Bolivar Belicosos Fino - James Squire ‘150 Lashes’ Pale Ale; Flor de Cana ‘Spresso’ Coffee Liqueur

The last of the current batch of seconds from Rob for Kenfessions. It would be fair to say that I did not necessarily leave the best to last, the Bolivar Belicosos Fino. As the picture hopefully shows, this was seconds for a reason. Well, I think it aspired to 2nd status and fell well short. ‘Ratty’ was my description of its looks.

5 1/2" by 52 ring gauge. A pleasant pale creamy brown wrapper. Notes of roast earth, toast, burnt meat – if I may jump in early, the Spresso worked really well with it. No great length here. It did need a lot of relighting. A fair cigar but hardly a great one. I have never had much luck with these and this did not change that. Never had one I'd say was poor or unenjoyable, but they have never got past ‘fair’ for me. 88.

I know others love this cigar and it is often talked about for its full-bodied nature, but I have never been so blessed. Bit over medium for me. I have also seen some talk about the coffee flavours found here. Again, not for me – and given the Spresso I was drinking with it, that would have been fantastic.

The drinks – a beer, the James Squire ‘150 Lashes’ Pale Ale, as it was a hot and humid evening. Cracking crisp, cold beer was ideal for the occasion, but I'm not certain it added anything to the cigar.

The second drink was a coffee liqueur from Flor de Cana, their ‘Spresso’, which I think we have covered before. Utterly decadent and hedonistic. Rich and luxurious and very sweet, it is like a molten choc/coffee treacle. But this is very much a small doses drink. Too much becomes a bit over the top.

It did work wonders with the cigar – indeed, I suspect that the score for the cigar might have been lower if it was not paired with the drink.

Now, a Kenfession. I chose the Spresso so I could talk about another Flor de Cana release.

There is no possibility of me ever getting the chance to smoke a cigar with the latest release from Flor de Cana and even less chance they are sending me a sample. Their Flor de Cana “V Generaciones’, a 30-Year-Old Single Barrel Rum, sits around A$2,500 a bottle and only ten arrived in Australia. There are only 411 bottles in existence (well, I suppose I should say that only 411 were made – no idea how many are left). I did get to try the rum at the release in Sydney and whacko!

All 411 bottles came from a single cask, which was filled back in 1988. Flor de Caña is a 5th generation family estate and has some of the largest aged rum reserves in the world. The release is to celebrate those five generations and their 130th anniversary in 2020.

Exquisitely packaged, the bottle features the signatures of family members from all five generations, the bottle cap is made from volcanic rock – volcanoes are a very big deal in Nicaragua – and there is a replica of the 1902 postage stamp, the ‘volcano stamp’, which changed the course of history.

A little over a century ago and even before that, the trip by boat around Cape Horn was not only extremely dangerous but added nearly 8,000 miles to every voyage. There was a serious push for a canal through Central America to alleviate the hazards and shorten the trip. Today, we take it for granted that it is and always was the Panama Canal. It wasn’t so.

Plans to build a canal for ships to cross Nicaragua were first drawn up in 1825 but finally shelved in the late 1800s, when America purchased the French interest in the Panama Canal. That rather prosaic declaration is, not surprisingly, not the full story.

Panama and Nicaragua were in close competition to build the canal, knowing the extraordinary economic benefit it would offer the successful nation. Nicaragua was the firm favourite.  In assessing who was to get the prize, it is worth noting that the canal would be longer in length in Nicaragua, but it would be a much easier engineering exercise than Panama’s.

Nicaragua made the fatal mistake of issuing a standard, bog-average ten-centavos stamp, in the usual manner. The problem was that this particular stamp featured a scenic view of a local volcano, Momotombo, with wisps of smoke emerging from its cone.

The people who would make the final decision were not immune to a little old-fashioned lobbying and the French lobbyist for the Panama Canal immediately sent every US Senator a copy of the stamp. The inference was not lost. Do we really want to build a canal in such an unstable country? One explosion and the canal could be destroyed, lives lost, fortunes desecrated. A volcanic explosion, earlier that year on the island of Martinique which killed 30,000 people, was still very much top of mind. And so, Panama got the nod. It was through that country that the Atlantic and Pacific were linked.

How much impact that stamp had will never be known but until the efforts of the lobbyists, it was very likely that today we would have the Nicaraguan Canal.

The rum? Stunning. A blend of honeysuckle and smoke, vanilla, coconut, a whiff of pineapple, hints of toffee and grilled mandarins (I wonder if anyone has ever grilled a mandarin, but if they did, this is what the aroma might resemble), but immaculately balanced. Incredible length. Whilst there is an apparition of sweetness, the amazing balance gives the impression that is neither dry nor sweet. Just absolute dead centre. It is, by any standard, one of the finest rums I've ever sampled.

Sadly, not one I got to enjoy with a good cigar.

KBG