Sat out on our deck and fired up an Undercrown Belicoso Maduro last night. Beginning flavors were lacking, but the second third delivered some very fine leather, some sweetness, and a hint of caramel. As a new cigar smoker, I did have some issues, and I'm wondering if it had to do with the ambient temperature and humidity? I store my cigars at 70/70 in my Pelidor, this one had been resting for about a week. However, the outside air was quite chilly (about 50F), and the humidity, if it was anything like this morning, was 85-90%. The issue I had was keeping the cigar lit. I found that almost any cessation of drawing on the cigar would cause the cigar to self-extinguish. I V-Cut the cigar with a Xicar VX2, looked perfectly fine and had a perfect draw. I simply had to continually relight unless I drew on the cigar 5-8x/min, which is WAY faster than the 1-3/min that I average. I also noted an uneven burn line which I did have to touch up several times, not like any of the other cigars I've smoked so far. Finally gave up with just over 1/2 of the cigar smoked.
So, was this a humidity problem? Undercrown problem? Newbie problem? As I noted above, no problems with the draw.
Thanks for the help, folks!
CW