Esteban Carreras- A Nice Smoke

It’s been quite some time since I enjoyed reviewing a cigar.  Reviews over the past month or so have focused on our CigarMadness2016 smoking contest.  Results of that contest should be posted within a few weeks to coincide with the basketball.  It has been fun smoking and reviewing some great sticks.  But it has left little time for other reviews.  If you can’t sympathize because you wish you were smoking more, let us know.  We could always use more reviewers.  Give it a try as a guest reviewer and if we both like the experience you could find yourself in the cigar industry.

Last night I went to the humidor and found an interesting smoke.  The Esteban Carreras Habana Real Semilla cigar.  I knew next to nothing about it, but it looked nice.  So I gave it a shot.  And what a shot it was. The vitola that I had was a torpedo, so I gave it a nice flat cut, and lit ti up.  It lit easily and gave off a nice leathery aroma  The cigar presents really well with the beautiful habano ‘gold’ wrapper.

The first tastes were earthy with jut a hint of spice.  It had and even mellow creamy flavor.  As it continued to burn, coolly, I got little bits of vanilla and straw.  At about the halfway mark the after taste became more pronounced.  It lingered but was very pleasant.  This just added to the interest for me.

Construction of this cigar was as near to perfect as any hand made item can be.  It burned evenly with a nice long grey ash.  The edge was tight and the smoke cool.

My only concern about this smoke is the price.  At around $10 it’s a reasonable value but I’d like it much more at $8.  Even so, it scores a nice 4 out of 5.  Enjoy!