22. Stogies (Gold Leaf Label)
This was another 8” from the Po Boy III and the second Stogies brand cigar in the smaplers (hence the label description). It was medium brown with a couple small, thin veins and a handful of wrinkles in the wrapper. I could feel a seriously soft spot an inch above the foot. The cap was horrible. It was lifting up in a couple areas when I took it out of the cellophane. All these sticks are made in the D.R., so I can’t help but wonder if these are the rollers who will eventually by making LPs for Drew Estates, or are these the ones who were recently fired from there? The foot had a mild scent of cocoa powder. I managed to punch it without destroying the cap and the draw was as tight as yesterday’s smoke. When I pulled on it like I was sucking cement through a Slurpee straw I picked up on something like freshly hewn lumber.
This one was a disaster from the word go. It began with a flavor similar to overcooked Brussels sprouts. You could pick up on a little sweetness in there, but it was overwhelmed by an unnecessary bitterness. This moved on to the highlight of the cigar flavorwise, a brief period of wet mowed grass that lasted all of 5 minutes. From there I went on a tour de force from doused campfire, to a taste like you would get eating licorice while sitting behind a truck that billowed diesel fumes into your car window. In the end this cigar was like a couch manufacture to CA flame retardant standards- it did nothing but smolder and put off noxious fumes.

The single best part of the cigar: The grassy puffs very early on.
The single worst part of the cigar: The way it made me feel shameful for smoking it.
Overall rating on a scale of 1-10: 4.5 (These points are almost exclusively for the fact I never had to touch up the burn, which though sometimes ugly always managed to pick itself up by its bootstraps.)