<![CDATA[Cigar Habitat - Cigar Reviews]]>

<![CDATA[Cigar Habitat - Cigar Reviews]]>Mon, 06 Jan 2025 18:19:20 -0500Weebly<![CDATA[Quick Take: Tatuaje Noellas]]>Sat, 06 Jun 2020 20:00:04 GMThttps://www.cigarhabitat.com/cigar-reviews/quick-take-tatuaje-noellas

Tatuaje Cabinet Noellas cigar made in Miami

The first time we tried the original Tatuaje cigar—now called Tatuaje Miami—back around 2005, we thought, wow, this could easily be mistaken for a Cuban cigar. I’m not sure if the cigar has changed, or our tastes have, but we would never say that now. Why? Maybe back then, this was the first cigar truly blended in the Cuban style, so it stood out as such. Maybe over the intervening 15 years, the blend or tobaccos have changed. Or maybe we’ve just grown accustomed to the kind of bold Nicaraguan tobacco that was fairly unique to Tatuaje then, but much more common now.

It was expensive back then, in part because it was made under the watchful eye of then-unknown master blender Don Pepin Garcia at his small factory in Miami, Florida with US labor costs. Today, it’s still expensive, still made in Miami (though Garcia oversees a far larger operation now) and still one of our favorite cigars. It’s also available in all of our favorite sizes except for the dreaded 6x60 monstrosity we despise. And lo and behold…you can get a corona! The 5 1/8” x 42 cigar comes un-cellophaned (whoopee!) in cabinets of 25 for $225, or $9 each. That’s not terribly expensive for a USA-made cigar.

Yet compared to the larger double corona or robusto or torpedo, the Noellas is a minor pleasure. It’s more rumpled in appearance than its bigger siblings. The experience is also more compact, with concentrated and not especially complex flavors of earth, leather, spice and wood. You have to smoke it slowly, or it can get harsh and bitter and quite strong. As a morning cigar, it’s strictly for those who have fairly stout constitutions; one of these, with a blonde roast coffee, got our hearts racing (and bowels churning!) on a recent sunny Saturday.

So think of this as a two-ounce espresso version of a larger Tatuaje rather than an abbreviated one. It’s quite different than the more open and complex bigger ring gauges. Our box, from 2017, has over three years of age but has mellowed not at all. If you’re into thin ring gauges, for a few dollars more, we recommend the Lonsdale-sized Havana Cazadores which starts more slowly, or better yet, the double corona Tainos at only $13—a two hour luxury smoke that checks off a lot more boxes and is a way more relaxing time. But if you want a firecracker, hey, don’t let us steer you away from the Noellas. It just happens to be the least talented member of a very formidable family.

THE DETAILS

5.1x42
USA
W: Ecuador
B: Nicaragua
F: Nicaragua
$9.00

THE HIGHLIGHTS

A bold, espresso cigar with straightforward flavors of leather, wood , spice and earth and a pungent aroma. The blend is better served in other Tat's longer, thicker formats.

THE VERDICT

CLASSIC
EXCELLENT
VERY GOOD
GOOD
----------------------
SMOKE/HOLD

]]><![CDATA[Cigar Review: Super Fly by Oscar Valladares Connecticut]]>Sat, 25 Apr 2020 19:53:38 GMThttps://www.cigarhabitat.com/cigar-reviews/cigar-review-super-fly-by-oscar-valladares-connecticut

It takes a lot to stand out in today’s cigar market, where manufacturers play a seemingly friendly but relentless game of one-upmanship. Oscar Valladares manages to play that game well, offering a small but bold lineup of brands that really stand out on the shelf—though if you drop a box of the company’s camo-themed Wild Hunter smokes in the woods, you might never find it again:

Not so with the Super Fly box. Yeesh:

What any one brand has to do with the other is anyone’s guess…Wild Hunter lives alongside Altar Q and 2012 and for whatever reason, the subject of today’s review, Super Fly. Technically, this isn’t the bold, regular-production Super Fly but a new, special, one-size-only version called the Super Fly by Oscar Valladares Connecticut.

We approve, though, because it’s a corona (yay!) and also part of the new breed of light-wrapped cigars that are definitely not your grandfather’s idea of Connecticut Shade. The 5¼ inch by 45 ring gauge format is little plump for a corona, and only a digit away in girth from being technically a corona gorda. Yet here it is, and we’ll take it. In today’s working-from-home world, your former 45-minute commute can be reimagined as extra cigar time. While nine bucks is on the high side these days considering the economic fallout all around us, it’s hardly outrageous considering Davidoff still charges $13 for a 4½ x 41 petit corona. (You keep on being you, Davidoff…we’ll meet again someday when people have jobs.)

Go ahead and take off that ginormous (and slightly hideous) band if you want, because it’s only hiding an otherwise great looking smoke. That’s some seriously nice wrapper leaf, approaching Cuban tobacco in terms of being smooth and with barely perceptible veins. It’s a little darker than we’re used to, but perhaps only slightly, and it has an appealingly reddish tint under the right light. Maybe that’s because this isn’t USA Connecticut, or the far more common Ecuador Connecticut, but Honduran Connecticut. The binder is Honduran too, with a filler blend consisting of Honduran, Nicaraguan and Dominican leaf. In fact, this is the first Oscar blend to include Dominican tobacco, perhaps in an old-school nod to traditional Connecticut cigars like Macanudo and Don Diego.

It resists being lit just a little, but once you get it going, the draw is very good and you’re immediately hit with Nicaraguan spice and Honduran earthiness smoothed out by that little hit of Dominican leaf and that mellow but flavorful-looking wrapper. It’s bready in texture, with a cake-like mouthfeel, a ginger-beer tingle on the tongue and hints of cocoa and leather. Grandpa might shit himself if you played the old switcheroo with one of these instead of his usual Ashton. It’s bold but still medium in strength, with a full-ish body and a long aftertaste. Trust us, if you’re hankering for a bite-sized chunk of new age Connecticut goodness, this is your idea of a good time. Fill your pimp cup to the brim with your favorite bev, don your finest animal print bathrobe and spark one of these beauties up during the time you’d normally spend fighting traffic. How’s that for a better start to your day—and a big bright spot during quarantine?

THE DETAILS

5.25x45
Honduras
W: Honduras
B: Honduras
F: Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Honduras
$9

THE HIGHLIGHTS

A quarantine treat all around. The beautiful Colorado-hued wrapper hugs a three-country blend that produces snappy, ginger like spice and a range of flavors from sweet to earth.

THE VERDICT

CLASSIC
EXCELLENT
VERY GOOD
GOOD
----------------------
SMOKE/HOLD

]]><![CDATA[Cigar Review: Sobremesa Brulee Robusto]]>Sat, 21 Dec 2019 22:01:51 GMThttps://www.cigarhabitat.com/cigar-reviews/cigar-review-sobremesa-brulee-robusto

Connecticut Shade-wrapped cigars have undergone a transformation in the last decade. First of all, very few are actually wrapped in genuine USA-grown leaf, which for decades was where nearly all Connecticut Shade came from. The high cost of US labor, combined with the short growing season and difficult process of literally shading the plants from excess sun exposure, became too much to overcome. Then there’s the value of the land, which was too high to justify its use for farming. Most Shade leaf now hails from Ecuador, where there’s no need to actually shade the leaves. The result is a richer, tastier tobacco that comes up lacking only when it comes to appearance. It’s oiler and veinier than the US-grown varieties, the finest of which resembled the smoothness of Cuban wrapper leaf.

Enter Steve Saka, owner of Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust. He was quoted as saying that today’s Connecticut “mainstays” have become “bitter and grassy” and that left the door open for someone—him—to reinvent the old blend. We assume that when Saka says “mainstays,” he’s referring to the old guard types like Macanudo, and not the new breed of far less mild Connecticut smokes from Oliva, My Father, AJ Fernandez, etc. We haven’t smoked a Macanudo in a dog’s age, but we did try some Don Diego lonsdales recently and they were woody and buttery and not bitter and grassy.

So it seems Saka developed Sobremesa Brulee as a line extension of the fuller-bodied Sobremesa brand that serves as a return to the way Connecticut cigars used to be, according to him anyway. We’ll leave it to you to decide whether that amounts to a solution in search of a problem. The cigar itself does fit a niche: it’s mild, but very flavorful. The newer Connecticut brands tend to be more on medium side, and while they’re very flavorful as well, they may not be suited to an early morning smoke, or simply occasions where you want something on the lighter side. On the other hand, Brulee is a cigar we could smoke any time of day, even after a meal.

It’s well made, with a golden-yellow wrapper leaf that has a nice oily sheen compared to many drier-looking USA Connecticut wrappers. The draw is excellent and the burn is very good as well; this is a luxury cigar that requires little attention during smoking. In keeping with the classic Connecticut Shade recipe, the binder is Mexican to add a little zing, but just a tiny bit. But whereas the Macanudos of the world use Dominican filler, Brulee is packed with Nicaraguan tobacco. While many smokers equate that with strong cigars, the truth is all kinds of tobacco gets grown there, and what’s used here collectively is hardly the stuff that’ll put much hair on your chest.

There’s pepper and sweetness at first, but this cigar quickly takes on notes resembling buttered English muffin and on the sweeter side, breakfast waffle, anisette, peanuts and a drizzle of maple syrup. It benefits from being smoked slowly. All of the Nicaraguan leaf, if overheated, can quickly overwhelm you with sweet, dense earthiness. Certainly, toward the end, earth takes over despite how slow it’s smoked. While we might not go so far as to call this cigar complex, it has a lot more going on than those Don Diegos we tried not too long ago.

For this review, we tried both the 6x52 Toro and 5.2x52 Robusto. Quite frankly, the Toro was too much of a good thing. The mid-section was longer, and because it didn’t change much, it got a little boring for our tastes. The shorter Robusto, on the other hand, was a more abbreviated experience that grew gradually richer and more complex with every puff instead of staying in a pleasant sweet spot for too long. If you like that sweet spot, then by all means, go for the Toro! Either way, this is a very nice smoke that we’ll be enjoying on many Saturday mornings to come. At $12.45, it’s on the expensive side, but we think it’s unique enough, and with enough obvious quality, to merit the price.

THE DETAILS

5.2x52
Nicaragua
W: Ecuador
B: Mexico
F: Nicaragua
$12.45

THE HIGHLIGHTS

Lush, rich, mouth-filling smoke that's lightly peppery and has buttery English muffin and maple syrup sweetness with a core of earth bubbling underneath.

THE VERDICT

CLASSIC
EXCELLENT
VERY GOOD
GOOD
----------------------
SMOKE/HOLD

]]><![CDATA[Cigar Review: Diesel Whiskey Row Toro]]>Fri, 21 Sep 2018 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.cigarhabitat.com/cigar-reviews/cigar-review-diesel-whiskey-row-toro

Ugh, we thought. Just what we need: a slightly flavored cigar for those who like their cigars just slightly ruined, but not quite a full-on Acid. After all, why else would you age it in bourbon barrels if not to impart a flavor other than what naturally occurs in the tobacco, AKA an artificial flavor. We couldn't have been more wrong.

Diesel Whiskey Row is made by AJ Fernandez...the same AJ Fernandez whose cigars we generally love and who is blending some of the boldest, most unique smokes on the market today. The story goes, he doesn't simply drop these in the barrel to suck up a strong whiskey aroma. He experimented quite extensively to get exactly what he was looking for, and using only the binder leaf. The result is a delicious cigar with an enticing aroma that never for a second overtly reminds one of brown liquor.

That being said, a lot of the nuances and aromas do have a somewhat whisky-like resonance to them. The texture of the smoke is cake-like, with a sugary, bready mouthfeel that positively drenches the palate in upfront flavor. First impressions are of a more medium-bodied experience but it quickly ramps up closer to full. It's initially deceiving because a lot of the hallmarks of full-bodied, Nicaraguan cigars like leather and earth are less prominent here and balanced by sweetness and wood.

The blend is crazy. Mexican San Andreas tobacco is so rich and characterful it's best used in small doses, and AJ smartly chose it for just the binder. But that also happens to be the one leaf which is bourbon barrel aged, ramping up the uniqueness even further. Our suspicion is the boldest flavors are coming from the binder—the sweetness, the cake and sugary icing—while the Ecuador wrapper brings the smoothness and the three region blend of filler (Ometepe, Jalapa, and Condesa) impart the more recognizable and expected Nicaraguan traits of wood and earth. Blends like this would've been considered over the top just a couple decades ago to the point of being unmarketable, and indeed, some of the tobaccos used here either barely existed or were not in common use then.

However, this "New World" style of blending may put off fans of more classic blends and also Cuban cigars. While balanced, it doesn't show an overabundance of complexity and some of you might wish it was more like an actual whiskey that you could add some water to and "open it up." Will aging temper this aspect—or will the cigar get duller with time? Right now, we're saying smoke these now, but maybe hold a few back because frankly AJ's brands haven't been around long enough to predict what to do.

The four sizes are pretty close together: a chunky 5.5x52 robusto, a 7x49 churchill that we like a lot, a stupid 6x60, and the best compromise of the bunch, this 6x54 toro reviewed here. We'd love to try this in a corona gorda around a 45 or 46 ring gauge, but perhaps the reason it doesn't exist is because it wouldn't allow for enough filler tobacco to balance out the blend. Still, it would be fun to try, even if it blew half our heads off!

Branding-wise, there's a little too much going on for us to decode. It's a partnership with Rabbit Hole Distillery, who supplies the used whiskey barrels used to age the binder leaf, and that's noted on the bottom band. It's also somehow a line extension of Diesel, which we tend to think of as a Cigars International exclusive house blend. Yet these are distributed to brick-and-mortar stores by General Cigar, which we guess sorta makes sense because Swedish Match owns both General and CI. Why not just call it Whiskey Row? Or make it Rabbit Hole's first cigar under their brand name, just like Drew Estate did with Pappy Van Winkle? It's a little confusing.

Fernandez keeps taking on new blends and upping production, which you would expect to impact quality, but there's no evidence of that here or in any of the other cigars of his that we recently sampled (and continue to enjoy).

Certainly this would pair well with just about any whiskey you'd care for, but we liked it best with a classic Scotch and soda. The fizz and flavor were more palate refreshing than you'd get with straight liquor. In fact, it was almost flavor overload with so many bold, upfront and harmonious things going on. This also goes great with a malted vanilla milkshake or coffee, too, and probably cola as well. There's a lot of versatility built into this blend, making it a great choice for after lunch or after dinner or heck, even after a hearty breakfast...just as long as your belly is full since this one could go wrong on an empty stomach.

AJ Fernandez has another winner on his hands. It's not the first time we've said that, and probably not even the last time we'll say it this year. There's never been a better time to be a cigar enthusiast thanks to dudes like him.

THE DETAILS

6.x54
Nicaragua
W: Ecuador
B: San Andreas
F: Nicaragua
$7.99

THE HIGHLIGHTS

Bold, rich, dense, upfront, mouth-filling and exciting. While not overly complex, this is a delicious and balanced cigar with notes of cake and earth and wood and leather. Very well made.

THE VERDICT

CLASSIC
EXCELLENT
VERY GOOD
GOOD
----------------------
SMOKE/HOLD

]]><![CDATA[Quick Take: Monte by Montecristo AJ Fernandez Toro]]>Thu, 05 Jul 2018 04:00:00 GMThttps://www.cigarhabitat.com/cigar-reviews/quick-take-monte-by-montecristo-aj-fernandez-toro

AJ Fernandez is on a roll, and his new partnership with cigarmaking giant Altadis USA has already netted at least one stellar smoke, H. Upmann by AJ Fernandez which we just reviewed—and recommended highly. Now here's a new take on another old brand with a three-country blend that practically mirrors the Upmann: Ecuador wrapper, Nicaraguan binder and Nicaraguan and Dominican filler. The price is higher, but Montecristos have always been sold at a premium. So for a few bucks more, is this a few ticks better?

It's good looking, with a very oily wrapper and a few veins and imperfections. The attractive box press and cocoa-hued wrapper give it all the appeal of a luxurious, gourmet chocolate bar. The Montecristo name and logo have an aura of class all by themselves, but on this particular product, add to the overall effect that this is a cigar worthy of its (elevated, but still reasonable) price point.

Lighting up, the draw is ever so slightly firm. That's not necessarily a flaw and indeed it may be that way intentionally. It limits smoke production a little, but on the other hand, we can picture this thing burning too fast and hot were the draw as open as, say, a larger gauge Padron 1926, which is utterly effortless but requires vigilance to keep it from overheating and smoking too quickly. The burn is just about perfect, which is a feat considering the oily wrapper.

While the flavors are big and bold, it just doesn't coat the palate quite like the Upmann Fernandez does. Also, the flavors tend to hit all at once and then fade more quickly, where the Upmann has a more gradual and satisfying finish. As you'd expect from the appearance, it's got chocolate and coffee up front, with a touch of leather and some graham cracker character. It's medium-full in body and ramps up slightly toward the end, gaining some of the intensity we wished for right at the start. You can feel the Altadis influence in this blend, because it feels like they started off at a 9 and then dialed it back to a 7.5 fearing it might be too bold and characterful to appeal to the upper echelon of the masses. (Well, anyway, the masses who spend $10+ on a super premium cigar which is a minority of cigar smokers.) If you're expecting full-throttle AJ flair, you might be better off selecting something from his own line instead. (May we recommend the new-ish San Lotano Requiem Habano? Review coming soon!)

In the end, much as we hate to keep comparing it to the Upmann, it's inevitable. The Monte just isn't as easy to enjoy and costs more. That being said, it's richer and fuller-bodied and will be more likely to appeal to folks who like Opus X, VSG, Padron Anniversary and the like and may be looking for a more everyday alternative. So, depending on your individual tastes, you may prefer this to the Upmann. Either way, the Altadis-Fernandez collabo is an exciting one that has produced encouraging results so far. We can't wait for more releases from this duo of highly experienced and innovative cigar manufacturers.

THE DETAILS

6.x55
Nicaragua
W: Ecuador
B: Nicaragua
F: Nicaragua, Dominican Republic
$11.44

THE HIGHLIGHTS

Great looking, chocolate-bar appearance. Slightly firm draw. Big flavors but rather upfront and with a short finish. Medium-full bodied. Could use more character and intensity.

THE VERDICT

CLASSIC
EXCELLENT
VERY GOOD
GOOD
----------------------
SMOKE/HOLD

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