Ashton Heritage Puro Sol
Monday, March 12th, 2012Slacker… Yes, I am describing myself. Reviews have lacked recently due to life. Nothing bad, nothing good. Just some home projects and goofing off. So it’s time to get to it…
The Ashton Heritage Puro sol sports tobacco that is all sungrown. Yes, it’s grown in the sunlight instead of underneath cloth cover. This can increase flavor, strength, and body of the tobacco, especially towards the top of the plant (Ligero). Enough of this rambling… Go to Ashton’s website for the details. I picked up the Heritage simply because I have never reviewed it before, and it looked good. As always, I paired this cigar with filtered fine Florida tap water. Mmm…
Wrapper: Cameroon
Binder: Dominican
Filler: Dominican
Size: Belicoso 4.875 x 49
Price: $9.95
Pre-Smoke & Construction:
The shiny chocolaty brown wrapper looked appealing, and only had minimal flaws not worth getting in to. The smell of the wrapper was sweet and earthy, and the foot had a slight spice. The cigar was pretty well packed, with minor inconsistencies. The pre-light draw has some resistance, but fell within my tolerance. As for the pre-light flavor, it was a simple earthiness and maybe a touch of wood.
The burn required no corrections, and the ash held for just over an inch.
Flavor:
The first third started with a simple earthiness. An easy spice developed quickly. It was easy to pass through the sinus and swish around the mouth. It left a mild, tingly spicy sweet aftertaste. A rich bitter sweetness joined in with what I can only describe as leathery and earthy.
The second third had an earthy, woody, spicy flavor with a tinge of bitter sweetness. I think the leathery flavor I got before was earthiness. My palate often get’s the two confused. The aftertaste was earthy and spicy. It really clung to the mouth for quite some time.
The last third fell into the upper medium to lower full bodied range. I bring it up because that was the biggest change in the last third. Another change was the sweet spice. It increased in strength but didn’t punch me in the face. It stayed easy to smoke and swish around the mouth and sinus. It just left a nice tingly aftertaste.
Conclusion:
This was a solid medium to lower full bodied cigar. The good… Construction and burn was flawless. The flavors were fairly complex and all good. Basically there is nothing bad to say. But… I can always find something. The price of almost ten dollars for such a small cigar is a bit much. Perhaps if there was more of a WOW factor, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Price aside, this was a good cigar. If it were cheaper, sure I’d smoke more. It is worth trying at least.
