Nat Sherman - "1930" inmenso (Dominican Republic)

As a birthday gift, my brother Dan got me a Nat Sherman "1930" inmenso, a super-premium cigar from New York, NY-based tobacconist Nat Sherman. I'd been dying to try it, and he and I each smoked our own a few weeks ago.

Nat Sherman himself was an old speakeasy proprietor-turned-tobacco mogul whose namesake shop occupies a rather fancy address on East 42nd Street, right across from the New York Public Library and a few blocks over from Grand Central Station. Ronald Margulis of Cigar Magazine wrote a nice article about Nat Sherman in the Winter 2006 edition of that periodical, where he claims that Nat Sherman's so-called Townhouse served as "neutral ground" for organized crime families. Today, the property is a high-end smokeshop in which I would not mind spending some time (as well as my entire paycheck):

Source: NatSherman.com

For this particular 1930 label, the cigars are manufactured under the Nat Sherman name by Quesada Cigars, the same folks who make the Dominican Fonsecas. This cigar is a 7" x 56 ring gauge Churchill grande size. Every component of this cigar, save for the Nicaraguan long-fillers, is Dominican. The wrapper and binder are all Dominican-grown, and there's some Dominican stuff in the filler as well. I like the leather-brown color to the cigar.

Before smoking the cigar, it's good to roll it between your fingers a bit to see how springy / loose the tobacco is. After doing this, I was initially concerned since the cigar seemed to be wrapped rather tightly. I had to really work the tobacco leaves between my fingers to get it pliable; it took quite a bit of working to get it to draw properly. Sometimes cigars are wrapped too tightly, which may require they be "drawn out," which means you need to run a length of metal down the cigar to essentially cut a channel through the tobacco through which you can draw the delicious flavor. Since I didn't have such a tool, I had to massage it in hopes that it might loosen up.

But it lit up, and after a bit of coaxing, and the flavor began to come out. The leaves opened up a bit as I smoked it, with a nice smooth pepper flavor with some leaf / earth flavors which I thought were rather nice. The flavor was more subtle than some other cigars I've had, which I appreciated for sure. The size of the smoke was nice, as well - a large-format smoke like this one was enough to last me for over an hour of smoking. It finished well, and didn't get acrid or nasty until the very very end.

The verdict is that it's a great cigar, but could be better constructed. I also recall that I had to relight it a few times, which is not great. All of this may be a function of this particular cigar, though - as with anything handcrafted, quality varies from piece to piece. I could have easily just gotten a badly-made smoke.  I'm definitely interested in trying another Nat Sherman in the future, because construction notwithstanding, the quality of the leaf and the taste of the smoke was really nice, and I'd love to see what else they offer.