Alec Bradley Prensado

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Alec Bradley Prensado 5" X 50 - Rested 1.5 months at 62% Burn Time : 70 min with 1.5" left

Wrapper : Honduran Corojo

Filler : Nicaraguan, Honduran

Light Strength , Medium Body

Prelight : Will say that right off the bat, this is one of the nicer looking cigars I've seen. It's got a silky smooth dark mottled wrapper. It's box pressed to a firm pack, but feels light in the hand. Perfect tight and invisible seams. Aroma is light, of barnyard and hay.

1/3 : Starting off there's a real easy draw with tons of smoke. The body starts off light-medium and progresses only to a medium throughout the cigar. It starts off with a wavy burn, a sign of things to come unfortunately. Initially I get a hit of nuttiness, then it fades and I get a nice smooth cocoa. The smoke is slightly creamy but has not much of a creamy texture/mouth feel and the flavors themselves aren't very..bold or full. The finish is pretty long and enjoyable, though. At the 20 minute mark strong nuttiness dominates. The first third ends with no pepper/spice yet but a nice mix of cocoa and nuttiness still with tons of smoke on the draw.

2/3 : Even though the smoke lacks any texture or mouth feel it is incredibly smooth throughout the whole cigar, which is great. No bitterness at all. What's not great is that it's starting to require touchups every 10-15 minutes, the burn is very wavy and the ash is flaky. 40 minutes in, it's burning real slow, and the flavors are more of the same. That is, smooth, slight cocoa, slight nutty mix and now I get a bit of cream on the retrohale. A bit later the cream starts coming in on the draw, but just slightly. Over the halfway point there's a transition to more of the elusive cream, with cedar and a very noticable spice on the back of my tongue, but no pepper tingle. Strength isn't noticeable at all, body still at a medium.

3/3 : I'll start with the pros: The flavor profile is really nice. It's mellow, but complex at the same time so I'm enjoying the cedar, spice and the long finish that stays until the next draw. But I start to get very annoyed with the constant babying this cigar is needing. The main reason I smoke a cigar is to relax and think about things, and having to baby a cigar and worry about touching up, double puffing when it goes out, etc. really takes away from the experience for me. With 1.5" left it's turning hot and mushy and I've had enough and put it down. But even until then the flavors themselves were enjoyable, the experience as a whole wasn't so much.

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Overall : I feel like I need to give this one another try. The cigar has a good flavor profile that are pretty much consistent throughout the cigar. But the burn issues that started 10 minutes in for me just took away from the total enjoyment of the cigar. I will try another, but won't go out of my way for it. On ci.com a good amount of the later reviews mention poor draw/performance/construction so I am assuming this is a different cigar from the Prensado that got a 96 and won cigar of the year in 2011.