Caldwell Girls Guns Gold

Late last year, Caldwell Cigar Co. released one of its brasher new cigars of recent memory.

It’s called Girls Guns Gold and it’s part of the company’s relatively new Crafted & Curated Series. The name seems to be a reference to a song of the same name by the band Metric. As for the cigar, it’s offered in a single 7 1/4 x 38 lancero size that uses an Ecuadorian Connecticut wrapper over a Sumatra binder and fillers from the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. Crafted & Curated is a series of cigars that are tied together more because they do not fit into the rest of the Caldwell profile than because of the relationship between the cigars themselves. It contains one-off blends like this and also modified versions of existing blends like the Montrose, a Long Live the King blend but with a Nicaraguan habano wrapper instead of the normal Dominican wrapper.

If you think this cigar might be more like a Lost&Found release, a company in which Robert Caldwell is also a partner, you might be onto something. It would seem that this cigar was once destined to be part of Lost&Found, but got released as a Caldwell product.

“This is what happens when you have two cigar companies and your partners from Caldwell bitch about Lost&Found,” said Caldwell in a video posted on Instagram. “You port a SKU over and you drop Girls Guns Gold, now by Caldwell Cigars.”

• Cigar Reviewed: Caldwell Girls Guns Gold
• Country of Origin: Dominican Republic
• Factory: El Maestro
• Wrapper: Ecuador (Connecticut)
• Binder: Undisclosed (Sumatra)
• Filler: Dominican Republic & Nicaragua
• Length: 7 1/4 Inches
• Ring Gauge: 38
• Vitola: Lancero
• MSRP: $12 (Box of 20, $240)
• Release Date: December 2022
• Number of Cigars Released: 750 Boxes of 20 Cigars (15,000 Total Cigars)
• Number of Cigars Smoked For Review: 3

The Caldwell Girls Guns Gold has a lightly-tanned wrapper with some red breaking through the brown. It’s not all perfect: the color is not consistent, the veins—while pretty minimal—aren’t pretty and one cigar has some minor dents. While there’s no pigtail, the cap is very round. The aroma from the wrapper is medium with acidity, saltiness, some berries and generic woods. The foot is stronger and sweeter with berries, floral flavors, creaminess, leather and a real sharp lemon that reminds me of lemon juice. The cold draw is predictably tight, though not as sweet as the aromas would have suggested. Lots of bread flavors overpower some less defined flavors like sensations of tart lemon, salt, leather, floral flavors and paprika.

With two cigars, I experience one of the more bizarre flavors I’ve ever tasted a cigar. For less than a second, the opening puff delivers a flavor that reminds me of the whites of hard-boiled eggs. It quickly disappears and is replaced by more common cigar flavors like earthiness, woodiness, mineral flavors and some more lemon tartness. After a few seconds, it’s difficult to identify much beyond the woodiness. The first third is led by sweet creaminess over cashews, earthiness and generic crackers. Milder flavors include rice cakes and mustard powder; though every 10 or so puffs I also notice a few metallic flavors breaking through. The finish is neither as sweet nor as nutty as the main flavor, and it also feels a bit flatter. At times, it seems like I just finished eating a rice cake or two, other times there’s black pepper, sawdust, roux-like flavors and leather. Retrohales have a pencil lead-infused earthiness followed by leather, lime and rice crakes. There’s creaminess, but it’s not as clean as I typically find that flavor in a cigar. The finish has some chili flake sensations but without the standard pepper burn. Creaminess and rice cakes are the other two sensations. Flavor is medium-full, body is mild-medium and strength is mild-medium. Construction is very good with an incredibly even burn. The only bit of criticism is that the ash tends to fall off pretty quickly.

Nuttiness, dry pasta flavor and leather emerge as the strongest flavors. Unlike the first third, these flavors are much more intertwined. Secondary notes include creaminess, hay and some subtle sugar sweetness. At times it can seem like there’s nothing but dry flavors, though the profile itself is not all that dry. The finish has dry egg noodles, rice crackers, leather and pepper flake flavors. Retrohales have roasted nuttiness and oak over espresso, egg noodles, black pepper and white pepper. The finish is a bit harsher with white pepper standing out more than black pepper. The sharpness leads leather and creaminess. Flavor remains full, body is mild-medium and strength remains mild-medium. Up until the halfway point, construction remains excellent. However, after the halfway mark, one cigar needs a touch-up and another cigar needs a full relight after it mysteriously went out. Due to the ring gauge, the draw is unlikely to ever be loose, but this is on the tighter side of what I usually find in a lancero. I’m a fan of how that draw feels, but I suspect the cigar that went out wasn’t helped by the restrictions on airflow.

Mineral flavors continue to gain in intensity, which makes the Girls Guns Gold grittier as the cigar comes to a close. Earthiness and mineral flavors lead the profile over creaminess, a generic pasta flavor and black pepper. Like before, the profile is very intertwined, though the individual flavors are different enough that it’s easier to identify them. The finish has gritty earthiness over a creamy dry pasta flavor, lime, leather, white pepper and some tartness. Retrohales have pasta, leather and lemon. For the first time in the cigar, I find it difficult to tell the difference between the retrohale and the main flavor. The retrohale is slightly more intense while also being less gritty, but the flavors are very similar between the two. Flavor remains full, body is mild-medium and strength picks up to medium. After some issues in the second third, I find construction to be great in the final third.

Final Notes

• The secondary band might be the smallest band that’s ever been used on a cigar. It is just 5.5mm in height.

• This wrapper is extremely fragile. Those two points combined mean that trying to slide off the secondary band is very difficult because there’s not much paper to grab onto and the wrapper is fragile.

• Removing the main band took off some of the wrapper. All told, I’d recommend undoing the bands versus sliding them off.
• The side of the band says 2014 on them. That is a reference to the founding of Caldwell Cigar Co. and not an age statement about the cigar.
• Many years ago, Dion Giolito of Illusione told me that he looks for the ash of a cigar to look like a stack of dimes, i.e. having very thin and even lines that form in each ash chunk. Throughout the first half of this cigar, I’d say this was doing that in spades, albeit slightly smaller than a stack of dimes due to the ring gauge. Oddly, after the halfway mark, I noticed that the lines in the ash no longer appeared at the same frequency.
• Typically, I find the final third of cigars to be the least enthralling. Whether it’s due to palate fatigue or the cigar’s properties changing, it usually ends up being worse than the previous two thirds. This is a rare instance where I consistently liked the final third more than the second third.
• While Caldwell Cigar Co. has never been conservative regarding the number of new products it releases, it feels like Caldwell and Lost&Found have released many new cigars in the last 12 months. It’s challenging to keep track of all of them, and I imagine that a lot of the company’s most devoted fans are skipping new releases due to limited amounts of bandwidth, time to smoke cigars, room in a humidor and money to spend on cigars.
• Final smoking time is right around two hours and 15 minutes.
• Site sponsor Cigars Direct carries the Caldwell Girls Guns Gold.