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Old 08-03-2008, 03:05 PM   #1
Ringo
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Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Downingtown, Pennsylvania
Posts: 1,895
Macanudo 1968 DC

Like many of you, I recently obtained three of the new Macanudo 1968 line for $9.95. My order arrived in about four days after I placed it, one day after a CI order that I placed at the same time but certainly no complaints about that. It came in a box that was much larger than required, along with several of those big air cushions that you see nowadays. Inside the box was a baggie with three cigars in cello; a double corona, a churchill, and a robusto; along with a small information sheet that tells us that the cigars are constructed with a wrapper from Honduras, filler from Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, and a Habano Connecticut binder. From reading elsewhere I gathered that these are intended to be the most full flavored Macanudos yet.

After they rested for a few days I decided to give one a try and selected the double corona. I have to say first off that these introductory cigars are not that impressive to look at. Considering the recent trend of rich cigars with beautiful, oily wrappers I figured that a new, richer Macanudo (a very powerful brand name among domestic cigars) would be a beautiful sight to see. But there is no doubt in my mind that these cigars have been around. They were not just cello'd, boxed, and shipped out when the aging process was finished. It seems to me that after being cello'd, but before being boxed, the cigars were shuffled around for a couple of years. The reason for this conclusion comes first from their appearance in the cello. The cello is all wrinkled and no longer shiny; like how it becomes on cigars that you own that you have had for a long time, that have been shuffled about in and between humidors, that have been taken out for the day or maybe a whole vacation but never smoked and put back in the humidor. You know the look, and it's not generally seen on new cigars. Then, after I removed the cigar from the cello, I noticed that the band was quite loose and came off easily. Imo these cigars sat around for -at least- two years after being banded. That's the only way that you end up with such looseness of the band, after the cigars age some more and lose a bit of the moisture and shrink a little. Of course there is nothing wrong with allowing your cigars to age! We wish that all cigars being sold were allowed to age long enough! I am not pointing this out as a fault - just to say that this extra aging did not appear to be intentional. If you are a manufacturer who is intentionally aging your cigars, you don't let the cello go all dull and wrinkly. So I am not sure what the original intentions for these cigars was. I get the feeling that Macanudo may have purchased some cigars that had been intended for something else and created the 1968 line for them. This does happen in the cigar world. Is it a good thing or a bad thing in this case? Did Macanudo risk their name on a bad cigar? You'll have to keep reading to find out!

As far as my double corona goes, I must stay on the subject of appearance for just a little bit longer. For my double corona was bent. I would have thought that I would have seen this before in my twenty years of smoking cigars, but as soon as I saw it I realized that I had not. What do I mean by "bent?" Well, it was bent! About halfway down the cigar lengthwise was a soft, apparently underfilled spot; over time the cigar started to lean towards it with the result that if the head end of the cigar was laid flat on a table, the foot was a good 1/8" off of it! You could clearly see daylight, probably place a few business cards in the space between the table and the foot of the cigar. Were I in mixed company there would have undoubtedly been some dick/turd jokes, but it was just me and my dogs out there on the patio and my dogs have considerably more discretion than any people that I know. But I must say that if anyone were there then there would have been nothing that I could have said in the cigar's defense. It DID look that way. And it is another reason why I am so sure that these cigars had some sort of a chequered past. You don't end up with bent cigars if they were rolled, aged, cello'd, boxed, and shipped. My double corona sat somewhere long enough, in a non-standard way for cigars, that it developed a lean towards the soft spot. Also, in addition to the bend, the wrapper of the cigar took on the wrinkled character of the old cello. That doesn't normally happen either. I can say nothing about the cigar's appearance other than that it was very poor for a supposed premium.

OK on to the smoke itself. I couldn't be blamed for not having the highest expectations for the next hour of my life at this point, could I? But I have learned not to judge a cigar by anything but how it smokes. So I had a mild apprehension at most. I could always put it out, right? The cigar lit easily and the burn stayed steady. The initial flavor was ok, nothing much to say there but that is true of almost any cigar. What can I say next? I smoked, I read, I smoked, I had some Hawaiian Punch, I smoked, I petted the dogs, I stared out blankly at nothing...double coronas are long! By the time the cigar neared the halfway point the flavor was getting to be quite pleasant. I worried that the burn would go bad when it got to the soft spot where the bend occurred, but it went right by it like that whole Y2K scare did, when everybody got all worked up about the end of the world or at least their computer no longer working but the New Year's went by without a hitch. Actually I forgot to even look for it, like when your car's odometer is about to turn over and you get all excited to watch it only to look down to see that it's now at 000001. But it burned straight and that is the important thing. Maybe it wasn't originally a soft spot; it may have been caused by whatever the obviously poor storage conditions of the cigar were. But I had no problems with the construction and burn of the cigar - it lit easily and burned straight all the way to the nub.

All the way to the nub. You might think that's a clue to my final judgement of the cigar, but I smoke almost every cigar to the nub. The last 1/3 of the smoke is my favorite part. So what was my final judgement of this cigar, the one based on the smoke, not the appearance (which I would expect to be remedied in the final retail product anyway)? Spectacular. Stupendous. Wonderful flavor. Absolutely delicious, rich, smoky, earthy, and VERY reminiscent of a good Cuban cigar. Please note that I do not use Cuban cigars as benchmarks - I am just making a comparison and noting that this cigar tastes like one. But I did say a good one, and we know how good Cuban cigars can be. The domestics are catching up. I really believe that Cuban cigars have traditionally been better because they have been making them for hundreds of years whereas the domestics are mostly of the past fifty years or less. Certainly soil and climate has plenty to do with it, but we're talking Cuba vs. the DR or Honduras etc., not Cuba vs. Iceland or the South Pole. I believe that the domestics are hitting their stride now in a big way. They get better every year. It takes a while to catch up with a country that had hundreds of years of experience on everyone else. This Macanudo 1968 had that perfumy, citrusy effect on the back of the roof of the mouth that until a couple of years ago I only noticed with Cuban cigars. I started noticing it recently in a few smaller domestic brands, most notably Tatuaje Cabinet and Padilla 8&11, but this Macanudo of all things has had the most so far, to the point where I would have no problem believing that this was a Cuban cigar in a blind test.

So it was a mixed bag as far as my introductory 3 pack goes - an unflattering appearance but a spectacularly good smoke. I have two more of these to smoke before I make up my mind about them, but based so far on my experience with the double corona there is no doubt that I would purchase these again. In fact I am debating with myself as to whether I should have another one of them tonight as well. I am not going to give this cigar a numerical rating because that takes appearance into account and it was not sold as retail at a tobacconist, as the cigars that it would be compared to would be. You would think that they would want these introductory cigars to look as good as possible, but for whatever reason, they do not. However, based on my smoking experience and ignoring the appearance, my Macanudo 1968 double corona would be solidly into the 90's, probably a 93 or maybe even higher. Absolutely and completely recommended so far.
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