Lost & Found by Caldwell Pepper Cream Soda
Posted on September 27 2021
Vitola: 6.5x54
Smoking Time: 116 Minutes
Cigars Smoked: 5+
Body: Medium
Wrapper: Mexican San Andres
Binder: Sumatran
Filler: Dominican Aged Corojo, Aged C98, Aged Olor
MSRP: $12.00
We’ve all heard of Robert Caldwell, the man behind Caldwell Cigars and Lost & Found. Lost & Found is a pet project of Caldwell’s, he searches factories, storage rooms, and anywhere else that might have rare, aged, and limited cigars or tobacco. After locating his wares, the Caldwell touch is added, creating something truly special.
Often the L&F releases don’t have bands, which seems like a strange decision. Because without the branding some people just don’t want anything to do with them. It seems that Caldwell was taking notice, as the new L&F releases all have bands, and seem to be notably more popular.
Visual Inspection: The Pepper Cream Soda has a unique looking San Andres wrapper on it. Normally they appear darker in color, this is not dark, but more coffee-with-a-touch-of-cream brown. Other than the slightly off color, it feels and looks like a typical San Andres leaf. There is plenty of tooth covering the cigar, subtle veins, while having visible seams. A squeeze along the cigar reveals no soft spots.
Aroma is rather simple, there aren't a lot of notes to ponder, but plenty hints of barnyard are present. I’ve used a v cut, and it slightly split the head of the cigar, but nothing too catastrophic.
First Third: After lighting, the flavors are rather flat, but gain body quickly. With notes of very subtle cream, dry earth, and wheat bread. A retrohale brings strong notes of pepper. The flavors are slightly underwhelming right now, but the body is actually quite full. Truly very peppery, it lives up to its name.
The tooth translates well to the ash, but the ash is weak, and slightly blooming. Burn line is adequate, and puts off slate grey smoke. The draw was slightly tight, after using a PerfecDraw it helped drastically. As the third comes to a close, the body has calmed down, and notes of cream and cinnamon are blasting through.
Second Third: The profile has changed nicely, now very cream forward, with cinnamon and trace amounts of pepper. A retrohale brings hearty notes of pepper, and even more cinnamon to the nose. Dark chocolate notes are starting to appear at the start of the draw.
The ash has firmed up and lightened up in color, now a light grey. The burn line wasn’t bad, simply dipped on one side, after a touch up, i’m sure it will clean itself up. Slight charred and peanut flavors have appeared and are met with a slightly chili pepper retrohale.
Last Third: The band is quite hard to remove, and in trying I split the wrapper a little bit, so I am waiting for the glue to warm up, hopefully making it easier to remove. Flavors are relatively the same, but the peanut is starting to show up more. Overall this third is peanut, cream, dark chocolate, and charred oak, forward.
Final Thoughts: This is one of my favorite L&F releases in a while. It's a tie between pepper cream chocolate crush, and this one. For the price, you cannot beat it. They are reliable and consistent. The age of the tobacco really does show in this cigar, there are not bitter or acrid flavors. This is something for those who like spice, a true fan or the San Andres wrapper.
-Sam