Black Label Trading Company Last Rites

Black Label Trading Company Last Rites Robusto is loaded with Honduran & Nicaraguan filler, held together with a Honduran binder and wrapped in a dark brown oily Ecuadoran Maduro leaf. It’s blended by the Godfather of Tobacco, Mr. James Brown – get down, y’all!

Last Rites refers to the Catholic sacrament for the dying faithful. Viaticum is the last Eucharist (Communion) included in the Last Rites. This cigar’s band features a black and white skull & crucifix and a footer with medieval script proclaiming it a “Last Rites.” The bands on the Black Label Trading Company series’ are dark and macabre. These could have easily been Edgar Allen Poe or Dante’s favorite cigars. That said, the series does include cigars named Deliverance and Salvation as well as Last Rites and Lawless. So…there is faith and hope in this line.

Flavors abound: wood – mostly cedar with occasional notes of oak, pepper, coffee, musty earth/vegetal/ hay/grass/grain (something in that array), leather, mixed nuts, Honduran sweetness with spice that’s dominated by a burnt caramel & cinnamon sweetness, which is also there with pepper on the retrohale. There’s also a dried fruit, raisin-like sweetness during the second third along with puffs of coffee, cocoa and cream. Man! There’s a lot going on with flavors transitioning and a small batch complexity I find very interesting. It’s medium-full bodied and strength, which does subside a bit during the final third. Interesting. I usually experience the opposite if there is any change in strength.

The construction on this cigar is exemplary – perfect open draw, dead even burn line start to finish, solid smoke output, and white ash that held firmly to over an inch yet tapped off on command. The cigar was solid with no bumps, soft spots or mushiness even at the nub.

Black Label Trading Company has impressed me with every cigar I have smoked. Last Rites is no exception. I have nothing but accolades for this cigar.

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