Quai D'Orsay Belicoso Royale: France Regional Release ULA NOV 13

[Guest Nekhyludov]

Dimensions: 5" X 52

Date Smoked: June 25, 2017

I'm revisiting this one since it's been about six months since I checked in on this box, and it's time to see how it's coming along. While some other sticks from this box had minor cosmetic irregularities, this one is gorgeous. Milk chocolate brown wrapper, with just a bit of velvety tooth. 

It didn't light as readily as I prefer, but once the combustion picked up it produced a nice, full smoke and a sturdy gray ash. I was drinking an iced latte made with Cuban beans, which usually lend a nice fragrant chocolate flavor. But I find that the Belicoso Royale just doesn't work with an iced drink. The cold seems to clash with the warm spiciness of the smoke, making it seem harsh by comparison. There are only a few cigars that I think work well with an iced drink. Guess I'll have to do some more experimentation this summer!

Right away, the aroma that I love is there. It smells like baking gingerbread. The usual flavors that I get from these are all baking spice - cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Those flavors were less pronounced in this one, though. In the first third, there's some salt and mineral notes present that I haven't gotten in QdO before. As the midpoint approaches, the flavors evolved into some earthiness that - again - is unusual here. That wonderful aroma persists, though. 

Toward the end, the the saltiness from the first third re-emerges and becomes very precise. The sweet spice base is almost undetectable at this point; the salt note is unexpected, but pleasant. The performance was great throughout - can't fault it.

 

I've also been thinking about how I score cigars. It seems to me that it isn't very informative to just assign a number to a cigar, with no context or basis for comparison. So I've decided that it might be more useful to report scores in terms of percentile rank. Below is a histogram of all the scores I've given every cigar in my notes. The average is 91.5, with a standard deviation of 2.6. Meaning that for my sample data (the cigars I've smoked), an "average" cigar would score 91.5 and rank in the 50th percentile - better than 50% of cigars I've smoked, and lesser than 50%. Right in the middle. I think this is a 92 point smoke, so:

=PERCENTRANK.INC(A1:A90,92) 

meaning,

Score = 52.8 Percentile

Better than average, but hopefully still getting better!

[TheMonk]

Very nice job, detailed review!