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So many of you have heard me bang on about Rocky Patel cigars when I am talking about non-Cubans. You will know that I do not dismiss NC cigars out of hand but that they never reach the heights of a great Cuban cigar. NC's range from hateful to good. CC's ranger from poor to get down and thank the lord for taste buds. Well I had an experience recently that I talked to a few people about and now think I should share with you as it has been playing on my mind and I want MORE!!!
A good and kind American I have traded some bits and pieces with was kind enough to put an extra stick in his first shipment. I had never heard of the cigar and thought little more than "that is very kind, thanks very much". This unheard of cigar was popped into one of humidors to recover from its arduous travels and little more about it was thought. My friend Jimmeh also received one of these cigars and we exchanged a few words regarding it but I do not recall it standing out as something I should take note of other than that it was supposedly somewhat rare. It was left to quietly slumber for a good few more weeks.
About three to four weeks ago I happened to think I might fancy a smoke with a coffee after work as it was one of the first nice days we had experienced this year. Without thinking overly I looked in my humidor of middle ranking NC's and picked this cigar up, placed it in a tube and stowed it in the car until the end of the working day. Come clocking off time I deposited myself outside Starbucks in East Grinstead (not the most glamorous of places, this one is part of a supermarket and the outside is essentially the front of the store with tables and chairs looking onto the car-park) with a coffee based beverage and my required smoking paraphernalia.
The cigar in question was the Tatuaje T110. I cut and lit the cigar without the undue care or attention that I would normally bestow upon a cigar of note and started to smoke without much of a care. Holy cow, what a stonkingly great cigar! Full on flavours from the start, rich mouth coating body, a joy from the start to the end. It was not a long cigar but was of a good gauge. I sat there rather taken aback and looked at the cigar. "Was it possible that an NC can be this good?" I asked myself. This put every other NC I have ever smoked into the shade. The My Father was another NC I had smoked around that time and enjoyed but this was just on another planet. It beat a lot of CC's I have smoked. While it was by no mean the greatest cigar I have ever smoked it was certainly well into the top five percent. I immediately picked up my mobile, something I would normally strenuously avoid whilst smoking, and called Jimmeh. I enquired if he had smoked his yet, he replied in the negative and enquired as to why I was asking. I told him that this cigar was earth shatteringly good for an NC and bloody good when compared with CC's. He said he would smoke his later that evening or the next day and get back to me.
I relished the rest of the cigar in quiet contemplation making a mental note to try and obtain more of them, lots more of them. I did not rush the smoke, I rarely do. I smoked it slow and lovingly, enjoying how it changed in the way a good cigar should. This was one of those occasions where I smoked it down until I was repeatedly burning my fingers, I was sad to lay what little was left in the ashtray and walk away.
I forget the order in which the following events happen but Jimmeh smoked his single stick and was equally shocked at how good it was and we also had a conversation about the cigar. It turns out that the T110 is one of those fashionable one hundred percent ligero tobacco blends. The 110 is the length of the cigar in millimetres. The T is the initial from the original longer version of this cigar that was reportedly made by Pete Johnson, the head of Tatuaje cigars, as a joke and made people ill due to its strength, the T meaning Thermonuclear. Supposedly the T110 is slightly toned down from the original but silly strong is not my abiding memory of this cigar, more rich full flavours, etc. The worst news was that this cigar was indeed rare. Pete Johnson made two hundred boxes for one shop in Hawaii, twenty five cigars per box, all now sold. This means that I will almost certainly never get to smoke this cigar again, let alone have some resting in my humidor. I wondered if I wasted the cigar smoking it without fanfare in such an environment but I suspect coming to it unsuspecting of its greatness actually resulted in me enjoying it more. I now want to try the rest of the Tatuaje range as if the are even just seventy five percent as good as the T110 then I will thoroughly enjoy them. I have two tubo Tatuaje, a red and a black, but that is all, I cannot bring myself to remove them from my collection and smoke them!
It was interesting to see that not only can NC's be pleasant smokes, like Rocky Patel, but can be bloody great smokes like the T110. Why can they not do this more consistently I still wonder.
Does anybody have any more input and experience on this brand?
I will copy in some links to review of the T110 which make for semi-interesting reading.
If you can source the T110, GET IN CONTACT WITH ME NOW, but I know that is a vanishingly small chance.
T.
A good and kind American I have traded some bits and pieces with was kind enough to put an extra stick in his first shipment. I had never heard of the cigar and thought little more than "that is very kind, thanks very much". This unheard of cigar was popped into one of humidors to recover from its arduous travels and little more about it was thought. My friend Jimmeh also received one of these cigars and we exchanged a few words regarding it but I do not recall it standing out as something I should take note of other than that it was supposedly somewhat rare. It was left to quietly slumber for a good few more weeks.
About three to four weeks ago I happened to think I might fancy a smoke with a coffee after work as it was one of the first nice days we had experienced this year. Without thinking overly I looked in my humidor of middle ranking NC's and picked this cigar up, placed it in a tube and stowed it in the car until the end of the working day. Come clocking off time I deposited myself outside Starbucks in East Grinstead (not the most glamorous of places, this one is part of a supermarket and the outside is essentially the front of the store with tables and chairs looking onto the car-park) with a coffee based beverage and my required smoking paraphernalia.
The cigar in question was the Tatuaje T110. I cut and lit the cigar without the undue care or attention that I would normally bestow upon a cigar of note and started to smoke without much of a care. Holy cow, what a stonkingly great cigar! Full on flavours from the start, rich mouth coating body, a joy from the start to the end. It was not a long cigar but was of a good gauge. I sat there rather taken aback and looked at the cigar. "Was it possible that an NC can be this good?" I asked myself. This put every other NC I have ever smoked into the shade. The My Father was another NC I had smoked around that time and enjoyed but this was just on another planet. It beat a lot of CC's I have smoked. While it was by no mean the greatest cigar I have ever smoked it was certainly well into the top five percent. I immediately picked up my mobile, something I would normally strenuously avoid whilst smoking, and called Jimmeh. I enquired if he had smoked his yet, he replied in the negative and enquired as to why I was asking. I told him that this cigar was earth shatteringly good for an NC and bloody good when compared with CC's. He said he would smoke his later that evening or the next day and get back to me.
I relished the rest of the cigar in quiet contemplation making a mental note to try and obtain more of them, lots more of them. I did not rush the smoke, I rarely do. I smoked it slow and lovingly, enjoying how it changed in the way a good cigar should. This was one of those occasions where I smoked it down until I was repeatedly burning my fingers, I was sad to lay what little was left in the ashtray and walk away.
I forget the order in which the following events happen but Jimmeh smoked his single stick and was equally shocked at how good it was and we also had a conversation about the cigar. It turns out that the T110 is one of those fashionable one hundred percent ligero tobacco blends. The 110 is the length of the cigar in millimetres. The T is the initial from the original longer version of this cigar that was reportedly made by Pete Johnson, the head of Tatuaje cigars, as a joke and made people ill due to its strength, the T meaning Thermonuclear. Supposedly the T110 is slightly toned down from the original but silly strong is not my abiding memory of this cigar, more rich full flavours, etc. The worst news was that this cigar was indeed rare. Pete Johnson made two hundred boxes for one shop in Hawaii, twenty five cigars per box, all now sold. This means that I will almost certainly never get to smoke this cigar again, let alone have some resting in my humidor. I wondered if I wasted the cigar smoking it without fanfare in such an environment but I suspect coming to it unsuspecting of its greatness actually resulted in me enjoying it more. I now want to try the rest of the Tatuaje range as if the are even just seventy five percent as good as the T110 then I will thoroughly enjoy them. I have two tubo Tatuaje, a red and a black, but that is all, I cannot bring myself to remove them from my collection and smoke them!
It was interesting to see that not only can NC's be pleasant smokes, like Rocky Patel, but can be bloody great smokes like the T110. Why can they not do this more consistently I still wonder.
Does anybody have any more input and experience on this brand?
I will copy in some links to review of the T110 which make for semi-interesting reading.
If you can source the T110, GET IN CONTACT WITH ME NOW, but I know that is a vanishingly small chance.
T.
Origin : Miami, FL
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