Too much age??

Last night, I dug to the eternal bowels of my humidor and pulled out a Partagas Black label pyramid 1845 series. I remember buying a a box of these back in 2004 or 2005, but must not have smoked all of them. Once I realized that this cigar had 5 years of age on it possibly, I got my self excited! Maybe too excited... Well, the whole experience proved to be disappointing. Not only was the cigar extremely plugged, and didn't produce hardly any smoke; the cigar lost most of it's flavor! This brings up a good point that I think some people don't really think about. Like different wines, some cigars are meant to have the consumer age them, and some are not. The difficult thing is that, the manufacturer often times won't tell you that it should or shouldn't be aged. Which leads us to make a subjective opinion on the matter. AND like wine, a cigar will peak with age, and start a steady decline not only in flavor, but composition as well. Unlike Cuban cigars, most non-Cuban cigar's tobacco is aged anywhere from 6 months - 10 years. Cuban manufacturers tend to ferment the tobacco for a much shorter period of time, hence why many people box age their Cuban cigars. I think this is more of a cultural thing than anything else. We here in the USA tend to like our products NOW. We as a culture don't like to wait for things. Latinos and Europeans tend to be much more accommodating when it comes to waiting for the finer things in life. Let's face it, the Europeans know how do it right!

In conclusion, I believe that 5 years was probably 4 years too many for this Partagas cigar. I need to get better at rotating my humidors!!