Black Label Trading Company Bishop’s Blend Novemdiales Petite Corona

Smoked: Black Label Trading Company Bishop's Blend Novemdiales

Smoked at: Fairfield, Ohio

Black Label Trading Company Bishop’s Blend Novemdiales Petite Corona is made in Nicaragua with Connecticut & Pennsylvania Broadleaf filler, an Ecuador Habano binder and a toothy oily Pennsylvania Broadleaf wrapper. It’s a small vitola tapered to a fine tip.

Novemdiales is from the Catholic Church’s 9=day period of mourning after the death of a Pope. No surprise the band is adorned in silver on black with a bishop’s mitre over a skull and a papal symbol. The footer exclaims “Bishop’s Blend” in script.

Charred wood, earth, hay, herbal tea, pepper, toast, and cereal and cracker notes – like water table crackers. There are occasional secondary notes of mixed nuts, creaminess, dried fruit and mineral. By the second third, the wood can be identified as cedar. Add some coffee, leather and hints of tart orchard fruit. And a puff of licorice that lasted long enough to think of Pernot & water. Now that would be an interesting pairing. Good balance, nice transitions and complexity. This cigar has a lot going for it. It’s full bodied with good amount of strength. There was some acidity after the relight leaving the stick on the port for awhile. The strength got to me. So the acidity and bitterness may have been due to my double, triple puffing to get the combustion back.

Tight draw that required the Perfect Draw and a toothpick poke. That tip on the cigar head leaves very little wiggle room to draw. Whitish grey ash held well. The smoke output was just fine, thank you. The burn line wavered off and on, but was even enough so no complaints.

Black Label Trading Company Bishop’s Blend Novemdiales packs a lot of flavor into a small vitola. Overall, I am impressed despite the undesirable finish. My bad perhaps for letting the cigar go out resting on the port for too long. A tip of the mitre to BLTC on another fine cigar. If you’re a fan of Liga No. 9, LFD Double Ligero or The Tabernacle Havana Seed, you’ll like this cigar. Full strength and full bodied.