On a busy Saturday, Punch and Draw take an hour out to review a CYB (formerly Cuenca y Blanco) 5.25 x 50 robusto deluxe.
Punch: The wrapper smell is nice alfalfa and some sweetness. Pre-light draw gives me a strong flavor of walnut. Toasting brings out more walnut.
Draw: Well said, agreed. I’m also getting green tea on the draw. Toasting improved the tea, for me, and added some seaweed.
P: After lighting I’m getting… are you ready?… Toasted walnut! And a very faint red pepper on the finish — which could be perceived as a slight harshness.
D: That was my very first impression, the overall flavor: toasted walnut. However within just a few drags, I’m really getting toasted seaweed. Particularly on the attack and middle. There’s some walnut in the middle. For the finish, its walnut green-tea. I’m detecting no pepper yet.
P: Oh. I just got a flash of cumin. There is some oak, and your green-tea description is quite accurate. I’m very impressed with how this is starting off.
D: Me, too. I picked the wrong beverage partner: this muscato sweet is complementary, but unfortunately the sweet is sticky, leaving my mouth coated when I return to the cigar, and it’s masking some of the spicy flavor, I believe – like the red pepper or cumin, for instance.
P: The new CYB is not entirely new; this stick has been out for about a year now. It has received at least two ratings in the 90 point range, and is not a value-priced cigar. Not that the flavor would suggest that it was.
D: You suggested the CYB, and I’m delighted you did, as it is another opportunity to try an Ecuadorian Habano wrapper, and I am fully convinced of the great taste it imparts. This Especial has a nice natural color, a muted metallic with burnished edges. Mine appears to have a triple-cap, and the construction is very nice. The draw is tighter than medium, but still very comfortable. And this CYB likes to smoke from both ends after a draw. And…my ash held on for about an inch-and-a-half.
P: Wow, now I don’t know what I did, but my flavor just dropped off here as I approach the middle third. Weird. So I wonder if my wrapper isn’t burning? Yep. I’m confident that this is the problem.
D: Well, I’m observing that I’m tunneling just a little, but I’m also hot-boxing a bit earlier when I was trying to identify flavors. I’m letting it rest more now, and I rewarmed the wrapper once – just because I don’t want to miss out on any Ecuadorian goodness.
I went to see “The Butler” this week – I highly recommend it. It depicts the concept of discrimination from a different viewpoint: that of a domestic worker at the White House. It’s an historical piece, but it doesn’t focus on one event (like a single community, or a single plantation), but as a continuous historical event. It puts the smaller, well-known events in context. And while it is a view from the black perspective, it isn’t about “blackness”; rather, it’s about people who happen to be black. That’s a refreshing thing to see and realize, and a great conversation starter with anyone, regardless of culture.
P: I remember our great aunt recommending “The Butler” when we were visiting her in Colorado while there for the Rocky Mountain Cigar Festival. (You see how I snuck that RMCF reference into yet another of our reviews? Pretty good, eh?)
D: Indeed. As for the CYB, the middle has taken on a cavernous leather flavor, still sweet, but wide open in depth. The seaweed has moved toward a simple slight saltiness which helps bring up the other flavors. The finish remains toasted walnut, without the tea, and I do begin to taste a little pepperiness, too.
P: Just great! I stop to type a measly four sentences and this thing goes cold out. Sheesh. After a fresh relight here at the middle I’m getting new leather in the middle and pepper and a slight cedar on the finish. Whoops — and the wrapper has a brand new one inch split running diagonally… from half-an inch behind the burn line. Before I deal with this, I’m going to run back in and grab some more cupcake tops.
D: Are you having top-o-the-muffin cupcakes?
P: Yeah. For an upcoming baby shower, my wife is making cupcakes which she is then decorating with an owl feature in fondant. Well, the cupcakes humped up, and she can’t have that for her decorations…so I get to be “the cleaner” and dispose of these tops for her.
D: Dude, top-o-the-cupcake TO YOU!
P: Here at halfway a pepper is starting to dominate. And I’m starting to feel the strength.
Man, I wish I had my pellet gun, and I’d be plinking some pigeons from the eave of the vacant house next door. I remember when I was a boy, and you were an infant, Dad gave me an air riffle/BB-gun and cautioned me to ‚”never shoot it out front. Always shoot it in back of the house.” This was our first house, where we were on the edge of town and behind us was just cornfields. Well, I had gotten bored with stationary targets, and I saw my dog standing out front in the street. So I used a minimal number of pumps and took aim. PLINK, and the dog didn’t move. I tried again, PLINK, and still he didn’t react. Well, bored with that – or maybe I thought the wiser about shooting my dog, yeah, that’s what it was – I put the gun away and went about some other play. A little while later my neighbor came over from across the street. “Do you know anything about the BB holes in my front window?” “No sir, I own a bb-gun, but I’m not allowed to shoot it out front.” That must have satisfied him, or for some reason he decided not to press the issue, because Dad never mentioned it either.
D: That, or he caught Dad when he came home from work, and Dad reckoned you’d learned your lesson.
P: Here at the end the flavors are well blended with little distinctiveness and the pepper finish has diminished. A nice ending to a nice overall smoking experience.
D: I agree. The leather has taken on a hotter flavor, heading toward cedar, with walnut pepper-cheese, and maybe a touch of mint in the aftertaste. That’s at about an inch and a half, and that’s about as far as I’ll go.
Burn it or Spurn It?
P: Get your lighter and flame-away. This thing had a great, even fun, start, and progressed nicely with fine complexity. It didn’t take any fancy u‑turns or drift around any corners, and didn’t turn into a pepper or cedar bomb. Recommended. I would classify the overall body as medium, and the strength didn’t grow past medium, either. I’m looking forward to having the few others of this that I have after ageing on them a bit — they should be great.
D: Yes, what he said. I have little to add to what is already described as a great cigar. Get some and smoke them, and tell us if you don’t agree.