Santiago — Wins

One of my sad realities is that I have too many cigars.   Yeah, I know, poor me!  What actually is the case is that I receive so many different cigars I hardly remember them all.  So it with the cigar I write about now.  I was looking for a smaller cigar the other night and I took this gem from the humidor.  My first thought was that it was  a beautiful cigar.   And, looking at the band, I began to wonder, what was it?

Whatever it was it was great.  When I did some research I found that it is a cigar company founded about 5 years ago by some people in NIcaragua who previously had some money in the industry but no real active participation.. They opened this small factory in Santiago de los Caballero , and with the help of the Placensia family made a great cigar.

This box pressed beauty punched easily and lit without  a problem producing a nice volume of smoke.  It felt very comfortable in my hand.  The construction of the cigar matched its looks.  It had a nice even open draw and gave a good ash.

Flavor was a bit off at first, with just a hint of bitterness.  That quickly gave way to a creamy, mocha flavor.  Mocha became much more predominant in the second third of the cigar.  Toward the end there were notes of vanilla to round out the chocolate.  On the whole a very pleasant forty five minute smoke.

Despite my best efforts I couldn’t find anyone selling this stick, so I am unable to make a value judgement and sadly, that has impacted the overall rating for this wonderful cigar.  But, I would certainly easily pay up to $7 for this great cigar.