Cigar Review: Rocky Patel Olde World Corojo Robusto

So this cigar has been touted as being a fairly superior cigar coming the the house of Rocky Patel, so, I figured I'd take it for a test drive. There it sat in its box amidst the Decades and the Sungrowns, with its distinctive secondary wrapper with the laser etching. So I decided to go for the Corojo per my local tobacconists, Nick, insistence.

A few notes on construction; probably first and foremost, what caught my attention quite startlingly was the label. It looked to be made of poor quality done with a dot jet ink printer, I know this is a moot point and really irrelevant to the flavor and enjoyment of the cigar, but for me there is something regal in a well done label, even the old Havana brown and white ones had a simple elegance to them. But, I digress, over all construction seemed well. It had an outside appearance of suede leather, however upon lighting it I discovered a whole different story. I noticed almost instantly that it had a very airy draw, too airy. It also burned uneven very early into the smoke and burned very fast, to the point it was going out and had to be re-lit several times. The ash was very mottled and almost zebra-striped and flaky.

As far as flavor is concerned, it started out as a smoked wooded flavor, with a hint of pepper in the finish, and I would say it was medium bodied. Getting into the 2/3 mark, the flavor began to mellow out and the wooded flavor begins to smooth out the pepper. The last third remained woody, but began to lose some of its character. I also noticed a resurgence of pepper and a hint of nut, but became very bitter in the after taste.

Overall, I fell quite honestly, I received a rare dud from the Rocky Patel line, it became a high maintenance cigar and not easy to enjoy and really frustrating by the end.