7 X 50 Churchill on a Budget

Large size often gets our attention, the bigger the better as they say. The present trend in cigars is taking sizes to amazing levels – 8 X 60 or more (any larger and the stick will have to have a built in handle).  However popular, the larger sizes use more tobacco so cost increases accordingly and more of your hard earned funds go up in smoke when you kick back to enjoy the big ones.  Enter M.J. Frias Cigars, whose website states “our goal is to provide our Wholesaler and Retail customers with a competitive and cost effective Cigar. We offer a wide selection of high quality products, which ship from our location in Orlando Florida.”  I met Miguel Frias at the 2013 IPCPR and he is proud of having made millions of affordable cigars since opening in 1991.  We discussed his factory in Santiago, Dominican Republic, and his company’s cigar offerings.  He gave me a Titan Cubano to test.

The Titans come in 6 sizes ranging from a toro classico (6 x 54) to King Kong’s favorite – the gigantes (8 X 60).  My Titan was a Churchill, 7 X 50 shaped like a double corona. The wrapper is an Ecuadorian Connecticut with the Colorado claro color. Both the binder and filler are Dominican.

The Titan was very firm and I find that Connecticut wrappers are almost always attractive.  The cap was particularly well done and the pre-smoke aroma was mild cedar. The stick light well enough and the smoke volume was thick and creamy.  The initial flavors were cedar and nuts with a background of sweetness.  By the middle of the smoke cream supplanted the sweetness and the final third was simply cedar.  The aftertaste was pleasant enough for a medium bodied cigar.  The 7 X 60 lasted an hour and 10 minutes, a little less than I thought for this size stick. In any case I found the Titan Cuban Churchill on line for $3.95 (a box of 24 for $95).  This is a lot of decent smoking for that price so I rate the Titan a 3.5 out of 5. This is the cigar to have on hand when the dreaded in-laws show up and you want to impress them at a very reasonable cost.