The Joy of a Cheap Cigar

A while back, a guy at work gave me a cigar called "Las Cabrillas De Soto " - a long, attractive-looking light-shade cigar - and I put it away in my humidor and let it sleep because 1) I don't like mild cigars and 2) I'm wary of cheapies.

The price label was still on the plastic wrapper: $3.85. Here where I live, a State with one of the most egregious cigar taxes in the land, a $3.85 cigar is mighty cheap - equivalent probably to a 2-dollar cigar in luckier environs.

Allow me to look this up online and see what a box of these might cost. Music from Jeopardy TV show.... waiting.... waiting.... Bingo, I found these at Famous - you can get a box of 25 for 45 dollars. So yes, folks, this is a cheap cigar.

But guess what? If you save a cheap cigar for the right time and place, sometimes (to paraphrase Mick and Keith) you might just find... you get what you need.

I took this pale Honduran along to the vacation hideaway - just myself, no wife and kids - and gosh darn on a cool Sunday morning, this long cheapie just called out to me. It said "winter is coming; soon you won't have time to smoke a long, silky feller like me."

So I lit it up, hoping to quiet the disembodied voice inside my head. I was hoping to find that this would be the undiscovered Shangri La of cigars, the uncut gem, the gold nugget at the bottom of the muddy sieve, yes, as any avid cigar smoker knows, I was hoping this cheapie would be THE WORLD'S CREAMIEST, BEST TASTING CHEAP CIGAR that nobody else knew about.

Of course, I was wrong. But it was better than I expected. Yes, it had the low-key, thin, papery taste of a Connecticut wrapper, but more creaminess beneath it than a Macanudo, Excaliber, or Monte Christo white. A lengthier finish than you'd expect from a light cigar; and after the halfway point a peculiar hint of onion and mint. I was pleasantly surprised.

At the last third, it got eggy and fuller-bodied, but tasted of charcoal instead of anything satisfying. I let it go out without smoking it down to the nub.

All in all, I got a good 4.5 inches out of this 7 inch cigar. Which begs the question, yet again: What's the deal with Churchills? If you pay for 7 inches of cigar, but only decently smoke 4.5 inches - isn't that about the same as smoking an excellent 5 inch robusto? What's up with all that wasted tobacco?

Such tangential speculation aside, the Las Cabrillas De Soto was a more than adequate cigar for early in the day, and for the particular mood I was in. I didn't want to be knocked over, I didn't want to have shrimp and pasta for breakfast. Just a light frolic that would leave me slightly titillated and ready for the day's adventures.

Final verdict: Worth having again. Yes, you heard me say it: A mild cigar worth having again. Perhaps even more so than the 5 Vegas Gold, which until now has been the only mild cigar I could appreciate.