Alec Bradley

Medalist

BEWARE POOR STORAGE!!! A testament to my own incompetence. Today is going to be a little different... Sometimes, instead of a glowing review or a vitriolic put down, today you get a cautionary tale. So a little context: I leave for a business trip right when a pack I had bought arrives. I am very busy, so I hurriedly get them into my normal tupperdor. There is no room. So I take a few older cigars out and place them into a yet unused small humidor I received as a gift. "It'll help me identify ones I need to smoke first" I muse to myself. You know the kind off Amazon for the lowest bidder: the ones with the ridged foam on one side, a flimsy cedar sheet, a humidifier puck, and an analog humidistat. My normal protocol before even using it would be to load up the puck, stick a digital humidistat I trust in it, and leave it a few days to see how badly off the analog needle reads. This time I throw protocol to the curb since I did not have the luxury of time. Fast forward three weeks and I get home. Only to find that this particular humidor was very not good, in that humidity stayed at around 85-90% and worse, the ridged foam specifically held a ton of moisture. I now have a separate container I've dubbed "my cigar ICU" and I'm trying to salvage the few cigars I put through that bog. After 5 days individually wrapped in cedar rolls, spaced out on a ridged block, and left in the care of a fresh sealed container... I'm testing a not-so-recovered Alec Bradley Medalist. Now I'm very familiar with Medalists. I rather like them. If I want a milder cigar, these are one of my go-to options. I won't mince words: measure your humidity before you store them. The photos speak for themselves. The wrappers still haven't recovered and the flavor is similar to a normal Medalist with a heavy layer of mustiness that ruins what I know is a good smoke. Instead of a rather tasty, if one note, cigar I have a burning musty sponge. What the pictures don't show are the funny noises as it burned. A sizzle as pockets of presumably very damp tobacco light up. What you don't see are the 8 relights. I don't fault the cigar at all. I was in a rush and made a poor decision. I'm just glad I didn't put my good cigars into an untested humidor with no supervision for three weeks. Store your cigars properly folks!

Mild to medium. Great drW and burn. Flavour was good.

White creamy smoke on first draws then turned very bitter with bluish smoke then lite off. Wrapper didn’t burn as quick at the filler. Had to constantly touch up wrapper. Taste was plain and light with bitterness.

A pretty mild stick from AB. Not much in the way of flavor changes, but that's just what I wanted for this session. Only complaints are slightly tight draw and harder to keep lit in the final third. Put 10 of these in humi on 6/10, and this was my first one. Gonna let them rest a couple months more before having the next one - just to make a good stick even better.

Excellent draw, good smoke

Good but not great. A little hard to draw and the burn was slightly uneven.

Earthy. Light wood.

Very nice stick!!