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Initial Smoke

A touch of the torch and the Mil Dias Maduro sends the taste buds right back to granny's kitchen, where she is whipping a gooey batch of those molasses cookies you love. But this time around, there is root beer and dried ginger, along with a heavier spoonful of soil and leather. Spiciness is nonexistent as well, and instead, you receive a salt and pepper mixture to satiate the tongue's cravings. V-cutting the cigar returns a draw that is medium-full in flow, and smoke formation is fantastic, with a nice medium body being detected.

1st Half

The molasses cookie bake-off continues as the first third unfolds, this time with darker soil for support, and a creamy coconut milk secondary note sitting inside. The cigar has grown faintly spicier and stocks a lot of leather, with that medium-bodied smoke texture, a fluid draw, and an excellent finishing cigar flavor profile, earning bonus points in my Bucksaw cigar journal. 

After a while, a medium amount of funkiness forms, but this time it is more of a Jamaican pot still rum taste, and it is sweet and satisfying. Roasted caramel beer malts can also be found throughout much of the second third, and the deeper you go, the more you may realize that retrohaling will result in a sweeter, slightly longer finish. 

2nd Half

Milk chocolate, more leather, and a medium amount of spicy funkiness on the nose firm the blend up a good bit past the centerline. Molasses notes have expanded their reach, and so too have those tasty rum cask flavors pulled straight from Jamaica. Dry one moment, but then growing sweet the next, the second half of this blend flips from one side to the other at random, leaving the tongue unsure as to what to expect next. 

What happens next, though, is the gradual addition of mineral and peppercorn to the mixture. This makes retrohales far more fiery and leaves the taste buds pondering a cigar flavor profile that goes beyond traditional sea salt. But this is all blanketed by that molasses funk, which somehow manages to remain dry at times, and it makes the leather and soil center section taste even more funky in a way.

Parting Puffs

Generous servings of bold black pepper, dry leather, heavy mineral, dry paper, and hints of baking spice result in a last stand that is so-so in my opinion. It isn't a complete charred mess or a funky overload of fermented flavors, but it isn't all that amazing or memorable either. 

Ash / Burn / Smoke / Draw

This was another good burner from Crowned Heads. No need for a touch of the torch along the way, with a fabulous draw returning an impressive amount of medium-bodied smoke. If there was one complaint to be made, it would be the somewhat rapid rate at which the blend burns and the ash drops that occur red along the way. Neither issue was sizable enough to be labeled as damning, but they definitely did not help the cigar's overall score either.

Final Thoughts

Here sits another reliable medium-powered Broadleaf maduro with consistent cigar flavor profiles, stick-to-stick, and a borderline ideal balance when it comes to tobacco potency. The blend has a lot of those funky flavors and aromatics that make fans of Connecticut Broadleaf reach for a specific smoke time and time again, with a consistent amount of smoothness for 80% of the stick, impressing the palate. 

But I cannot ignore the rapid burn rates and ash drops I found each time, as well as the dry, peppery moments later in the burn that caused the cigar to taste imbalanced. There were also times when the cigar seemed to be playing coy, when it should have been unloading fresh flavor profiles or amplifying what was already being detected, which is what made La Imperiosa from Crowned Heads so impressive.

Even then, I must say that I genuinely like the Mil Dias Maduro on the whole. Molasses cookies and Jamaican rum, rich leather and soil mixtures, plenty of cocoa moments, and roasted beer malts all make the core sections of the cigar quite tasty. Initial impressions were also pretty damn good, with that mixture of root beer, dried ginger, and molasses making an impression right away. 

This earns this blend an upper middle tier status in my journal, as one of those reliable medium maduro blends that will consistently deliver the goods without any major hangups along the way. It won't be the most complex cigar in the humidor, but that's perfectly fine when you think about what this blend is trying to achieve in the first place. And that is a clean, medium maduro smoke session with just enough funk to keep things fun.

Overall Balance & Repeatability