Magus Red Band Robusto

[Mad Dawg]

A while back, Pmagus offered to send a Magus sampler to the first 25 people who emailed him, so I decided to take him up on the offer. A week later, I received a sampler of Magus cigars, 2 with red bands and one with a blue band. I'm no expert on the line, so I asked Paul for a little information on them. Here's what he wrote:

Originally Posted by Pmagus

the Magus line is distinguished by being the ONLY Ecaudorian puro on the market- filler, binder, wrapper- the whole thing is Ecuadorian.
The other thing that makes it unique, is that we roll these with tobacco that is not cultivated on a plantation---it grows wild in the swampy areas of west central Ecuador, This gives the cigar a taste that is simply DIFFERENT than any other cigar.
The red band (regular magus) has a wrapper we bred ourselves- its earthy and rich with great leather notes-- fairly ffull bodied but cool smoking and smooth.
The Magus Blue is a little different- combining the same tobaccos, in different proportions and using an Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper that imparts a much more peppery character to the cigar.

I took the Magus Red Robusto with me to my duck camp last weekend, and sparked it up Friday afternoon. Paraphrasing my notes:

Wrapper: Nice maduro color, smooth, light sheen of oil. Pretty!

Construction: Nice weight, firm, yet with good draw. No soft spots. Nice.

Pre-light flavors: Toasty, leathery, earthy. Really surprisingly nice for "wild swamp tobacco."

Burn: Laser-straight throughout, never required touchup. Stayed lit well despite slow smoking, and held a firm, dark gray ash for a long time.

Flavors: The initial flavors from each draw were complex, almost spicy (wrapper's contribution?), and meduim in body. With each draw, that spicy complexity was quickly replaced by a uniform melange of woody and earthy notes that were lighter in body, that always seemed to compliment each other, and that never really changed much as the cigar progressed.

Bottom line: This cigar really surprised me. I frankly hadn't expected much from wild tobacco, but this cigar delivered a lot of flavor. It is certainly, as Paul promised, different, yet somehow that difference works. The only real fault I found with it was purely a personal preference thing: it remained consistent throughout, whereas I like cigars that change as the cigar progresses. That was a minor thing, though. This was the first N/C cigar that I can remember nubbing in at least two years, which frankly surprised me. A lot.

I still have a red band piramide and a blue band corona gorda from Paul's sampler left to smoke, and I'm looking forward to both.