Black label
Salvation
I tasted this cigar as soon as it was put on
the Belgian market, and I really enjoyed it. And I note with horror, that
several months later, I still have not written an article about it!
As its creator, James Brown explained to us during
his Belgian visit, it is certainly the mildest cigar of its creation. If you
are familiar with Black Label, you can imagine that this does not make
Salvation a light cigar.
I obviously have a particular packaging. To
explain this one, you must know that in addition to producing cigars, James is
an artist and it is him who takes care of the design of his rings that he
chooses, invents and conceives in connection with his travels, his family, his
works...
For this
cigar with the sweet name of Le Salut, which
is one of his first blends from 2013 when Black
Label Trading Co was founded, he
based it on a piece of art he made in 2012. It incidentally hangs in their factory
and reminds them of where it all began.
So I have
in front of me a cigar with a well oiled wrapper; beautiful veins run through
it and it is highlighted by two black and silver rings.
The first
one is James' work: two joined hands holding a rosary. They are tattooed (we
can see the logo of Black Label as well as other signs certainly in connection
with James and / or Angela). The cross that hangs from the
rosary looks more like an Occitan cross than a Christian one, but it could also
be a Maltese cross. Under
the hands, there are three roses.
I practice
my cut and light ritual. Cold, I'm surprised by this freshly mown grass flavor
(thankfully my allergies don't kick in here), white pepper and milk chocolate
round out the palette.
The
ignition is perfect.
A beautiful
smoke quickly fills the room, I am in white pepper, cedar, caramel before the
black pepper takes place in this mixture.
The draw is very good and the fun is there. The medium level strength from the start rises to titillate the medium-strong.
I pause slightly
in my description to point out that I shared one of my tastings with a Malheur
blonde beer and I found this pairing not bad at all: the citrus and its
strength made the beer hold up to the cigar without taking over or changing my
impressions.
My vitola
moves toward California chili (medium-strong chili) and molasses, with a push
of red pepper to move back toward blueberries, toast and vanilla.
My tasting
is very pleasant and even if I don't take off, I travel in the gustatory
memories with a beautiful widened palette.
And then
it's the explosion, my cigar goes into centrifuge mode to give me a perfect
balanced complexity, all the flavors now make a homogeneous block and the power
goes up another notch.
I'm almost
at the beautiful death of my cigar when I realize that in no way did I have any
bitterness or too much heat effect.
A good 70
min later, I put a small cigar butt (smoking more would have been a risk of
mustache fire) in the ashtray for his little death before joining the Mother Earth.
The
tastings of the order of 5, were carried on 3 Robusto & 2 Toro, of
respectively 12.7 cm for a cepo of 54, and 15.24 cm for a cepo of 52.
Wrapper : Habano (Ecuador)
Binder : Honduras
Filler : Nicaragua
In conclusion: Another cigar that is regularly
in my humidors, and as already said, beware! The less strong of James does not
mean light. A cigar to be taken gently and calmly to fully enjoy its range of
flavors.
Thank you Angela for the additional
explanations on the ring and the name.
Price at the time of writing: 14.40€ for the
two modules.