La Flor Dominicana Air Bender - 2010 Zen Cigar of the Year

Zen Limited Edition Cigar of the Year:

This also required deliberation, but the winner came to me much more quickly.  It was the cigar that offered the most unique tasting experience..

EP Carillo Short Run – 2010 Limited Edition Cigar of the Year

Congrats!  I look forward to 2011!

Zen Cigar of the Year

Aurora 107 – a nice new offering from the oldest factory in the DR, great price point too.

La Flor Dominicana Air Bender – another wonderful full-flavored smoke from Litto Gomez.

AVO Heritage – the strongest AVO to date!  Very good and flavorful!

El Triunfador – it feels like this line has been out longer than 2010, but this is Pete’s smoothest and most refined cigar to date.

EP Carillo Core Line - Ernesto is back in form with his Core Line offering.

Zen Limited Edition Cigar of the Year – where small batches rule!

La Gloria Cubana Artesanos de Obelisco – a true pyramid shape, this cigar from General is actually really good.

EP Carillo Short Run – Ernesto at his best – with a hint of Kelner to the cigar.

Illusione Singulare 2010 – a cigar that gets better each time I smoke it.

Viaje Holiday Blend 2010 – Andre does a lot of LEs, but this is by far his best this year.

Griffin’s XXVI – after some duds, the Griffin’s LE is back!

So who’s it gonna be?  Is the suspense killing you??  Well, you won’t have to wait long.  I’ll reveal the results by the end of the week.  Oh, and no poll this year, but feel free to leave me your opinions and thoughts in the comment section.  Thanks!

Size:

Vitola: Toro

Wrapper: Ecuadorian Habano

Origin: RP factory in Nicaragua

Age: Pre-Release – super fresh!

I received an e-mail from the folks at Rocky Patel asking if I would be interested in trying a pre-release of Rocky’s 15th Anniversary cigar.  I said sure, and the cigars were at my doorsteps faster than you can say Ecuadorian Habano-seed wrapper.

I received two, this review is for the first one I smoked.  Taking in to consideration that this is a pre-release you sometimes have to over look any youthful characteristics in the smoke.

The cigar has a very dark wrapper for being an Ecuadorian Habano-seed, and looks like it might have a kick to it.  Considering this nice looking box-pressed cigar has all Nicaraguan filler in it, I thought it may be a welcome departure from the usual RP Honduran flavor profile.

The cigar had a nice pre-light draw and the first flavors were spicy and rich, reminiscent of the first run of Edges all those years back.  There definitely was some Nicaraguan spice present in those first few draws.  It also doesn’t have that dryness present in some Honduran tobacco.

I picked up some leather and wood with the pepper.  There was also a little coffee on the finish.

The burn got a little off but corrected itself a few inches down the cigar.  To me, this was one of Rocky’s strongest cigars to date.   It reminded me a lot of Rocky’s newer cigars like the Patel Bros cigar and the last Winter Selection cigar that was a big hit with fans.

Yes, there was some youth to the cigar, that bite that accompanies a freshly rolled cigar, but this should even out in a few months.

As I finished the cigar, the pepper was still there to punch me in the face along with some nice coffee and cocoa notes.

This is a nice cigar that will mark Rocky’s amazing rise to being one of the top cigar makers in the industry, more amazing that it’s only been 15 years!  Thanks again to the folks at Rocky Patel for the chance to smoke this new release before it goes out to retailers!

Vitola: Toro

Wrapper: Dominican Rosado

Origin: the DR

Age: Fresh from my humidor but aged in Calvados barrels at Chateau Fuente

I recieved this cigar from the second round of CRA samplers. The Forbidden X cigars are a little different then your normal Opus. These bad boys are aged in Calvados barrels. So what drink did I decide to pair with this rare cigar?  Why calvados of course!

I removed the cedar wrapping and took a whiff, I swear I could smell that appley goodness.

After the first few puffs I already knew I was in heaven. I got that rich woody and cedary taste with a dash of leather and yes, apple.

From the way it was tasting, I thought I was at the end of the cigar, not the beginning.

It’s really interesting, and I’m not sure it just the calvados I’m drinking, but I really get an appley crisp bite to this cigar. Maybe I should ease up on the booze…

As I continue this wonderful cigar I am inundated with notes of coffee and coca with a hint of spice.  This after all, still an Opus.  Part of me wanted to age this cigar for a special occassion, but I wanted to smoke this while it still had some of the Calvados essence.  I have tried to age Anejos and they seem to lose that special flavor as well.  Anyhoo, I’m glad I smoked it.

Fuente really went through a dry spell with Opus quality, I’m glad to see they are back!

I’m sitting outside under the porch, near my wife’s gardenias while a a nice NC summer thunderstorm rolls in enjoying a fine drink and cigar. Couldn’t be finer!  Zen at it’s best!

Rating: 91 (A-)

This cigar is smooth and spicy.  If you are a fan of the My Father line of cigars, this is a must try!  Hal & Co. at Empire will ship!

2010

90 Miles – This new line from the folks at Flor de Gonzalez will come in 4 sizes with an Ecuadorian Habano Rosado wrapper.  The name refers to the distance between Cuba and Key West.

Alec Bradley Mudial – no info yet.

Andiamo – a new line with two different wrappers from the folks who brought you La Perla Habana and Black Pearl.

Aurora 107 – this new blend is dedicating the 107th (?) anniversary of the La Aurora line.

Camacho Plus – a more novice-accessible Camacho.  Press.  Haven’t heard much more about this, not sure if it’s still coming out.

Cohiba Behike “BK” – a new three-size line from Habanos but not as limited as the original Cohiba Behike.  Info here.  Take a loan out on the house to pay for these bad boys…

Davidoff Puro d’Oro – the long awaited and delayed Dominican puro from the Master Henke Kelner.

El Triunfador – Once a secret release LE cigar from cigar-star Pete Johnson, this will now be available in six sizes with a Ecuadorian Habano wrapper.  Great flavor w/ a medium body, this my favorite line from Pete to date!

Esteban Carreras 187 – two size value priced line w/ a Nicaraguan Maduro wrapper.

Esteban Carreras 5150 – two size value priced line w/ an Ecuadorian Sumatra-seed wrapper.

Garcia y Leon – a collaboration between La Aurora and My Father Cigars, the blend will be created by Leon but will be made in Pepin’s My Father factory.

Gran Vida by Rocky Patel – a new three size line featuring a Pennsylvanian Broadleaf wrapper.

Gran Vida Habano by Rocky Patel – similar to above but w/ a Habano wrapper.

Graycliff Heritage Royale – once called “Project X” , this will feature a Costa Rican wrapper.

Gurkha Havana Legend – a new value conscious line with a Nicaraguan wrapper.  Here’s the press release.

Gurkha Monogram – a new value conscious line with a Connecticut wrapper, similar to the Elegance.  Here’s the press release.

Gurkha Nautilus – a new value conscious line with a Nicaraguan H2000 wrapper.  Here’s the press release.

Joya de Nicaragua Antano Dark Corojo – stronger than the original Antanos – with 75% ligero!  This is JdN’s best to date!

Joya de Nicaragua Cabinetta – a mellower line that’s half maduro wrapper and half claro.  These are really great flavorful cigars.

Joya de Nicaragua Fuerte Series B - a bundle line from JdN.

La Flor Dominicana Air Bender – features the best wrapper out there – Litto’s Ecuadorian Habano!  This is one very good cigar!

La Gloria Cubana Artesanos de Tabaqueros – a dual wrapper cigar – 1/3 Connie Shade, 2/3 Sumatran.

La Palina – an old Clear Havana line resurrected by the folks at Graycliff.

Legend-Ario Connecticut – a new wrapper for Camacho’s answer to The Edge.

Nestor Miranda Selection Dominicano – a new blend from Miami Cigars blended by Pepin with a Dominican wrapper from La Aurora!  Press Release.

Nosotros – can’t wait for this one.  Here’s the release.  The pre-release I tried has some serious potential!

Quesada Tributo – a new release from MATASA with a (surpirse!) Ecuadorian wrapper, check more out here.

Ramones – and old name once owned by Simon Camacho in the 60’s  makes a return with two wrappers – an Ecuadorian Connecticut and Honduran Habano.  This value-priced blend will be made by Camacho.

Rocky Patel Vintage Signature – no info yet.  This was a hold-over from last year.

Sencillo – a new brand from Prometheus made by (gasp!) Camacho and will be a Honduran Puro.  Sencillo means “simple” in Spanish.

Limited Editions:

• AVO LE10 – the newest birthday smoke for Mr. Uvezian.  The filler is all ligero! 
• CAO Escaparate Blend #7 – a new blend available at Butthead’s Tobacco in Connecticut.  This is the original blend for the Vision.
• Carlos Torano Roots Run Deep Tour Cigar – a special churchill made for the 2010 Tour.
• Room 101 LTD Conjura (by Camacho) – avaiolable in 4 sizes, stronger than the original 101’s with box artwork by some tattoo guy.
• Tatuaje La Verite – a special release featuring leaved grown all from one farm.
• Viaje Double-Edged Sword – a super limited edition perfecto.
• Viaje Exclusivo Robusto – these LEs came in a cool mason-style jar!
• Viaje Reserva Oro – a one size line, box pressed w/ aged tobacco.
  
• Viaje Reserva Platino – a one size line, box pressed w/ aged tobacco.
• Viaje Skull & Bones – super secret new blend!
  

A: Grow it in Ecuador!

OK, call it in – it’s over.  I can guarantee one of the hottest cigars of the year will feature a Ecuadorian wrapper.  Why?  Because it seems that EVERY new cigar has a Ecuadorian wrapper on it!

So what’s so magical about this little country and it’s wrapper leaf?

Map of Ecuador (Source Worldtravels.com)

Well, geographically, it’s the only wrapper growing country in South America (can’t count Brazil, yet).  The DR, Honduras and Nicaragua are all very close together and around 15 degrees north of the Equator.  While Ecuador, is well, right on the Equator.  You may ask about Cameroon and Indonesia, and both are close to or on the Equator, the climate is much different.  Ecuador is very temperate (more than you think) and almost always covered in light cloud.  So a lot of the wrapper leaf that needs to be shade grown in other regions can thrive without a cloth cover in Ecuador.  This causes the leaf to pick up extra sun, and provide a richer and more flavorful leaf.  It also has 32 active volcanoes in its borders, and ash makes GREAT fertilizer.  Here’s a great old article from CA about Ecuador.

Ecuador IS evolution.  From the Galapagos islands (where Charles Darwin was first inspired about the the Theory of Evolution) to the volcanic hillsides, there really is something special about this country.  Much like the iguanas, penguins and turtles of the Galapagos Islands evolved to their habitat, maybe wrapper leaf has evolved in the soil  Ecuador.

The Galapagos

Top Wrapper Leaves of Ecuador

1.  Habano – La Flor Salomones and Air Bender

2.  Connecticut (recently dethroned) – anything Davidoff or Avo

3.  Sun Grown (really just cloud grown) – Sun Grown really isn’t a varietal and can be from a variety, but it is a designation indicating a more intense flavor.  Try Ashton VSG and AVO Companero.

4.  Sumatra/Sumatra Oscuro – try LFD Double Ligero and EP Carillo

Frank Llaneza and the Oliva Tobacco family really got Ecuadorian leaf on the map.  Ernesto Perez-Carillo, of La Gloria Dominicana fame, used it to help entrench himself as one of the master blenders of our time.  The Fuentes have used Ecuadorian leaf in their Sun Grown and in the Newman’s Diamond Crown Maximus lines – and you can’t forget the Ashton VSG.  The Davidoff group uses it in just about every cigar they make!

Tobacco fields in Ecuador

For me my love affair with Ecuador began with Oettinger Davidoff.  In the early 2000′s, they stopped buying Connecticut wrapper from the Connecticut Valley and started procuring it from Ecuador.  It had a little deeper color and just a bit more flavor and pizazz.  For a while Ecuador was known as the best place for Connecticut Shade wrapper leaf.  Then came others.

Litto Gomez of La For Dominicana began to buy Sumatran leaf from Ecuador and used it in his Ligero and Double Ligero lines.  The Sumatran leaf had a taste very unique for this varietal, it was richer, sweeter and spicier with a beautiful oily sheen.

I asked Litto Gomez what made wrapper leaf so exceptional when it’s grown in Ecuador.  He said,

I started to use Ecuadorian wrappers nine years ago on our Ligero line. The reason is that I was impressed with the sweetness and texture of it.

I know that the weather is just perfect to grow wrappers [in Ecuador] because is very mild and cloudy and the temperature is also mild and that is why these wrappers have such a beautiful texture and colour.  The soil [also] seems to have the right content because of how sweet Ecuadorian wrappers are.

I can tell you that any wrapper grown any where in the world,will taste sweeter and look better when is grown in Ecuador.

But for me, the coup de grace was with the Habano wrapper.  The Ecuadorian Habano wrapper is most likely a hybrid of the ill-fated Habano 2000 varietal and has received a 2nd life growing in this little country.  With the success of the Salamones, Litto began to put the Habano leaf in more and more of his lines.  The new Habano Perfecto and Double Press cigars as well as the great new Air Bender line.  In fact, in light of the quality issues with Connecticut Broadleaf, Litto will be incorporating Habano Maduro wrappers in to all of his Maduro wrapped lines this year.

But that’s just the beginning!

Cloudy Ecuador

Last year began the trend; from La Flor,to Pepin Garcia (Tabacos Baez), to CAO (Gold Vintage and La Traviata), to Padilla (Cazadores) and to Tatuaje (Ambus Mundos and Boris LE).  This year already has a bunch of new releases featuring a wrapper from Ecuador.

Here’s the list as of February of this year:

El Triunfador

LFD Air Bender

Quesada Tributo

…and  that’s just the beginning!

So is wrapper from Ecuador really better than other wrapper leaf?  Yes and no.  More importantly it’s “hot”.  Just as Nicaraguan wrapper was all the rage for most of the last decade, this is just the new direction the market is going in.  And if someone makes a great cigar, everyone will try to follow suit.

So you just wait!  This year, and maybe even this decade, will be all about Ecuador!

Viva Ecuador!

“Do you see how this land is?  It’s just very good land.” – John Oliva, Jr. [Cigar Aficionado March/April 2000]

San Rafael Falls, Ecuador

]]> http://zencigar.com/2010/02/22/2010-the-year-of-the-ecuadorian-wrapper/feed/ 8 http://zencigar.com/2010/02/10/la-flor-dominicana-air-bender-matatan/ http://zencigar.com/2010/02/10/la-flor-dominicana-air-bender-matatan/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:17:50 +0000 Zen Cigar http://zencigar.com/?p=2117 Continue reading →]]> Size: 5″ x 50

Vitola: Robusto

Wrapper: Ecuadorian Habano

Origin: The DR

Age: Fresh

Woo-hoo! The newest creation from Litto Gomez was on my must try list.  The name Air Bender has two meanings according to Litto, the first is due to his affinity for Kung Fu movies and the other is that smoke appears to be bending air as it dissipates.  Kinda poetic, no?  My shop, Empire Cigars, just got the whole line in and I couldn’t be more excited.

My hope is that this has everything that was so good about the LFD Salomones at a fraction of the price.

I had the robusto and it began like others wish they finished. Cherry (a Litto specialty) and cocoa and leather without the dryness.

There was a subtle nose spice that picked up now and then.

This is the Zen cigar for sure- a great balance between flavor and strength, complex and gives you that mouthful of flavor that you get in the “sweet spot” in most other cigars.

This, however, is not the strongest cigar in the LFD stable, but makes up for it in flavor tenfold.

The last half amped up the cocoa, and threw in some espresso with a touch of Habano musk!

If every 8 dollar cigar was this good…  My only real complaint was that the draw was pretty tight, and that’s what kept it from an “A” rating.

Rating: 89 (B+)

So how did we fare?  Matt and I met last Thursday for the big reveal.

Did Matt pull the wool over my eyes?  Did I dupe Matt into going against his gut?  Find out now!

Matt had an early idea what he was smoking but held off his guess until the end.  Matt had guessed Oliva… and was right!

He even guessed 2 out of the three lines correctly.  He was right guessing Cigar #2 was the Oliva Connecticut Reserve and Cigar #6, the Serie V Torpedo.  Now I thought I was real clever giving him a claro, maduro and spicy cigar, but after I handed him the “mystery smokes”, he opens his travel humidor and pulls out a Serie V and exclaims that other than Tatuaje, this is one of his favorites.  So I knew right away this would either be really easy or really embarrassing.  Luckily for Matt, he was dead-on.  I did trip him up on Cigar #4 as he thought it was an El Cobre (by Oliva) but in fact it was a Serie O Maduro.

Here are Matt’s review’s here:

Cigar #2

Cigar #4

Cigar #6

Plus, here’s Matt’s take on the results.

Ok, so how about me?  Well I was pretty sure it was Nicaraguan when I smoked the first cigar.  The second cigar tripped me up though as it gave me hints of “Honduran tobacco”.  So from that point on I was off of the Nicaraguan puro route and kept trying to fit a multi-country blend, off of one flavor note.  So needless to say, I didn’t feel good about my decision at all.  The third cigar didn’t make me feel any better, although I recognized it as something I had smoked before.  But I had already put my mind on someone like Rocky or CAO or something like that, so I picked Rocky Patel.

Wrong!

No surprise really.  I knew it was a wrong guess when I made it, but I had thoroughly confused myself.

The funny thing was, Matt had picked Oliva too!

He gave me a Serie V, an El Cobre and a Master Blend III.  I feel somewhat ok about all of this, because the first thought put me in a Nicaraguan state of mind.  I had thought it was a Viaje or Oliva until I got derailed with Cigar #3.

So here are my laughable reviews: 

Cigar #1

Cigar #3

Cigar #5

Until next year!

This is the fifth of six blind reviews, 3 from me and 3 from Matt from Matt’s Cigar Journal.  Click here for the rules to the contest.  Note that all cigars Matt gave me to smoke were from the same manufacturer, so hopefully after smoking all three I can put it together, although I am thoroughly confused at the moment…

Cigar #5 has an odd box press-ish shape to it.  It is similar to an Oliva Master Blend III, with it’s rounded edges, but not as severely box-pressed at the MBIIIs.  So was the just a result of being in Matt’s humidor for a while, or is it the actual shape?  This doesn’t help me in identifying the cigar that’s for sure.

The pre-light draw is easy and it takes the light well, but gives off a few acrid flavors in the first few puffs.

From the first puff, it’s safe to say that I have definitely smoked this cigar before… but that doesn’t help me much.

The first cigar gave me the impression I was smoking a Nicaraguan puro, but this one, as well as the second cigar Matt gave me has hints of Honduran flavors in it.  So this does narrow down the field a bit, as it’s not a manufacturer who primarily rolls puros.

The ash was gray and firm, and held on for quite a while.

The flavors in this cigar were a lot more pleasing to me than Cigar #3.  This cigar was rich with leather and wood, with a hint of coffee and anise.  The flavors were balanced, not overwhelming, in the medium bodied cigar.  It wasn’t very complex, but it was enjoyable.

So now I have to guess.  Yeesh.  I must admit I’m a bit stumped here.  Nothing has really grabbed me about any of the sticks and indicates one manufacturer over another.  I really think these are multi-country blends (except #1), so it’s hard to place a specific profile.  Which is why I have to guess Rocky Patel, or someone like that, who has different tasting cigars in many strengths.  So if I had to guess the three cigars, I would say #1 is a Vintage 92, #3 is an Edge Maduro and #5 is a RP Decade.  I have a feeling I whiffed on this one, we’ll see soon, so stay tuned!

Here’s my first review here!

Check out Matt’s review for Cigar #2 here!

Here’s my review for #3!

Here’s Matt’s review of the 4th stick in the White Band Project!

Last, here’s Matt’s review of Cigar #6!