I went to a local smoke shop to buy cigars. At this particular place you get tax free smokes. I took advantage of their buy one get one free Cohiba XV deal. I've bought pleanty of cigars there and find the two guys there very knowledgable. I've smoked pleanty of XV's from my usual smoke shop. I find the XV's to be a great smoke. Nice tight white ash smooth sweet and spicy flavor with an added kick and a wonderfull aroma. Now the cigars I bought from this place were strange as soon as I brought them home to smoke. The band on all were very crooked and just tore off as soon as you touched them. The smoke was extremely harsh, not fullbodied, just harsh. There was only a strange foul cigerette taste and after taste. The ash was very hollow looking and a greyish brown. The cigar was very soft and at the cut off end of these cigars you can see a bunch of stems. Now I called the smoke shop and told them about it and asked where they got them from. They told me direct from general cigar and that there is no such thing as a fake Dominican Cohiba just Cubans. I asked what made these so bad, and believe me these were just plain lousy. He said a number of factors. One he said could be lazy or tired rollers. The other he said could be that they have not matured. I compared the bands to a couple nice XV's I bought at my usual shop and nothing diferent about the front of the bands but on the back of the bands the color was different. The good smokes had a white back side color and the bad ones had a yellowish color. Can someone give another explanation to this? Can there be fake Dominican Cohibas at a local smoke shop?
