One Bad Star

Rocky Patel Dark Star Robusto – Bury the Leaf

Sometimes you get a bad one.

That sentence is easy to write when the cigar costs four bucks and came out of a bargain bin. It gets considerably harder when you’re dealing with an established manufacturer, a roughly $10–$12 premium cigar, and a stick that had been sitting comfortably in a properly maintained humidor for more than 90 days.

But tobacco is an agricultural product, cigars are handmade, and occasionally Friday afternoon shows up in a box.

The Rocky Patel Dark Star Robusto had plenty going for it. A Honduran Corojo wrapper. Mexican and Nicaraguan binders. Honduran and Paraguayan filler. That last country was the reason I was particularly interested in this thing. Paraguay isn’t exactly the first place that comes to mind when talking premium cigar tobacco, and I wanted to see what it brought to the party.

Unfortunately, we spent considerably more time talking about what was falling off the cigar than what Paraguay put inside it.

I’ve smoked plenty of Rocky Patels. There’s a humidor in The Evening Draw Lounge stuffed with them. This experience doesn’t rewrite that history.

But this particular Dark Star?

We got a bad one.

By the Numbers

• Vitola: Robusto
• Wrapper: Honduran Corojo
• Filler/Binder: Honduran and Paraguayan filler; Mexican and Nicaraguan binder
• Cut: Colibri V-Cut
• Procured from: Cigar Page sampler
• Price Paid: Part of sampler; individual purchase price not established
• Estimated MSRP: $10.50–$12.50
• Duration: 1 hour, 3 minutes
• Band Rating: 1 Band — Leave It in the Ashtray

Construction & First Impressions

The Dark Star started raising its hand before I ever put a cutter to it.

It was firm from cap to foot with a pronounced wrapper seam, but the real concern was a significant crack beginning at the cap and running down roughly the last inch of the cigar. Calling it a hairline crack would be charitable. This thing was starting to look like the San Andreas Fault had established a Paraguayan satellite office.

The wrapper gave off earthy, sweet tobacco aromas, and the cold draw added a faint dried-fruit quality. There was potential here.

The cap dictated the cut.

A straight cut looked like it could turn an existing problem into a complete wrapper failure, so I reached for the Colibri V-Cut to preserve as much of the cap as possible. Even then, the crack immediately worsened.

Not exactly the confidence-inspiring start you’re looking for.

Once lit, the draw was extremely open and unrestricted. The first pull was surprisingly aggressive, carrying a bitterness reminiscent of very dark coffee. Not necessarily unpleasant, but powerful enough to get your attention immediately.

Earth followed, along with fresh grass, faint pepper and a darker wood character. This wasn’t the bright cedar that shows up in a thousand cigar reviews. Hickory or oak was closer.

There was another important piece of evidence sitting behind the cigar: storage.

This Dark Star had been resting in The Evening Draw Lounge humidor for more than 90 days at approximately 67% relative humidity and 68 degrees. Those conditions have served countless cigars without producing this kind of wrapper failure.

Whatever happened here, blaming an improperly acclimated cigar would be a hell of a stretch.

So we lit it and hoped for the best.

First Third

The opening profile settled into familiar Corojo territory.

Earth led the way with natural tobacco, a little grassiness, subtle sweetness and faint pepper. As things developed, dark chocolate and coffee joined the mix, while the heavier wood character stayed underneath everything.

There were moments when the combination of wood, grass and tobacco reminded me less of a finished cigar and more of walking into a tobacco barn or aging facility. There was an earthy, fermented quality to it that worked surprisingly well.

A retrohale pushed the coffee considerably farther forward.

Flavor wasn’t the problem.

What I couldn’t identify was Paraguay.

That’s not criticism of the blend as much as an admission that I don’t have enough experience with Paraguayan tobacco to know what flag I’m supposed to salute when it marches past. The unusual filler was one of the things that attracted me to the Dark Star, but nothing in the first third jumped out and announced itself as some radically different tobacco experience.

The burn initially behaved itself, but the ash quickly showed that it wasn’t interested in hanging around.

Less than an inch into the cigar, obvious break points started developing. Rather than allowing gravity to decide when the ash landed in my lap, it had to be manually addressed multiple times. You could see exactly where it was going to separate, and a light tap against the ashtray confirmed it.

The cracked cap remained intact enough to continue smoking, but it was always there.

At this point, the Dark Star was still getting the benefit of the doubt.

At roughly $10.50 a stick, however, the flavor wasn’t exactly kicking the humidor door down demanding permanent residency. It was smooth enough, enjoyable enough and interesting enough to continue, but nothing had reached “go buy the box” territory.

A five-pack?

Maybe.

There was still plenty of cigar left.

Second Third

Dark chocolate became the dominant flavor as the Dark Star moved toward the middle, backed by earth, wood, pepper and coffee.

And then construction started taking over the review.

The burn became increasingly inconsistent. The cap crack continued widening. The wrapper started behaving in ways that are simply atypical of cigars stored under the same conditions in this lounge.

The flavor profile, meanwhile, didn’t move very much.

That doesn’t automatically make a cigar bad. There are plenty of cigars that find a good lane and stay there. But this lane was fairly ordinary: traditional Corojo earthiness, darker wood, coffee, chocolate and pepper.

Nothing revolutionary. Nothing particularly offensive either.

The construction was another story.

Removing one of Rocky Patel’s multiple bands produced one of the stranger band failures I’ve encountered. The decorative exterior separated from the underlying paper rather than coming off cleanly. Forget putting this one in the Remember Me journal; the band itself was headed for the trash.

More importantly, removing the band revealed that the problem wasn’t confined to the cap.

There was substantial wrapper damage hiding underneath it.

Now we had a cracked cap, an increasingly erratic burn and additional wrapper splitting that had been concealed by the band.

That’s when “one little construction issue” became something else.

None of this completely destroyed the ability to smoke the cigar yet. The V-cut had almost certainly saved the cap from a more immediate catastrophe, and the Dark Star continued producing smoke and flavor.

But smoking a premium cigar shouldn’t require constantly wondering which piece is going to fall off next.

Final Third

Entering the final third brought the best flavor transition of the evening.

Pepper finally stepped forward.

The wood and coffee receded, spice increased, and for my palate the Dark Star became considerably more interesting. Had that peppery profile been present throughout the cigar, this review might have sounded very different.

For a moment, the Dark Star showed what it could have been.

Then the wrapper finished the job.

Removing the remaining band exposed roughly an inch of cracked and damaged wrapper underneath. The existing damage became increasingly pronounced as heat built through the final third, while the cap continued disintegrating.

At that point, construction wasn’t merely an annoyance.

It was ending the cigar.

That’s tremendously disappointing because the flavor had never become outright bad. The Paraguayan filler may not have delivered some unmistakable exotic revelation, but the cigar itself remained perfectly smokeable from a flavor standpoint. Earth, dark chocolate, coffee, darker wood and eventually more assertive pepper made for a respectable profile.

I simply couldn’t continue ignoring the physical condition of the cigar.

After exactly one hour and three minutes, the Dark Star was put down early. There was probably another 15 or 20 minutes available if I had been determined to fight it to the bitter end.

I wasn’t.

There comes a point when finishing a cigar becomes stubbornness rather than enjoyment.

We reached it.

Millennium of Aftermath

Here’s where this review needs an important distinction.

I cannot recommend the Rocky Patel Dark Star Robusto based on the cigar I smoked.

I also don’t believe one defective cigar is enough evidence to declare the Rocky Patel Dark Star a defective line.

Both things can be true.

The cigar spent more than 90 days properly acclimating in the Evening Draw Lounge humidor at roughly 67% RH and 68 degrees. The wrapper was visibly cracked before the cut. The crack worsened after cutting. Additional wrapper damage appeared underneath the bands. The burn became increasingly erratic, and eventually the wrapper deteriorated badly enough that the cigar had to be put down early.

That’s a failed smoking experience.

But I’ve also smoked enough Rocky Patel cigars to know this isn’t representative of my broader experience with the company. The Edge Habano is a regular around here, and there are enough Rocky Patels in the lounge that they’ve earned their own humidor.

That’s why I’m chalking this one up to a bad stick unless another Dark Star proves otherwise.

And I would smoke another one.

The blend itself still interests me. Paraguayan tobacco isn’t something I encounter every day, and beneath all the construction nonsense there was a perfectly respectable Corojo profile. Dark chocolate, earth, coffee, darker wood and late pepper gave the cigar enough substance to make me wonder what this experience looks like when the wrapper stays attached to the cigar.

But The Evening Draw reviews the cigar that actually gets smoked, not the hypothetical perfect specimen sitting somewhere else in the box.

This one came apart.

At roughly $10–$12, that’s unacceptable.

One Band — Leave It in the Ashtray.

Not because the Dark Star tasted terrible.

Because eventually, that’s exactly where this one had to go.