CAO Soprano Boss

7" X 56, Maduro

Appearance: This is one huge dark cigar! Not only that but it is heavy. The wrapper was smooth and veinless and as dark as night. There is definitely a lot to this cigar. It is almost intimidating.

Pre - Light: Clipped the cigar with a Xikar at the Stogie Shop that looked like it had cut about a million cigars prior to mine, give or take. Man, did this cutter look rough! Surprisingly though, it seemed to clip just fine. The Pre-Light draw was free and easy and produced notes of dark cocoa, dark roasted coffee, and smoky woodiness.

Burn/Draw: The cigar burned well, and fairly straight, which was fairly surprising to me, given the conditions. We were driving home and I had to smoke the thing with the window open and wind blowing in the whole time, and I half expected that to cause burn issues. It did not. The draw, like I said earlier, was free and easy and produced more than a fair amount of smoke. This seemed like a well constructed cigar.

Taste: This cigar is deep and rich and strong. Lots of Mocha and rich coffee, and unsweetened cocoa. Also, my cigar had lots of power, and I mean LOTS. The problem is that the power pretty much drowned out all the complexity of the cigar. This is unfortunate, because I think, with time, this will be a great cigar. I would love to buy a box and squirrel it away for a year or two, but at the current price point there are too many better buys. Overall I would say that this cigar was pretty good, but just not cost effective enough to warrant in depth buying.

TomC