The Cigar I Never Would’ve Bought

Ashton Virgin Sun Grown (VSG) Sorcerer – Bury the Leaf

Some cigars arrive with expectations. You bought them because somebody told you to. You read the reviews, saw the ratings, heard the name enough times that eventually curiosity and a credit card took over.

Then there are cigars that basically sneak into your house.

The Ashton Virgin Sun Grown Sorcerer was the latter. It showed up as part of a sampler, a seven-inch box-pressed Churchill I probably wouldn’t have selected on my own. I’d never smoked an Ashton VSG. Hell, before this sampler showed up, the VSG line wasn’t particularly on my radar.

That changed in a hurry.

There is something wonderfully humbling about discovering a cigar that makes you wonder what else you’ve been walking past for years. The Sorcerer didn’t need much time to make its case, and over the course of the evening it turned into one of those experiences that reinforces exactly why sampler packs, cigar-of-the-month clubs, and conversations with good lounge employees are worth having.

Sometimes somebody else needs to pick the cigar.

Because apparently I’ve been doing a piss-poor job of picking Ashton VSGs.

By the Numbers

• Vitola: Sorcerer — Box-Pressed Churchill
• Wrapper: Ecuadorian Sumatra
• Filler/Binder: Dominican
• Cut: V-Cut
• Procured from: Cigar Page — Page Plus Membership Sampler
• Price Paid: $8.90
• Estimated MSRP: Not established in supplied notes
• Duration: 1 hour, 37 minutes
• Band Rating: 4 Bands — Box Worthy

Construction & First Impressions

The Sorcerer is a box-pressed Churchill, and around here that makes the cutting decision pretty damn easy. Box press means V-cut.

I reached for the single-blade Colibri rather than the SV, accepting the possibility of wearing half the cap in the process, and it punched a deep, clean valley into the head. No cracking, no drama, just a solid cut and an open cold draw.

Before any of that, though, the VSG was an interesting cigar simply to handle. The wrapper was rougher than I expected, with pronounced veins running beneath the fingers, but the construction underneath felt excellent. The seams were tight, the cigar was firm from cap to foot, and there wasn’t a soft spot anywhere.

The wrapper aroma brought hay, cocoa and barnyard earth with something resembling dried fruit hiding behind them. The cold draw stayed in roughly the same neighborhood: sweet hay, cocoa and earth.

Then I lit it.

Good Lord.

The opening draws were powerful, sweet and immediately engaging. Cocoa arrived alongside deep earth and a subtle woodiness, all of it seemingly switched on at once. There was no warm-up lap. The Sorcerer came out of the tunnel already doing 90.

Within the first half-inch, one particular flavor started bothering me because I couldn’t quite name it. It wasn’t simply generic earth. It was darker and richer than that.

Then it clicked.

You know those little containers of red worms you buy before going fishing? That dark, moist soil they’re packed in?

That.

I’ve never eaten fishing-worm dirt, for the record, but if you could somehow convert that smell into flavor, this was remarkably close. Damp, mineral-rich earth with enough cocoa around it to keep the whole thing from becoming oppressive.

It was weird.

It was also fantastic.

First Third

The damp-earth character became the foundation of the first third, but the Sorcerer wasn’t content to just sit there throwing dirt at me.

A sweetness began slipping through the heavier profile. For a moment I thought it might be something like apricot — a quick flash of brighter fruit cutting through the earth, wood and little tinge of pepper — but it disappeared almost as quickly as it arrived.

Peekaboo.

Then cocoa stepped forward and began challenging the earth for control.

This was already becoming an unusually dark, rich cigar, and I found myself thinking about how much more I’ve come to appreciate profiles like this. Give me a spicy Habano and I’m usually happy, but these darker, mineral-heavy profiles have increasingly found their way into the rotation.

The Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper on the VSG was doing exactly that.

The Sorcerer’s dimensions also played a little trick on me. Despite being a Churchill, the box press gave it a slimmer feel in the hand, almost reminiscent of a Lancero experience. Seven inches of cigar were there, but it didn’t feel cumbersome.

The ash initially looked like it wasn’t going to win any beauty contests. A natural break line appeared relatively early, and I figured we weren’t getting one of those ridiculous social-media ash stacks that hangs on for half the cigar.

Fine by me.

As long as the ash lands in the ashtray instead of my britches, we’re winning.

Flavor remained the story anyway. Earth and cocoa continued dancing around each other with some wood and restrained pepper behind them. Every once in a while, something sweeter would appear. At one point, I swear the combination briefly produced something resembling bubblegum before vanishing.

That sounds ridiculous.

It was ridiculous.

But that’s what showed up.

The whole profile had me thinking about cold weather. This isn’t a cigar that felt like the middle of August. It felt like late fall or winter — the kind of cigar you’d smoke when somebody in a Lifetime movie has returned to her hometown, rediscovered the guy she inexplicably abandoned 15 years ago, and is now curled beneath a blanket holding hot cocoa while snow falls outside.

You know the movie.

They’ve made it 417 times.

If those movies had cigars, this would be the cigar.

Second Third

Then I introduced coffee and accidentally started a science experiment.

Up to this point, the normal Evening Draw companion would’ve been sparkling water. But the cocoa and earth had me thinking coffee, so I grabbed a dark Cuban-style K-Cup and figured the obvious thing would happen: coffee would amplify the cocoa and turn the profile toward espresso.

Nope.

The first draw after the coffee suddenly became much more wood-forward.

Then black pepper arrived.

Instead of turning the VSG into a mocha bomb, the coffee seemingly pulled oak and pepper out of the blend and shoved them to the front of the line. Whether that transition would have happened naturally without the coffee is impossible to know, but I can tell you exactly what happened while I was smoking it.

The cigar got bigger.

Heavier oak. Stronger pepper. More intensity.

The earthy cocoa profile that had defined the beginning wasn’t gone, but it had been pushed backward while wood and spice started running the show.

And it worked beautifully.

The dark roast became an outstanding pairing precisely because it didn’t do what I expected. Rather than duplicating flavors already present in the cigar, it seemed to expose flavors hiding underneath them.

Eventually, as the coffee cooled, the Sorcerer changed again. The pepper began backing off and the profile softened. A lighter coffee note appeared in the cigar itself, accompanied by something almost creamy — closer to a latte than the dark espresso flavor I expected earlier.

Maybe the temperature of the coffee influenced my palate. Maybe the cigar was naturally transitioning. Maybe both were happening.

I’m not going to pretend I can conduct laboratory analysis from a lounge chair.

I can only tell you what I tasted.

And what I tasted was damn good.

Construction meanwhile remained virtually flawless. The draw stayed right where it should be, the burn behaved, and the cigar required no babysitting.

Even the ash eventually decided to contribute to the entertainment.

I went to set the Sorcerer down as an ash roughly an inch and a half long was hanging on. Gravity finally won, except instead of dumping itself onto the floor, the entire stack dropped vertically and somehow landed standing straight up on the rim of the ashtray.

I’ve smoked a lot of cigars.

I’ve never seen that.

There it sat, balanced on the edge like it had rehearsed the stunt.

Sometimes cigar photography plans itself.

Final Third

Just before the final third, the Sorcerer decided things had been entirely too predictable.

After an evening built around earth, cocoa, coffee, oak and pepper, something hit me square in the taste buds that I had absolutely no business finding in this cigar.

Ginger ale.

Not vague sweetness. Not “maybe citrus.” Not some tasting-panel nonsense requiring three paragraphs and a degree in agricultural chemistry.

Ginger ale.

Distinct enough that I sat there wondering whether my palate had packed a suitcase and left without telling anybody.

I’ve been to two goat ropings and a county fair and ain’t never seen nothing this crazy.

And naturally, three draws later it was gone.

The black pepper returned, wood settled farther into the background, and the Sorcerer went right back to being the cigar I’d been smoking before its brief carbonated hallucination.

That little detour actually made the experience more memorable. The underlying profile stayed remarkably consistent throughout the cigar, but there were enough small twists to keep seven inches of Churchill from ever becoming monotonous.

As the burn approached the band, coffee and wood became the dominant combination. The pepper remained present without overwhelming everything around it, and the darker earthy character from the beginning was still identifiable underneath.

Most importantly, there was no late collapse.

That’s where plenty of otherwise good cigars lose me. Heat rises, bitterness creeps in, the flavors flatten, and eventually you’re continuing mostly because throwing away two inches of a premium cigar feels vaguely irresponsible.

The Sorcerer never gave me that conversation.

Instead, I found myself genuinely disappointed that I was running out of cigar.

Millennium of Aftermath

The Ashton VSG Sorcerer was supposed to be another cigar from a sampler.

That’s it.

I hadn’t been chasing one. I didn’t buy the sampler because I desperately needed a VSG in my life. I’d never smoked the line, and if you had handed me the same amount of money and told me to pick something individually, there’s a very good chance this cigar would’ve stayed on the shelf.

That’s precisely why this experience mattered.

At $8.90 delivered through the Cigar Page Page Plus sampler, the Sorcerer was a hell of a discovery. More importantly, that sampler left me with five more VSGs in different vitolas, and after this experience I’m legitimately excited to work my way through them.

Not necessarily review them.

Smoke them.

There’s a difference.

The Sorcerer delivered deep damp earth, cocoa and wood before a cup of coffee helped turn the middle into an oak-and-black-pepper flavor bomb. It softened into creamier coffee notes, briefly lost its damn mind with ginger ale, and eventually landed on a rich coffee-and-wood finish.

Construction gave me essentially nothing to complain about.

And that’s why the Ashton VSG Sorcerer earns 4 Bands — Box Worthy.

This is exactly what that rating is supposed to mean. I don’t need to proclaim it the greatest cigar ever rolled. I don’t need to start clearing shelves in the humidor and ordering boxes before the nub cools.

But would I deliberately buy more?

Absolutely.

Would I keep several around?

Without hesitation.

More than anything, the Sorcerer is a reminder to occasionally let somebody else pick your cigar. Buy the sampler. Join the club. Ask the person behind the counter what they’ve been smoking. Grab something you’ve walked past 100 times.

Your favorite cigar can’t be something you’ve never smoked.

And apparently, I should’ve smoked the Ashton VSG a long damn time ago.