El Rey Choix du Roi SGA/AGO/16: DEFJ review weekend comp

[BuzzArd]

In rummaging through my collection @SenorPerfecto Asked what I hadn’t tried yet and this box came to mind. My uncle picked it up while in Belgium and I’d just tucked it away....  Friday night seemed a good opportunity to give one a try. 

 

I can’t say I’ve heard great things about them, so I know there isn’t 8999 boxes out there still, but they smelled great at cold and felt well constructed. I’d taken this out of the box and had it sitting on the counter for about three hours before I finally made it outside to fire it up, so I removed the bands and ran the stick under the tap as the wrapper felt rather brittle at this point.  I let it soak up what it could in 10min and wiped off any excess, then fired it up.  My son was building a fire in the chimnea of old Christmas tree branches and I’d pulled a bottle of Copper City Bourbon for my tipple.  Seemed it would be a good night.  

The cigar started with a subtle baked pastry and baking spice hint mixed with cream.   Smoke production was very good straight away. More like an Upmann/Hoyo EE love child right off.  

The initial burn wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t bad.  Normally I’d touch up that bit of binder/wrapper that was lagging, but I decided to wait.   It came around on its own and burned perfectly for the rest of the stick.  The flavors intensified slightly and about that time the Christmas tree was gone and my son threw some mesquite on the fire and that’s about all she wrote for my flavor sensitivity that night.  The cloying scent of mesquite was just too overpowering to really appreciate the cigar after it got going, and that’s about all the wood we have left this time of year.  The unusual wind out of the south blew a steady supply of (normally welcomed) mesquite fragrance through the porch and I couldn’t smell or taste anything else.   Sadly it was just too much to even enjoy the bourbon properly.  

I will say that it tasted nothing like what I’m used to in the El Rey demi tasse that I enjoy throughout the week.  That snappy, sweet fruit flavor was not present here.  While it may not be an amazing regional I think the construction and burn and initial impressions were promising.  I’ll give one another try without the smokey influence next time.  

[TheMonk]

Nice review, nice pics!