Been a while since I’ve posted, so I thought I’d kick us off with a flavorful stick by Drew Estate. Drew knows his shit, and though I’ve had an Isla del Sol before, this one just seemed to explode with flavor.

Vitola:

We’ve got here a beautiful 7×50 Churchill wrapped in Sumatran leaf. These stogies sport a very nice chocolate brown color, and they look good enough to eat. Inside you’ll  find Nicaraguan leaves, and in my experience, coffee and chocolate are common occurrences in tobacco from Nicaragua. Wrapper is clean, with only a few minor imperfections (noticeably a small vein near the foot). Drew Estate are excellent rollers, but this isn’t an elite stick by any means, which is great for me. Smoking a great cigar is awesome. Smoking a great, affordable cigar is more awesome.

Smoke:

You can never tell what the smoke will be like for a given cigar. The Isla is a Churchill, so not a small smoke by any means, but it gave off relatively little smoke. This can be a deal breaker for some people, but I don’t mind as long as the flavor is there. The smell coming off this thing was very nice. Cream and chocolate throughout the whole burn, with notes of coffee and hazelnut near burn’s midpoint. Though the cigar didn’t smoke much, I felt the bouquet hung around for a long time, even though I was outdoors. I thoroughly enjoyed this, but if you’re limited in where you can smoke or you have to worry about bothering other people (Cigar smoke bothersome? Never!) you may want to put some thought into where you smoke this.

Flavor:

The Isla isn’t a “flavored” cigar, but the flavor notes I picked up were so strong, I could’ve been fooled. As with the bouquet, chocolate and coffee featured predominantly, with notes of cream. I didn’t taste any hazelnut, despite it being in the bouquet, which was a bummer. The flavors stayed pretty much constant throughout the whole stick, with the only new addition being mocha in the final third. Though not very complex, this stick is delightful. Smoke this stogie right after a meal for a dessert-like finish and you won’t be disappointed.

Smoke Time: 57 minutes (Could have been prolonged, but it was delicious and I was eager!)