Cusano C10

Last weekend I went over to my friend's place for a barbecue. I'm trying to get my friends more into smoking cigars (It's pretty much a losing battle thus far) so naturally I brought down a few sticks to share. I actually sent my brother into the store and told him to randomly pick a few off the shelves and we'd see if we got lucky. Turns out we did.

Of the 4 that we sampled that night, one really stood out for me. I had been drinking all day and also switched back and forth between all the different sticks we had lit at once so I was in no shape to come up with an official rating but I made a note to buy another one soon. The next day I stopped into my store and pick up a Cusano C10 Corona ready to give it another test. Just as I had remembered, it was really quite enjoyable.

The C10, which commemorates the 10th anniversary of Cusano, is the first cigar created using four distinct wrappers, one as a binder and two included in the filler. Cusano combined a 1996 vintage Cuban wrapper from Ecuador with a spicy Mexican Sumatra binder and then added Jamastran from Honduras, Broadleaf from the USA and Dominican leafs as well. These four wrappers are complemented by two Dominican filler tobaccos. The size of the cigar is 5 inches with a 42 ring. The price was $8.50.

To start off, the cut is good, the toast and light are easy, and the draw is nice and smooth. An effortless puff produces a full mouth of smoke which allows me to really experience all the flavors. Immediately prominent are some sweet cedar notes and some faint pepper tastes. They seem to excite different taste buds in the mouth and so work well together. The cedar flavors pretty much control the cigar throughout but it's so well constructed that I enjoy it for the entire time.

The burn on the cigar was nice and even. I didn't have any problems with keeping the stick lit. The ash didn't hang on for as long as I would have liked but it didn't seem to compromise the burn too much. One thing I noticed a lot more the second time around with this cigar was that the smoke was very smooth. There were no biting flavors and no trace of burning in the mouth at all. This underrated characteristic kept the smoke tasking almost fresh with no obstacles interfering with the wooden flavors.

The cigar finishes off just as smoothly as it started with one last full puff of wood, citrus and pepper. In my opinion, this was an excellent example of a cigar that can be great without needing to be complex. I'd argue that too many flavor transitions here would have taken away from the enjoyment of the flavors brought out by the combination of those 4 wrappers. I'd probably categorize this one as a mild to medium cigar even though I think Cusano pushes the C10 as a bolder smoke. I don't think I buy that but I would definitely buy the cigar again.

Overall Score: 90