CAO Brazilia Gol – Bury the Leaf
There are cigars that lose you because they taste bad. There are cigars that lose you because they burn like a brush pile in a rainstorm. Then there are the frustrating ones—the cigars that spend an hour showing you exactly why you should like them while simultaneously falling apart in your hand.
The CAO Brazilia Gol! landed squarely in that last category.
This wasn’t a cigar I went hunting for. It arrived through the Mike’s Cigars Cigar of the Month Club, which is precisely why those clubs and samplers have a place in the humidor. Left to my own devices, I’m probably walking past this one for something from a smaller or more boutique operation. Instead, somebody else made the decision for me, and I got introduced to a Brazilian wrapper with a personality unlike much of what normally passes through The Evening Draw Lounge.
And damned if I didn’t like what was underneath it.
Unfortunately, “underneath it” became a little too literal by the end.
By the Numbers
- Vitola: Gol! — 5 × 56
- Wrapper: Brazilian Arapiraca
- Filler/Binder: Nicaraguan / Nicaraguan
- Cut: Guillotine
- Procured from: Mike’s Cigars Cigar of the Month Club
- Price Paid: $8.62 delivered average cost
- Estimated MSRP: $11.10 per cigar
- Duration: 1 hour, 3 minutes
- Band Rating: 3 Bands — Worth the Smoke
Construction & First Impressions
The Brazilia Gol! came dressed in that unmistakable green, yellow, blue and black band, and the tobacco offered an earthy aroma from the wrapper and foot before anything ever touched flame. At 5 × 56, Gol! lives in that short, thick Robusto Grande neighborhood: enough tobacco to provide some horsepower without committing the evening to a Churchill.
The trouble started immediately.
A guillotine cut should have been routine. Instead, the cap loosened and a crack ran down toward the band. Then came an exceptionally tight cold draw. Another small cut didn’t solve it. Trying to open things up only aggravated the damage, and before this cigar had even been toasted, the wrapper was already beginning to resemble a windshield after catching a rock on the interstate.
This wasn’t blamed on the retailer or storage. The cigar had been kept with the rest of the humidor inventory under the same conditions without issue. Sometimes you simply draw the short straw on an individual cigar.
The wrapper continued cracking around the cap and body, and the initial concern wasn’t whether the Brazilia would burn well.
It was whether we’d get to finish the damn thing.
Then we lit it.
First Third
And this is where the Brazilia Gol! became frustrating.
Because it tasted good.
The first draws brought a sweet, earthy aroma followed by an earthy and peppery profile. Leather showed itself early, with a little chocolate hanging around behind it. There was something different about the earthiness, though—something that didn’t fit neatly into the usual cigar-review vocabulary.
Eventually the best description became obvious: damp, mossy earth.
Think woods after a rain. Cedar nearby. Damp ground underfoot. Add pepper and you’ve got the backbone of the first third.
Damp, mossy earth, cedar and pepper.
You’re welcome.
The Brazilian Arapiraca seemed to be doing something distinctly its own. This wasn’t simply another combination of earth, wood and pepper where somebody starts reaching for increasingly ridiculous adjectives to make familiar tobacco sound exotic. The ingredients themselves were familiar; the way they came together wasn’t.
Even stranger, the cigar that had seemed destined for draw problems settled down after lighting. The draw became considerably more manageable, the ash stacked nicely, and the burn line stayed remarkably straight.
So here sat a cigar with a cracked cap and a wrapper threatening mutiny, burning better than plenty of prettier cigars.
The Hurricane Coffee & Tea Company Cuban 1910 dark-roast coffee pairing pushed further into the earthy side of the profile. It wasn’t there to transform the cigar. It simply met the Brazilia where it already lived.
As the first third progressed, a slight bitterness appeared around the edges while chocolate became easier to find with a slower, more restricted exhale. Earth remained the dominant note.
Had the wrapper damage not already been staring us in the face, there wouldn’t have been much to complain about.
Second Third
The pepper began retreating as the Brazilia moved into the middle portion, never disappearing completely but becoming far less important. In its place came a strange sweetness riding alongside the earth.
Molasses was the closest comparison.
Not clean sugar. Not syrup. Something darker, slightly bitter and heavier.
That sweet-but-bitter character gave the middle of the cigar another layer without abandoning the damp earth and wood that had defined it from the beginning. The coffee reinforced those darker flavors and made the combination feel natural rather than forced.
Flavor wasn’t the problem.
Construction was becoming the entire damn story.
The original crack had continued traveling. The wrapper near the cap became increasingly fragile, and another crack developed on the opposite side. Handling the cigar itself became an exercise in damage control. Tobacco started flaking away.
Cigar dandruff.
That’s about the only term for it.
And that’s what made this experience aggravating rather than simply bad. A lousy cigar falling apart makes the decision for you. Toss it and move on. The Brazilia Gol! kept producing enough interesting flavor to make you want to save it.
There just wasn’t much left to save.
Final Third
Entering the final portion, the profile grew warmer and richer while simultaneously becoming drier. Woodiness supplied the dry edge, while the accumulated earth and darker sweetness gave the smoke some weight.
The flavor remained interesting.
The wrapper did not remain a wrapper.
By this point it was separating badly enough that the burn line was approaching damage extending essentially from the cap downward. Once that happens, optimism stops being a repair strategy.
We fought it as long as reasonably possible.
Then the cigar won.
Or lost.
Depending on how you score these things.
Roughly the final inch and a half never received a fair trial. The wrapper had deteriorated to the point that continuing became pointless, leaving a cigar that still had tobacco—and potentially flavor—sitting unfinished in the ashtray.
That’s disappointing because the Brazilia hadn’t run out of gas. It hadn’t become harsh enough to chase us away. It hadn’t turned bitter beyond redemption.
The physical cigar simply couldn’t keep going.
Millennium of Aftermath
The CAO Brazilia Gol! presents one of the stranger rating problems we’ve encountered because two entirely different cigars seemed to occupy the same wrapper.
From a flavor standpoint, I’d smoke it again.
The Brazilian Arapiraca brought a distinctive damp-earth character with cedar, pepper, leather, chocolate and eventually that dark molasses-like sweetness. The Cuban 1910 coffee pairing fit naturally beside it. Even after the disastrous cold draw, the actual smoking draw improved, and for much of the experience the burn was surprisingly straight.
Then there’s the construction.
It was terrible.
There’s no polishing that. The cap cracked. The wrapper cracked. More cracks followed. Tobacco flaked off while smoking, and eventually the wrapper failed badly enough to strand roughly 20 percent of the cigar.
One cigar isn’t enough to condemn an entire line, particularly when the flavor underneath the failure gave us legitimate reasons to return. That’s why I’d smoke another Gol! before deciding this was anything more than a bad individual example.
It also proves the value of occasionally letting somebody else choose what’s going into your humidor. I probably wouldn’t have purchased this cigar on my own. Mike’s Cigar of the Month Club put it in front of me, and despite the construction disaster, it introduced a profile I’d willingly revisit.
That’s worth something.
But Box Worthy means more than “I’d like another chance.” This particular cigar made us work too hard and ultimately couldn’t finish the job.
So the CAO Brazilia Gol! lands at 3 Bands — Worth the Smoke.
I’d absolutely smoke another.
Next time, I’d just like the wrapper to come along for the whole ride.
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Stuff with the Sticks
Everything that was within arm’s reach of the chair for this one.
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