What's with the Gurkha hate?

[blind2reason]

Is there a fundamental flaw with the company Gurkha that has so many brothers of the leaf turned against them, or are they just bad cigars?

I personally have yet to try one because there are a lot of cigars on my hit list yet, but I do have a couple in my humidor. So what’s the story? Did they sponsor a baby seal clubbing tourney back in the day? Are they just overrated? What gives? I keep seeing the name Gurkha used like it’s a blasphemous dirty word in the forums, and I don’t get it.

I know there are a lot of bandwagoners that will say they hate anything that is consistently top rated in order not to be labeled conformists, but I want to know what people’s real beef is with this seemingly legitimate company.

I don’t get it, enlighten me!

-Blind:cbig:

 

[NickThePyro]

They make the MSRP WAY higher than the value of the sticks should be. Tactic is used to always have them on dirt cheap sales so it seems like a great deal to get people to buy but they are getting sold at the amount they should be sold at in the first place. Some are good, then sticks like HMR are as good as a $8 stick from what I read and is sold for hundreds a stick.

 

[Patrick B]

In a nutshell, they are boring cigars when compared to a TON of other stuff that's out there. Around here, though, we always say try a cigar and if you like it that's all that matters.

 

[strife]

There's a handful of good Gurkhas but unless you're buying online you're paying more for the boxes and bands. Then there's trying to figure out which stick out of the umpteenth thousand that they make that you actually liked and finding it again. Not worth the trouble IMHO.

 

[cmhicksusmc]

There's a handful of good Gurkhas but unless you're buying online you're paying more for the boxes and bands. Then there's trying to figure out which stick out of the umpteenth thousand that they make that you actually liked and finding it again. Not worth the trouble IMHO.

I Concur^+1

but i do like Titans.

 

[blind2reason]

I only have two, and one is a Titan and the other is a Crest perfecto. I've been saving/aging them a bit in my humidor because I like the feel and smell of them. I can't contest what others are saying about Gurkha though, so it's just more knowledge I can use when making purchases (always appreciated).

Thanks!

-Blind:cbig:

 

[twenty5]

Smoke one and tell us what you think of them.

In my experience with Gurkha, I have had cigars that exploded, wrappers that came unwrapped, pulled sticks out of them the size of a pencile, etc etc, all that trouble for a cigar that usually tastes like bunched up burning newspaper? No thank you.

I do however think they make awesome boxes and if anyone has an empty genghis khan box feel free to send it my way. Besides, what other company has the balls to charge 15,000$ for a box of 20 cigars?

To each their own though, I know people that swear by Gurkha and claim them as their favorite cigar mfgr.

 

[JRL]

Smoke what you like and like what you smoke.

All the Gurkas I have bought have been at reduced pricing and I have had very few issues with them. I don't mind them and enjoy most of them.

I was smoking one at Casa Fuente when one of the guys who work there commented on how well it was burning and ask what I had, I think he was kind of surprised when I showed him.

 

[ThatGuy3510]

All but one of the Gurkhas I've had, have been pretty good sticks, mostly because I took the recommendations from my B&M on what to try. Like others have said, there are diamonds in the rough among their many blends (Ninja, Ancient Warrior come to mind), but it doesn't seem worth it to me to drop money on cigars I know have a higher-than-average chance of falling apart and being unsmokeable.

 

[whodeeni]

For whatever reason, a lot of the good ones end up being Discontinued...
and Mike is right... I was looking at a ci catalog yesterday. They had 3 Gurkha Beast's and 3 Gurkha Beauty's for 29.99 the MSRP on both of these sticks is between 28-30.00. From what I hear the Gurkha Beauty is a great conneticut stick but is it 30.00 good? Probably not.... (very few sticks are....)

 

[agctribefan]

I have smoked a lot of gurkhas, some are good, some not so much. The MSRP is blown way out of proportion, but nobody actually is going to pay that msrp. I have heard that there is a lot of issues with gurkha's exploding. of all of the gurkhas I have smoked I have only had one experience with the wrapper blowing up. Give them a try and you may like them. Thats one of the best things about smoking cigars. Everyones tastes are different. You like what you like and there's nothing wrong with that.

 

[Koujo]

From my experience I have found them to be very inconsistent in their cigars. This is not from brand to brand but from inside each brand. I have found that if you buy them from a B&M you are more likely to get a good one but if you buy from a sampler online of the same brand, the quality is worse and is way different. This makes me think they have two different factories one for the good cigars and one for the samplers that most of the time suck. This is just from my experience.

 

[vivalanation734]

From my knowledge the guys at Ghurka just buy random bails of tobacco and blend with their eyes closed. To each his own, but for the price there are much better cigars.

 

[TMS]

I tried a few when I was into NC more. 3 things:

suck
suck
suck

Oh I forgot to add their logo sucks as well. Scares all the other cigars next to them.

 

[Bsneed51]

At least K. Hansotia has a firm grasp on his product, since he refers to the other cigar makers as Ford and GM, and says his products are more like Ferraris and Bentleys. :bigeyes:

 

[CWS]

I have smoked boxes and boxes of Gurkhas in the past and loved them. Legend and Masters Select were both cigars of choice for years. The problem these days is there are so many labels that who knows if any one is good or not. Seems like they release a new cigar every week. Also the pricing is meaningless as they have so many discounters of their product and discount lines now. I don't hate em. I just gave up following them.

 

[Dave]

I've sampled at least a dozen different Gurkhas. None were awful. Some were OK; some were good, some were outstanding. None were competitive with other brands at MSRP. Most are decent value at cigarbid/CI/C.com-type pricing.
The brand just seems to inspire strong negative reactions due to extremely high MSRP, too many blends without having any enduring flagships, and tendency of Gurkha to engage in hyperbole which pisses some people off (Rolls Royce of Cigars, HMR @ $700 per stick, etc.)
They have a few that fill their niches very well:
Nepalese Warrior - stellar cameroon that can be had for ~$3 at online budget outfits
Titan - Wonderful, full flavor - no value at $30 msrp, but delicious and worth c.com/ci prices of $5-6
Micro Batch Liga TPB-1 -- Ridiculous name, but under the radar outstanding box-press corona corojo -- I'm well into my third box....don't tell anyone, but I haven't paid over $2 for one yet
HMR -- hard for me to imagine ever paying $20 for a cigar, much less $700. But, they do sell some of these and get much more value in the publicity of having one of the highest priced production sticks in the world.

 

[Bsneed51]

Micro Batch Liga TPB-1 -- Ridiculous name, but under the radar outstanding box-press corona corojo -- I'm well into my third box....don't tell anyone, but I haven't paid over $2 for one yet

Someone sent me on of these in the lancero/panatela vitola with the band removed for me to do a blind tasting, and I have to admit it was a pretty decent cigar.

 

[blind2reason]

A lot of good points on here that make sense. They do seem to be a lot about advertising and damn do they have a lot of different types. I don't have any personal experiences with Gurkha yet, so I'm still neutral towards them. But the general consensus seems to be that they're about quantity over quality.

-Blind:cbig:

 

[Hayblet]

I have smoked a lot of gurkhas, some are good, some not so much. The MSRP is blown way out of proportion, but nobody actually is going to pay that msrp. I have heard that there is a lot of issues with gurkha's exploding. of all of the gurkhas I have smoked I have only had one experience with the wrapper blowing up. Give them a try and you may like them. Thats one of the best things about smoking cigars. Everyones tastes are different. You like what you like and there's nothing wrong with that.

A big +1 to this guy's thoughts, I've tried a ton of Gurkhas with still many left to smoke, no idea why MSRP is so high on them because I've never seen them sold at that price, least B&M wise. I still firmly believe the Centurion Perfecto is the best blend and only one's I've had "bad-ish" experiences with was the Cuban Legacy and The Regent. I think most of the time The Beauty is tubed and tubed sticks tend to MSRP higher? I do enjoy Gurkha sticks, but I also know for the price you can get superb sticks like the LP 9, T 52, or the Dirty Rat. Just my two cents I suppose, but no harm in trying them so you don't wonder about what if.