Inhaling chlorine bleach can really distort my senses. I had just finished deep cleaning the bathroom. My reward would be a cigar. The carrot? But I have to go back a day to explain the present.
Yesterday I was smoking an HVC Edición Especial 2015 – same place (garage), different feeling. My head and throat were not suffering the aftermath of breathing in copious amounts of the gaseous throes of NaClO.
The flavor was reminiscent of brittle toast with a few snaps of chocolate charcoal slashing in and out. The essences were complex, such as the lives of two people who are under marital pressures – difficult to understand, but easy to tell.
I love to write and read, I draw. I paint. I fancy ideas of sculpting desperately searching to find materials that even though they may have been used previously by other artists somehow will be miraculously refashioned by my take – my emotions and experiences.
Picking out colors for any project is much more difficult than one may imagine. The overwhelming choices of hues are limitless even though it has been said that there are approximately only 10 million colors that we can actually see. I marvel at the reflection of those we can’t.
I can understand this is how a blender must feel considering his or her choices are just as numerous. The leaves come from the environment, and as much as one would like to believe that nature reproduces the exact same strain of plant with each seed, this is obviously not the case. Like snowflakes, each one is randomly created by various factors under surprising and constantly changing conditions.
Ergo, the impossible task of describing the flavor of any cigar with any type of accuracy. The end result of such a critique is an approximation of “tastes like . . .” and all that rot. So recognizable generalizations are used, as they must simply be because of the millions of palates that are being tantalized by the varieties of fermented tobacco leaves.
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This brings me back to the present day while experiencing another HVC cigar, the newest line by Renier Lorenzo – the Hot Cake Gran Canon in Spanish Pan Caliente (2016). Yes, almost the same name (Hot Bread) as the 2016 release, but different profiles. But this is where colors and tobaccos become cousins. I was looking for specific colors that would reflect those I could use for a drawing that I remembered in my dream. A bird encrusted with sparkling, soft crystals of snow that when touched by my finger brilliant colors were revealed. Yet they would be impossible to recreate exactly, but I could approximate vaguely the pigment.
Now make this clear, the Hot Cake is a complement to Pan Caliente, not a duplicate. As will be the colors I choose for my artwork. Those will be like the colors I think I remember in my dream – not the exact ones. That is not attainable. And never will be. But since there are so many colors (seen and unseen) and millions of possibilities for blends (considering Mother Nature) it still is a mystery to me how colors and tobacco leaves intermingle and produce something new and distinct – despite my poor memory of the dream and being overcome with strong chemical solvents totally altering my taste buds, and especially my ability to distinguish aromas.
There are 24 shades of pink we can detect with the naked eye. Some are so similar that the distinction is almost imperceptible. Which is the right one to use? Add a drop of white paint and perhaps another hue is created – 25?
Now add the effects of chlorine bleach to my throat and olfactory glands to my current smoking experience. Stillness. So when I lit up the Hot Cake, what was I really tasting – “(the gases of) . . . of ~3-6% sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl), which is mixed with small amounts of sodium hydroxide, hydrogen peroxide, and calcium hypochlorite?” (Google) Strength wise, the difference between the 2015 and the Hot Cake was simple to discern. But by adding the aftermath of gulping NaClO for 90 minutes the entire profile of the cigar’s flavor changed dramatically. It was almost to the point of being hit in the back of a head with a 2 X 4. Stars and pain. A totally unreliable assessment would follow if I continued to make the attempt. No toast. No chocolate. No burgundy pencil lead. Just sandpaper. Not even remotely accurate.
Did I intend it to be so? No. I didn’t think the concentration of the cleaner would be that strong. This was not my first time cleaning a bathroom. But I had never jumped right into smoking a cigar. Normally after the job is done, several hours will go by before I light up my deserved motivation.
So could it be said that the cigar itself, be it an HVC Hot Cake or any other brand has this elective infringement as a part of its essential essence thus producing the impossibility of accurate descriptions? This conundrum should be disconcerting to those who critique cigars – or make the pretentious attempt to do so Left to the military acronym KISS – all choices of colors and blends are culled down to either, “I like it, or I don’t.” Bleach or ephemeral dreams aside – save this for another day.
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