Stogie Reviews: Graycliff Double Espresso
29 Sep 2009
Even harder to find than most of Enrico Garzaroli’s Graycliff Cigars, the Double Espresso is a limited edition, one-size extension of the Espresso line.
The four and a half inch by 54 ring gauge cigar features double the ligero found in the regular Espresso line. And like most of Garzaroli’s cigars, the it isn’t cheap, with a suggested retain price of $15 per stick.
The Double Espresso sports a milk chocolate-colored Costa Rican wrapper with a filler that is a mixture of Cuban-seed corojo and Ecuadorian ligero. It is slightly spongy, which I have found to be common for most Graycliffs.
Overall, the appearance is a little rugged with a cap that is less than perfect and a couple of knots in the wrapper near the head.
For a short cigar, it packs quite a punch in the taste department with a well-balanced core of coffee, chocolate, and spice. As a coffee lover I find the aroma of this stogie quite intoxicating, reminding me of a cup of nice French vanilla.
With its voluminous creamy smoke, this cigar really hits its stride about an inch in when the saltiness fades and the sweetness is amps up a bit. It is quite the treat with an even burn and fantastic balance.
Unfortunately, given the hefty price tag, an ash that was quite flaky, and some appearance issues, I can only give the Graycliff Double Espresso three and a half stogies out of five.
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I'd buy Graycliff Double Espresso by the box if they were ~$7-9 each (stick, not box). It is a good cigar and has a distinct flavor/draw combination.
But at my local B&M those sticks run $22.
Graycliff, as a company, must rely on single stick, one-time purchasers – somebody's wife or gf, maybe, who thinks, "Hey, it's expensive, I'll try it…"
Nobody must repeat-buy those things.
I'd wager a year's cigar budget that the P/L on the Graycliff Cigar division runs red.
Think about it, for that price, you could buy boxes of Cohibas and *still* have surplus to cover your Customs Office fines…
graycliff=fail. Even Charlie, Mac, Dennis, Frank, and the useless chick would agree. Now, lets go toe to toe on bird law!
Smoked my 1st double espresso today! I went in excited, and thought this 18$ cigar was going to be legendary. I was 100% wrong! The overAll smoking experience was no fun for me. An uneven burn, and a small crack in the center didnt stop me from nubbing it. I had to make every penny count-
the flavor was awesome and very rich. A Cain ligero cigar is about 60-70% less, and delivers more than the double espresso. Might I also add they are a hell lot easier to find! The ligero in the double essp. is very tasty and possibly the best tasting ligero I have had in my 6 years of puffing. I give this stogie a 2/5
I ordered 2 Graycliff samplers around a year ago and this was one of the sticks included. I have a pretty good cigar collection going now and I've been diving in of late. Being a novice, I decided to take an approach with my current stash that would add an interesting element to things; I'm smoking a cigar and reviewing it for myself without 1st reading other reviews and gauging those reviews to my own afterward.
The Double Espresso was a rough looking roll. For a while, I wondered how long I'd had it in the bottom of my desktop humidor as it just kind of looked beat up. Spongy feel to it, but not in an alarming way. On lighting, it had a great draw, perfect even, and smoke was on the thick side. Consistently uneven burn that I touched up once, though I think it would have come around on its own. Ash was an odd, flaky ash. Stout enough to hold up for an inch or so but the outside of it had flakes peeling away. I didn't like it. Wrapper held a coffee & chocolate flavor that was pleasant but the smoke was wood/earth distinctly and kept the entire experience from becoming a "sweet" result. It had a spice to it and the strength of the cigar was a medium but I didnt get any pepper and that was fine by me. This stick did not transition much, if at all. The 1st inch is how the entire thing went. Burned for a little over an hour. I told my wife that I'd give it a 7 overall. This is not a cigar I will likely ever smoke again. Certainly, I won't seek it out to have one especially after seeing the prices.