Then it hit me.  There it was, that same old sharp, acrid tobacco flavor that I dreaded whenever smoking a Te-Amo…and here it was in the A. Turrent Toro.  But how can that be?  With the Nicaraguan binder and filler you would think it would soften the Mexican wrapper a bit.  I don’t have enough confidence in my palate to believe this…yet.  Next step, run down to the humidor and find another A. Turrent Toro to try.  If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.

Take two, nice cut, check.  Takes to the lighter, check.  Produces decent amounts of smoke, check.  Same acrid, sharp taste that I remember staying with me forever, unfortunately, check.  I am obviously not a Mexican tobacco guy.  The A Turrent Toro was stable throughout, although it is not a stability I would shoot for.  The stability was consistently sharp tobacco.  I tried to sit and think about what kind of tobaccos you could marry this Mexican flavor with to produce a decent cigar, and didn’t come up with anything.  If they tried Nicaraguan, I am sure they tried many others.  If this is the best they could do, I am scared.

Altadis is a rock solid company with tons of good cigars.  The Turrents are rock starts of the tobacco world.  It’s hard to imagine these two groups getting together and not providing a decent if not world class smoke.  It would be fun to be in the blending room when they decide they are going to use San Andrean tobacco in a cigar.  I can see the blenders nervously looking at each other with that face that says “really, we are going to try this again?!?”.

Enough beating on the A. Turrent Toro and Mexican tobacco in general.  Chalk this up to a palate thing if you like, as it is no secret I do not like Mexican, specifically San Andrean (is there any other Mexican tobacco?) tobacco.  If you want to give this a try feel free, but I have a hunch my view on this is not going to be far of from the public perception.  Either way, sometimes a bad cigar is better than no cigar.  In this case…it’s a close call.