Size:  6” x 50

Vitola:  Toro

Wrapper:  Mexican Habano 2000      

Origin: Mexico

From the Vault:

Ah, the Mexican cigar.  Much maligned, but is the bad wrap it gets justified?

As far as appearance is concerned, this looks like a nice enough cigar, the draw was very easy and it took alight well.

But the flavor… it can only be decribed as muddy, not earthy but muddy.  And it has a barnyard aroma.  

And as for the construction, it canoed a lot and got hot real quick as it seemed to be underfilled.

This was not an enjoyable cigar, in fact it was so bad i could barely get halfway doen before i had to toss it.  Yuck!

So do all Mexican cigars deserve a bad wrap?  No?

Does this one?  YES.

Rating: 55 (F)

Size: 6″ x 54

Vitola: Toro

Wrapper: Mexican Corojo (San Andres)

Origin: Dominican Republic

I do not like non-Cuban Trinidads, or any Altadis product for that matter.  To me it’s just another bastardized Cuban label.

I was intrigued by this cigar, not because of the Mexican Corojo wrapper, which I thought was just plain weird, but the fact that a post-revolutionary cigar had a 100^th Anniversary…

The was a little too easy, even for a bigger cigar and my worries were confirmed when the cigar began to canoe and tunnel (cannunel?) right away.

But just like the Cuba Aliados Anniversary cigar, it actually tasted good.  The problem with this cigar was that it actually tasted really good.  Right off the bat, I was hit with cream and milk chocolate with just a touch of spice.

There was plenty of smoke, but it had a very flaky ash.  The burn was also all over the place, but it still tasted good.  This is hard for me to write, because I usually like to bash the big guys (General & Altadis), but this cigar is making it difficult for me to do.

Worst of all, halfway through, it got better.  An Altadis cigar actually showed complexity!  The creaminess moved to the background as a warm licorice flavor took over.  What was also interesting was that the aroma was more barnyard than it would have seemed based on what I was tasting.  This was a seriously bi-polar cigar.

Horrible construction, funky aroma, but damn good taste.  Go fig.

Rating: 84 (B)