Quote Originally Posted by cbr310 View Post
Is it just me or the darker the stronger the cigar? I have a few real dark I'm scared to even try.
When I was pretty new to cigars a great guy bombed me with a selection to try out. Included among them was an unbanded cigar that I couldn't identify. I asked him what it was, and his response was along the lines of, "You mean the dark, evil-looking torpedo? That's a Taboo Original Exotic Blend Maduro." And yes, it WAS a dark, evil-looking torpedo. Because of that (and the name didn't help to reassure me, either!), it sat in humidor for a long time while I smoked everything around it. I was actually afraid of smoking the darned thing. Finally I mustered my courage and gave it a try. Here's the text of my review posted on Puff in 2010:

With its dark, unbanded wrapper, slightly irregular shape, and a name with the words "Taboo" and "exotic," this looked like kind of an outlaw cigar.

Prelight draw was firm but not hard, and delivered a nice, rich, aged tobacco flavor with a hint of cocoa. It lit easily and burned pretty nicely. Went out once about halfway through, maybe as much my fault as the cigars, but relit easily. It really wanted to go out again with about 1.5 inches remaining, and I fought it a little bit, got another half inch burned, and then finally let it die.

Bandito cigar it may have looked, but it smoked really civilized. Earthy flavor up first, joined about an inch in with leather. Throughout the entire smoke there was just a hint of mint. The minty note held the same balance throughout, even as the main body of flavor shifted from pure earthy toward leather and a little wood. Somewhere after the first inch, a really fun peppery aftertaste popped up. Never tasted pepper in the draw, only felt its tingle and tasted its spice in the moments after exhaling.

Exhaling - ahhhh - lots of aromatic smoke. It smelled like rich guys hanging out in leather chairs around hand-carved wooden tables with glasses of favorite beverages close at hand.

Interestingly, although this cigar certainly placed well into the medium flavor range, it didn't drown out any of the white wines - not even a gentle, innocently fruity Riesling. It would have been better with a red, maybe, but there were times with the whites that I found a delicious, slightly smoky tropical fruit essence bursting on my palate. Exotic, indeed!

After a red-orange-pink-purple sunset that spread clear across to the East end of the cloudy sky, Jupiter shown incredibly brightly in the West, finding almost the only gap in the clouds. Further South and East, the moon lit up the growing cloud cover, and distant "heat lightning" flickered silently and sporadically across the sky.

As it grew later, the experience took on an almost elemental quality - a fiery ring swelling as I drew a breath of earth-flavored smoke. A storm-promising breeze carrying my exhaled wisps of gray and white into the darkness over the water. Almost two hours after lighting up, I let the Taboo go to sleep, and Pam and I headed inside.

Not long after, it began raining hard - drumming on the windows, tapping on the ground, splashing through the tree branches. A nice summer shower to cap off the experience. All in all, a very pleasant cigar to while away a couple of hours with on a summer's evening.