Super 8 Cigar Sampler Review Courtesy of the
3 Regular Guys at Thompson Cigar.
There’s really no need to start out the review on the Thompson Vintage Especiale with the same corporate biographical snippet or back story like each of the other cigars got because we’re all pretty well aware that Thompson Cigar began in Key West in 1915, later to move up here when Tampa was solidly established as the epicenter of the cigar world. Our company heritage is something we’re all very proud of here.
This company has been selling cigars for longer than any of us here have been smoking cigars or even been alive. Sometimes we’ll relic hunt on eBay and find things like our old postcards that we would use to sell cigars. Suffice it to say we’ve been in this game for a very long time. For ages and ages we only sold cigars with our band on them. Now we sell premium and super premium national brands alongside our Thompson private label stogies.
We 3 Regular Guys mostly smoke national brands. Probably because we can afford to buy Thompson cigars so whenever the Blogmaster appears as though he might throw us a bone out of the humidor we tend to mention the most expensive stick we think he might actually hook us up with.
In the Super 8 sampler appear two sticks of the Thompson Vintage Especiale. Now if you have been reading through the previous reviews from this sampler you know the Vintage Especiale has its work cut out for it as it is surrounded by some stiff competition. So, how did it fare up against Padron and Torano and Cusano? Well, even the 3 Regular Guys ended up quite pleasantly surprised –which is always a good thing when you’re the one smoking it.
We smoked the Churchill wrapped in Connecticut sun grown leaf. The one thing that each of us immediately commented on was that we thought the pig tail was a pretty cool feature. The one cigar that always comes to mind for Scott in regard to pig tail caps is the CAO Criollo so the Vintage Especiale already had at least some cosmetic similarity to the rest of this bunch.
While this box-pressed stick is not a show stopper in appearance –aside from the cap of course- it is slightly veiny and has a moderately alluring dull cocoa colored wrapper. Construction is consistent and solid. Our Xikars cleanly lopped off the cap and we were ready to try this cigar out. Scott and Dave found this cigar to have an even draw that offered plenty of smoke. The taste to them was a bit woody and mellow with a hint of sweet tanginess. Colm picked up on about the same experience but he opted for toasty instead. The burn was even and the ash was a light grayish-white in contrast to the wrapper.
Overall the taste was medium bodied with a bit of a lingering finish. There were only slight hints of edginess to the flavors of this cigar. We felt that the tastes hung right around toasty and woody but did drift in and out of being a little bit citrusy. Laying them up in your humidor for a few weeks or months will only serve to smooth this out and round out the tastes even more.
The Vintage Especiale might not fully stand out in a crowd but if you grabbed one from your humidor for yourself or passed one out to a buddy you’d both probably have the same thought. That thought would be something along the line of “I didn’t really know to ask for this, but now that I’m smoking it, this cigar is really quite alright. Now where was I?...” Truth be told, this is a really impressive cigar since it actually can hang with the rest of ‘em in the Super 8.
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Labels: 3 Regular Guys, Cigar Reviews, Super 8 Sampler, Thompson Vintage Especiale
