Perdomo Grand Cru Connecticut
While at IPCPR, I visited one of my favorite cigar companies, Tabacalera Perdomo. The they were not introducing any new lines, but they were presenting two additional cigars: Perdomo Patriarch Connecticut and the Perdomo Grand Cru Connecticut. Today, I’m sampling the Grand Cru cigar. Perdomo states that this cigar is a Nicaraguan puro using all Cuban seed Semilla Habano tobacco to make up the wrapper, binder and fillers. The tobacco was hand selected from the best yield of the best field from Perdomo’s farm in 2004. This cigar also comes in a corojo and a maduro wrapper. I’ve been on a Connecticut click lately (Oliva, Nub, Camacho) so I’m eager to try this.
Let’s see how it smokes.
Appearance
The cigar has a very smooth, light brown wrapper with no large veins. The cap is really large and is about 1/2 of an inch big. I think it’s the biggest cap I’ve ever seen on a cigar. The wrapper does have some smaller green dots on the wrapper and some smudges, but that’s all. It has a firm feel. No soft spots at all.
Pre-light Aroma
The wrapper has that typical barnyard, hay smell to it. The foot has a much sweeter aroma almost like milk chocolate, but just a hint. The draw is tight but I get a sweet nutty taste on the draw.
First Third
The first third is starting of pretty mild, but this is a Connecticut. This cigar has a nice nutty profile with a hint of creaminess. That’s pretty much it so far. The cigar’s draw is tight so it doesn’t produce a lot of smoke.
Second Third
Honestly, not much has changed, but there is a flavor of a nice bourbon is intermixed with the cigar now. It’s faint, but it’s there. It has a very short aftertaste. It doesn’t linger for more than maybe 5 seconds. Other than that, the cigar is pretty linear.
Last Third
This cigar has gotten really spicy. The pepper you usually get with Nicaraguan tobacco is really strong now, almost too much. The creaminess has remained throughout the cigar, which is nice because I love a cigar with a creamy flavor profile. The hint of nuts is still there, but the spice has come on STRONG in the final third. I didn’t even detect it in the first two thirds.
Conclusion
This cigar was a little underwhelming. Maybe I was expecting more since this is supposed to be their Grand Cru. I LOVE the Habano maduro and the Lot 23 natural along with the Cabinet line. Speaking of that, it reminded me of something. The only Cabinet series cigar that I don’t enjoy is the white label natural series. This reminds me a LOT of that cigar. If you like the White label, I think you’ll love this cigar. It’s not for me, but it might be for you. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
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Comments
Nice review – kind of disappointed as I was having high hopes for this one :( It does not sound like it would be a good morning cigar with that last third being killer!
I will try a couple to see for myself but I am not looking forward to the last third.
Mike
Maybe they need more “rest” time in the humi?
Mike,
I think your right. The cigar seemed…..rough, for a lack of a better word. I think aging it a little would add to it tremendously.
The stick I had was seriously spicy in the first third…exactly what I had come to expect from the grand cru corojos. Now, I understand that its a connecticut, so I expected it to cream out a bit after the first couple of inches but the cigar got really kind of bland, which I totally would have been fine with being that this was billed as a more mild cigar, but I also started to get real bitter notes all the way through. For me, I’ll take the good with the bad, if its a strong cigar with a lot of flavor but some bitterness (as ive come to expect of the LFD double ligero in the larger sizes, or the Camacho trip maduros) i’m okay with that. If its a stick that’s billed as being really smooth and balanced but not so much on the flavor, sometimes that’s okay too (the Alec Bradley havana sun grown, for instance, or the Hoyo Excalibur natural #1). But this stick really didn’t meet the standard that I had come to expect from the Grand cru line.
For shame, Nick Perdomo, for shame.
…Funny enough, one of the things that I found to be really good on this cigar was the draw. I’ve never had a problem with the draw on any of the grand crus, from the churchill to the torpedos in any of the wrappers, when I mentioned this to the regional Perdomo rep at the last peromo event I attended, he said that this was because a few years agao Perdomo almost went under due to draw/construction issues (the cuban parejo is a great example of that) and so now all their cigars get draw tested before they leave the factory. Very strange that you had draw issues on this stick.
Great review. Awesome pic of cigar/lighter/cutter. Gotta love Palio cutters!