I have to admit, I was slightly afraid of this cigar. Allow me to explain...
I'm not a big fan of full strength cigars, mostly because they pretty much always make me sick. Whether I've had something to eat or not, which most full strength smokers say you need to do before smoking a full strength stick, it never seems to help me. And let me tell you, whether you've enjoyed a cigar or not, nothing ruins it (or makes it worse if you hated the cigar) than your stomach demanding a refund on whatever you ate. There are cigars I specifically avoid now, because I've tried them and had that experience.
Now, I've always heard that LFDs are full strength. That's why I avoided buying them. However, when I attended the Seattle Cigar Expo this year, I got 2 of these Churchills in my cigar bag. Until now I've avoided them for the reasons already explained, so they've been resting in my humidor for approximately 2 months. However, I finally decided that I will not allow a cigar to intimidate me. So, after a big meal, I decided it was time to try one of these.
After pulling this cigar out of its cello I took a big whiff of the wrapper. Honestly, that is the sweetest smell I've ever gotten off of a cigar. I don't mean sweet as in "awesome", I mean sweet as in "sugar". It smelled very sweet. Almost overwhelmingly so. I had a hard time placing the aroma. I ended up narrowing it down to honey or vanilla. The foot smelled even sweeter. It was completely surprising. Then came the time to take a cold draw. I was expecting power even there. However, it was basically just plain tobacco with a little pepper. It wasn't anything huge.
Then, as I lit up the cigar I again anticipated to be overpowered. And the flavor on lighting up was...pretty tame. There was some cedar and some pepper but nothing near what I was expecting. I've gotten more strength off of a Connecticut. What was going on? Was I mislead? Was this maybe just not going to be that powerful because of the size of the vitola? It was hard to tell.
The rest of the cigar was pretty plain. Mostly just a normal tobacco flavor with occasional pepper and maybe some earthiness. The draw was a little disappointing. I usually had to draw 2-3 times in order to get any smoke. However, I did cut this one with my Shuriken. I eventually thought maybe the cigar was just too narrow to draw well with a Shuriken cut. Once I just got too tired of it, I grabbed hold of the pigtail cap and started to untwist it. Well, I guess I had been smoking it long enough for the tobacco to be moist because that action ended up causing pretty much the top part of the cap (everything above the shoulder) to come right off. The cap tore off but the important part of it was left intact. Unfortunately the draw improved only slightly after that. The burn wasn't great either. I had to retouch it several times and even had to relight once or twice, as well as to purge the cigar a couple of times because it tasted too bitter.
Overall, it was kind of an average smoke. Since it was free, I really can't complain. Would I buy one? Probably not. However, I do have one more from the Expo sitting in my humidor. I'll revisit the issue when I smoke that one in a few months. We'll see what happens!
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