Alec Bradley Harvest Selection 1997 Review

Wrapper: Nicaraguan Habano

Filler: Combination of Dominican Piloto Cubano, Mexican Ligero, and
       Nicaraguan Criollo

Price: $5.00

Now as you can see from my past reviews, I am not much for mild bodied cigars. But, I heard from a few people that this was a fairly good smoke, and I bought it in a sampler pack awhile back, so I figured I would write it up.

At first take, the cigar smelled pretty good. It was also very tightly packed. Once I clipped it and lit it up, the draw was surprisingly easy. The cigar burned a lot faster than i expected it too as well.

I'm going to say this ahead of time... there weren't any strong flavors at all in this stick. If I had to say what I was tasting, it was just a toasty earthiness with very subtle hints of spice. After I was about an inch in or so, the flavor was primarily just a generic sweet tobacco taste.

Now after it smoked down to about the halfway point, a very mild coffee-like flavor entered, but it was just as subtly as the spice flavor I was getting earlier. Still, it was mainly just the sweet tobacco flavor that I was
getting throughout.

Now during the home stretch of this stick, all subtly flavors went out the window, and I was left with a mild bodied general tobacco flavor. There were little bits and pieces of earthy tones, but nothing exciting at all.

Surprisingly, the ash was really weak. I thought that since it was wrapped so tight, the ash would be strong, but it kept falling off after about an inch, at most. But, on the other side, it was a nice, dark shade of gray.

The aroma as well was nothing special. In my opinion it was extremely bland. And it was also quite unpleasant. Usually I love the smell a good cigar gives off, but I was highly unimpressed.

Maybe its just the fact that I dont like cigars this mild, but I was highly unimpressed with this stick. But I feel, since it was constructed very well and burned perfectly that I have to give it a rating of 5 out of 10.

Enjoy your cigars,

Zack the Stogie Man