CAO Left Coast Trapezoid

Initial Thoughts

I have a few friends who work with General Cigar and I received this cigar from one of them to try. I believe that was back in early October. I put it in my humidor and honestly forgot about it until Siz was talking about it the other day. I thought, ‘I’ve got to smoke it and review it!’

I haven’t heard too much about this cigar, only that it took just a few months from idea to product. It shipped in early December to a number of West Coast shops and then a few in Oklahoma and in Texas. I’m not even sure there are any left out there. I feel lucky to have this one, for sure.

Looks

At first glance, the cigar is a beast! It actually reminds me of a submarine with its shape. I’m almost afraid of it. It’s intimidating with its size as well as its being packed full of (what looks like) ligero. Can’t wait for this one!

The wrapper is beautiful. The foot half has a dark, espresso brown color to it and then fades up the stick to a leathery brown. It’s oily and girthy. Back to my submarine analogy, I feel like I’m looking up at a battleship destroyer, in awe of the monstrosity it entails! This particular CAO Left Coast Trapezoid didn’t have a band on it (I think I got this before the bands were completed) so the wrapper looked even denser without a band. There are a few visible veins, two of which are pretty large and they run the entire length of the cigar. I also noticed a few soft spots but this thing is packed full. Not much of any smell was detected on the wrapper, just a faint hint of sweet tobacco. I really had to work to get a scent on the foot as well. A faint hint of barnyard finally came out.

There was one spot, close to the head, where the wrapper had started to come undone but it looked like it wasn’t going anywhere so I really didn’t worry about it.

Function

I’m curious to see how this cigar smokes. It’s somewhat awkward in my hand due to its size (that’s what she said). With the ring gauge being 72, I decided to see if it would be comfortable in my mouth before cutting it. I found a sweet spot that actually was perfect. Ok, I’m feeling better about this now.

I had a vintage, guillotine cutter I wanted to use but realized quickly that the cutter was no match for this massive stick! I had to go with my scissor snips I got from the Coppola vineyard (see my review on the Joya de Nicaragua / Cabinetta for an explanation on that!). After cutting, I got a nice, 45 degree angle, which now (I’m pretty sure) made this Trapezoid a parallelogram with all its different angles. Wow! Lots of spice on the cold draw and surprisingly, the draw was incredibly easy and loose. I thought for sure it would be tighter due to the size and the amount of tobacco packed in. I hope this won’t affect the burn at all.

Smoking

I used my Zippo lighter with this one and the lighting was fairly simple except it was a little more difficult to go in the direction of a pyramid instead of a regular circle.

The cigar produced a medium amount of gray smoke. Holding it at a 45-degree angle seemed to work pretty well but about halfway through I found that by holding it upside down (with the flat part of the cigar facing up towards the sky and the stick being parallel to the ground) it felt much more natural. I had some burn issues as I’d feared. About halfway through the first third, it caught one of the veins and followed it pretty close through to the half of the second third. I thought at first it might correct itself but ultimately, I had to touch up and correct it. Overall, the ash was heavy but a little flakey.