the burn line is somewhat erratic. There’s still a decent volume of smoke output. The ash holds until around an inch but it is kind of flaky.

I like the Caldwell Buck 15, but I was a little disappointed in it. I expected more from this Lost & Found given the online hype and some very good reviews prior to smoking the Buck 15. It’s a decent stick and an enjoyable smoke. I do like the aged tobacco flavor of Caldwell Lost & Founds so we give it a 4 for flavor and a 3 (although it probably should be a question mark) for construction since I contributed to some of those issues with the reamer.

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