Happy Friday Folks!
This morning I smoked a My Father Le Bijou 1922 Petite Robusto as part of the monthly contest I mentioned a few days ago. The reason I am starting off this post talking about what I smoked (normally I save it till the end) is because today’s topic is about trying cigars again.
It has been SEVERAL years since I smoked a Le Bijou - probably 8-10 years. I don’t remember a whole lot about that cigar, but I clearly wasn’t enamored by it as I hadn’t smoked one again. Now, that goes against my better judgment and what I consider best practice. I always recommend smoking cigars a couple times to see what you really think about them. Especially if the cigar is as highly regarded as something like the Le Bijou.
Obviously you can’t do that with every cigar or else you would inevitably be smoking a lot of things you don’t like. I recommend, and try to, smoke a cigar again if I am on the fence or if it showed some redeeming qualities the first time. For instance, if a cigar has a very interesting note, but I can’t tell if I actually like it or not, I’ll smoke it a couple more times to see. Or maybe a cigar had a great profile for my palate but had some construction issues. I will happily try it again to see if the construction issues were an anomaly or if the blend has something in it that makes it burn funky. I also will often revisit a cigar after some time and try a third one, if the second time around still found me on the fence.
Sometimes you find some real winners when you give a cigar a second chance. On the flip side, you can save yourself from a mistaken box buy if the second or third time around the cigar is not as good as you originally thought.
As for the Le Bijou, I neglected to try it again many years ago as this was likely before I made this rule. Obviously it wasn’t appalling back then or else I would remember that (I have a good memory for that kind of stuff). Had I tried it again back then, then maybe I wouldn’t have made the mistake of buying 5 of them for this month’s contest… Did you see that coming?
I don’t hate the Le Bijou, but it certainly is not for me. It performed flawlessly which is great, and there wasn’t anything extremely off putting. Honestly, it was just very drying to my palate and quite reminiscent in flavor as when you move an old, moldy hay bale and get that facefull of dust. Plus it started to burn out my tongue a bit - something that I, unfortunately, do not find to be uncommon from cigars that use tobacco, and come, from the My Father factory.
At any rate, I got 4 more that I will smoke this month in the name of made up internet points - but I may not be happy about it!
What is a cigar that you had to smoke 2, 3, maybe even 4 to figure out if you actually liked it or not?
-Trevor