Gross Times with Good Times - A Cigar Blend Review
Background
Are you familiar with Good Times? No? Well honestly, and I mean this sincerely, congratulations. I encourage you to close out this review and continue on being unfamiliar with Good Times. It’s a better life. It means you probably have avoided Facebook groups hawking their litany of picks, or whiskey bros showing off a Chocolate Caramel Coconut Fudge Sundae flavored (intentional word use- Good Times will claim finished, I will not) bottle with a pornographic sticker or marketed by some secondary group as an “Infinity Stone” pick.
If you’ve stuck with me so far, welcome to the pyramid scheme of the whiskey realm. The scheme goes something like: Groups or individuals buy flavored (that Good Times will call finished) picks, slap some stickers on them, foist them on novice collectors, novice collectors receive increased blood sugar. A quick list of the three funniest flavor picks I’ve personally seen:
Mexican Neopolitan Raspberry Cask Finish Rye: Claims to use Raspberry Brandy, Mexican Vanilla, Bourbon Cacao barrels.
Caramel Chocolate Coconut Cask Finish Bourbon: Claims to use Bourbon Caramel, Chocolate, and Coconut Brandy barrels.
Vanilla Coconut Pineapple Cask Finish Bourbon: Claims to use Bourbon Vanilla, Coconut Rum, and Pineapple Brandy barrels.
Good Times- the whiskey for people who don’t want to taste whiskey! As you can see, these are deeply unserious people, so this will be a deeply unserious (but real! I actually drank this whiskey!) review. Without further ado:
Good Times Cigar Blend (Oloroso, Cognac, Armagnac Barrels) (NAS, 118 Proof)
Nose: Saccharin sweet barn hay aged in sweat coated cognac barrels. It has a musk, and not the good kind. If you told me they used this as a stand-in scent for Sex Panther in Anchorman, I’d believe you. Someone clearly wanted this to smell good and failed trying.
Palate: It has a harsh, chemical, grainy, peanut nature. Almost as if it was designed for warfare against an allergy ridden kindergarten class. Honey is also a note. Maybe some lemon peel from the cognac? I’m being completely serious when I say it just tastes horribly artificial.
Finish: Oh hey honey, welcome back! Let's drizzle you over a shipping container and bottle the run off. The finish just lingers like you licked a handful of pennies.
Disgusting (1/10)
Overall: My disdain for this offering is clear at the top, so you have every reason to not believe what I am about to say: I was ready for my mind to be changed when I drank this. My first approach was coming from an angle of “is this as bad as everyone says.” It is. It is horrendously artificial. Nothing about this tastes real. Whatever notes the underlying bourbon had, and the implication from the bottle is that it’s MGP, have long since been covered up by the flavoring process.
I could have given this a 2, 3, or 4, and you all would have gotten the point. But the impression this pour gave me is one of such immediate revulsion that I never want to drink this again, much less try a more ridiculous concoction from them. Poison.
