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After a relatively long stint of...CRAP smoking experiences, i've decided that the majority of my humidor real estate will be filled with non-cubans. I've just had a lovely Cuban Crafters torpedo (cameroon wrapper I believe, had a blue band). I picked this out tonight to get it out the way, the band looked cheap so I thought it would smoke crap, ridiculous close mindedness I know, but we all think that.
And boy how I was wrong, what a marvellous cigar, brilliant white ash all the way down, brilliant draw and considering I cut my torpedos really high up on the cap to maximize draw, this is was great. If I could fault the cigar I occassionally had to keep the burn even as it would sometimes go un-even, but the good experience far outweighed the cons. Teach me to think like that again.
This is not the first time, Rokkit let me in on a little cigar secret, namely Georges Reserve. Now this is a cheap stick, but they are goddamn excellent. Infact my top drawer is full of these now, I have a regular friend who comes round to smoke them too as he loves them.
Not being funny, but I'd rather have a box of those Cuban Crafter things and some Georges Torps than to splash out on a box of CC's.
I've gained this attitude because my last few experiences with cigars in general have been piss poor, I'll show you via a 'recent experience rating' paragraph:
Piss Poor Experiences:
Partagas Serie D No4 (plugged shit, 2 of 2, will not buy these for a LONG time)
H-Upmann NC Corona (First cigar I've ever chucked away, plugged sack of shit)
Cohiba NC Churchill (God, destroyed wrapper, plugged to death, managed to smoke it only because I wanted a smoke that night)
Average Experiences:
Bolivar RC (Love em, I have a box! But the last one was really flat and ...musky)
Bolivar Tubo No.2 (Dull to smoke, smaller gauge cigars get the ass with me and sometimes smoke strangely)
Jose L Piedra Brevas - Number 22 from my first box of cigars ever, Not bad, infact it was very well! Nice flavors, behaved well. But wasn't amazing, Brevas have been better from my experiences
A dark Maduro Torpedo - Got this from G-man's Order. Dunno what it was, It looked nice to smoke, but a bit of a work horse smoke, had to keep checking on it . Un-explainable poor draw even though it was lit properly, it was loosely packed aswell, why draw funny for?!
GOOD Experiences:
Sol Cubano Artisan - Great LOOKING stick, smoked fantasticly throughout!
Georges Reserve Torpedo/Toro - Probably the most consistent stick I've plowed through, Good draw, nice and light, what I want from a smoke.
Cuban Crafters Torp - Super smoke!
CI Legend Series Red Label - These are also really consistent, the dark maduro wrapper and the white ash give this cigar a great look, but also give off lovely chocolate and mixed tones, a great go-to cigar when I want something a bit heavier
Perdomo Golf Edition (or something) - It had a green band and mentioned golf. This was beautiful. I smoked this on a sunny sunday morning, it was emitting blue neon and white smoke from both ends and it was being enhanced by the morning sun, looked great. Smoked a treat, a surprise for an early riser.
Ashton Cabinet Torpedo - This was another brilliant one, gleaming white solid ash, a real easy goer, no effort to smoke, some real funky flavors in there.
unnamed NC - I had a cigar the other night and it blew me away, the complexity of it, I was not expecting! I forget the name, probably because it was so damn good.
As you can see most of the good recent ones have been cheapy NC's. They've performed well and above the call of smoking duty for being cheap. When a cuban smokes bad, I get in a bad mood, one, because I look foward to a cigar and when it goes wrong, it affects me personally, and two, they're more expensive, you're essentially watching money burn. With a cheaper NC, I don't mind accepting that one might be crap, and I can discard it because it's cheaper. I know that may be subjective to people with different incomes, but I don't get annoyed when an NC is crap, I just laugh and avoid them. (Cohiba)
More bang for your buck? Or are Non Cubans's acting like foster guardians to a small child (me) who has been beaten and bruised a few times by his parents (cubans) at the moment?
If I have to buy cheap cigars just to get an easy going smoking experience which is consistent like Georges, then so be it.
What do you think?
And boy how I was wrong, what a marvellous cigar, brilliant white ash all the way down, brilliant draw and considering I cut my torpedos really high up on the cap to maximize draw, this is was great. If I could fault the cigar I occassionally had to keep the burn even as it would sometimes go un-even, but the good experience far outweighed the cons. Teach me to think like that again.
This is not the first time, Rokkit let me in on a little cigar secret, namely Georges Reserve. Now this is a cheap stick, but they are goddamn excellent. Infact my top drawer is full of these now, I have a regular friend who comes round to smoke them too as he loves them.
Not being funny, but I'd rather have a box of those Cuban Crafter things and some Georges Torps than to splash out on a box of CC's.
I've gained this attitude because my last few experiences with cigars in general have been piss poor, I'll show you via a 'recent experience rating' paragraph:
Piss Poor Experiences:
Partagas Serie D No4 (plugged shit, 2 of 2, will not buy these for a LONG time)
H-Upmann NC Corona (First cigar I've ever chucked away, plugged sack of shit)
Cohiba NC Churchill (God, destroyed wrapper, plugged to death, managed to smoke it only because I wanted a smoke that night)
Average Experiences:
Bolivar RC (Love em, I have a box! But the last one was really flat and ...musky)
Bolivar Tubo No.2 (Dull to smoke, smaller gauge cigars get the ass with me and sometimes smoke strangely)
Jose L Piedra Brevas - Number 22 from my first box of cigars ever, Not bad, infact it was very well! Nice flavors, behaved well. But wasn't amazing, Brevas have been better from my experiences
A dark Maduro Torpedo - Got this from G-man's Order. Dunno what it was, It looked nice to smoke, but a bit of a work horse smoke, had to keep checking on it . Un-explainable poor draw even though it was lit properly, it was loosely packed aswell, why draw funny for?!
GOOD Experiences:
Sol Cubano Artisan - Great LOOKING stick, smoked fantasticly throughout!
Georges Reserve Torpedo/Toro - Probably the most consistent stick I've plowed through, Good draw, nice and light, what I want from a smoke.
Cuban Crafters Torp - Super smoke!
CI Legend Series Red Label - These are also really consistent, the dark maduro wrapper and the white ash give this cigar a great look, but also give off lovely chocolate and mixed tones, a great go-to cigar when I want something a bit heavier
Perdomo Golf Edition (or something) - It had a green band and mentioned golf. This was beautiful. I smoked this on a sunny sunday morning, it was emitting blue neon and white smoke from both ends and it was being enhanced by the morning sun, looked great. Smoked a treat, a surprise for an early riser.
Ashton Cabinet Torpedo - This was another brilliant one, gleaming white solid ash, a real easy goer, no effort to smoke, some real funky flavors in there.
unnamed NC - I had a cigar the other night and it blew me away, the complexity of it, I was not expecting! I forget the name, probably because it was so damn good.
As you can see most of the good recent ones have been cheapy NC's. They've performed well and above the call of smoking duty for being cheap. When a cuban smokes bad, I get in a bad mood, one, because I look foward to a cigar and when it goes wrong, it affects me personally, and two, they're more expensive, you're essentially watching money burn. With a cheaper NC, I don't mind accepting that one might be crap, and I can discard it because it's cheaper. I know that may be subjective to people with different incomes, but I don't get annoyed when an NC is crap, I just laugh and avoid them. (Cohiba)
More bang for your buck? Or are Non Cubans's acting like foster guardians to a small child (me) who has been beaten and bruised a few times by his parents (cubans) at the moment?
If I have to buy cheap cigars just to get an easy going smoking experience which is consistent like Georges, then so be it.
What do you think?
Probably the best mild smoke I have tested in the last 2 months was an Arte Cubano, kindly provided by our man at NASA, also from Cuban Crafters; a 2 $ stick but not in taste... so pleasant.
.
Maybe from some, personally I'd love to learn more about NC, and I since I know little about cubans I have no issue admitting I know as much about NCs 
. Any word of wisdom from you fellow BOTLs across the pond is more than welcome for me.
, but their price rarely can compete with the affordable NC brands as everyday smokes. 
I have smokes billions and billions of N/Cs and CCs and find CCs to be a superior smoke. But there are many fine N/Cs that I enjoy very much, such as the A. Fuente 858 and Latino Gold - both great values (around 1,000pesos for a box). 
BJ, BJCoro
don TJ and the 
Coros
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