Casa Magna – Oscuro belicoso Cigar review

Casa Magna – Oscuro belicoso Cigar Review

Time in Humidor 3 months @ 66%   

         

Size: 6.5 x 52 Belicoso

Blend: A dark Honduran Oscuro wrapper over a Cuban-seed Honduran binder enveloping a mixture of Cuban-seed Nicaraguan and Honduran long-fillers.

Construction & Appearance: The dark brown near black wrapper is rustic to say the least; thick, dry and toothy to feel and wrought with veins and small holes. General battle scars make this stick look like it was brought up on the wrong side of the tracks. The pack is consistent along the length with no soft or hard spots and when feeling this stick it is quite lumpy.  There seems to be even more big veins included in the binder wanting to break through the fortunately thick wrapper.

Smell: Wrapper, on the nose there was significant tones of manure with sweet chocolate, coffee, tobacco and hay. On the foot, hay and slight manure.

Cold Draw: Flavours on the cold draw consisted of primarily of hay hints of sweet coffee. Resistance of the draw after a small cut was what I would consider perfect, taking into consideration the draw issues presented by torpedoes/ belicosos.

First Light: Flavours on the first light consisted of cooking chocolate, singed/ bitter tobacco with slight inklings of espresso. Smoke production is good with clouds of thin semi dry white smoke.

Aroma: In my opinion this cigar was emitting a quite unique aroma; consisting of dark brown toast & ground Arabica coffee.

First 3^rd: 25 min

Flavours in the first third remained similar to the first light whilst gently evolving for the better. The cooking chocolate smoothed out a little and moved closer to sweeter milk chocolate, the bitter tobacco dialed down to a smoother standard tobacco taste. The espresso in the background slowly increased its presence.

Smoke production remained unchanged but developed a meatier texture and moisture.

Overall the body of the stick was quite light, sitting in the light to medium area which I found surprising.

The burn on this stick was quite good, usually exhibiting a near straight line, producing a very soft salt and pepper ash which held for about 12mm before falling off.

Second 3^rd: 55 min

The profile of the second third was nearly a mirror of the first, the only change was the addition of a slight sweetness to the whole profile of the cigar. The burn remained good overall, going wild when moving through some wrapper defects and correcting when past them. 

Third 3^rd - 1hr 15 min

Moving into the third 3^rd the draw started to clog and was evident a new cut had to be made. As I graciously and carefully made the new cut I managed to drop the cutter into the ashtray and destroy most of the whole ash making for some picturesque final photos……

Flavours in the third 3^rd started to change rapidly, initially there was a rapid buildup of bitterness, essentially the same as what was experienced previously on the first light. The bitterness soon transitioned into the onset of heat which was yet to detract from the cigar. The existing flavours were present and unchanged at a medium to light body.

The burn went wild at times and managed to correct itself to more than acceptable levels as the third progressed.

Moving through the third 3^rd the heat managed to stay at quite a low level for the best part, allowing appreciation of the whole stick.

Approaching the end the heat quietly ramped up and I elected to retire the stick before the heat managed to overwhelm the timid flavours offered by this cigar.

In conclusion I found this stick surprising in that it managed to remain very light and easy to smoke. Its consistent light flavour profile comprised primarily of chocolate and coffee made it very enjoyable without being overly impacting. 

It’s not the most exciting of cigars to smoke due to its consistency from start to finish; by no stretch does that make it a bad one. This is a good cigar to have with friends and focus on the act of smoking and socialising rather than the constant analysis of the smoke itself.

I would happily smoke and buy another box of these again, a good everyday smoke!

Suggested pairing for this cigar is Tia Maria or Kahlua on the rocks or some form of ice cold schnapps; anything sweet. 

Thanks for reading

Whisgars