Xikar Defiance
I found the cigar up for review today in Orlando at The Corona Cigar Company. During this visit, I had the opportunity to chill with Jerry from The Stogie Review, along with Matt and BigReg. We smoked cigar after cigar and browsed the huge selection on hand. Good times.
About the cigar… It was blended by Jesus Fuego for Xikar. Yes, it is the same Xikar who makes lighters, various cigar accessories, and my coveted multi-tool scissors. Jesus Fuego happens to blend a couple of my favorite smokes, the Rocky Patel Vintage 1990 and 1992. This made me want to give this cigar a try even more.
A portion of sales are donated to organizations to fight against unjust tobacco taxes. The band looks nice, and has a tab that reads “Do not remove!” Naturally, your first instinct is to remove it. You can’t control me, I removed the band and a little message awaits those who “Don’t always do what you’re told.” Yea, it’s gimmicky, but I’ve seen worse. Let’s get to the review!
Wrapper: Cuban seed Criollo aged 4 yesras
Binder: Sun grown Corojo
Filler: Nicaragua
Size: “The Renegade” Robusto 5 x 50
Price: MSRP $6.50
Pre-Smoke & Construction:
Giving the cigar a once over, I appreciated the smooth looking wrapper. It had small veins, but still looked smooth. To top things off, the triple cap was well placed. Sniffing the wrapper and foot revealed a woody, grassy, and earthy smell. The pre-light draw was good, with slight resistance. The pre-light draw had a sweet taste, along with woody, earthy notes. As for the burn, I only did two touch-up’s. The ash held on for over an inch, and still took effort to knock off. This was a well built cigar.
Flavor:
The first third started off with woody flavors. This combined with an earthy, rich soil kind of flavor that was pleasant and smooth. Every once in awhile, a very noticeable flavor would appear. When I would take another draw to see what it was, it was gone. Looking back, I would have to label it as some kind of sweet flavor that I never pinned down.
As I hit the second third, the earthy notes calmed down a bit. This revealed a slight pepper when exhaled through the nose. A subtle sweet flavor entered, but wasn’t consistent. Although very subtle, it reminded me of caramel. There was a woody component as well. Very nice…
The last third started with all peppery flavors going away. Earthy notes lingered faintly in the background, while the woody component remained very noticeable. Again, that sweet flavor would come and go. I’ll call it caramel, but at times it was like it was trying to morph into mocha.
Conclusion:
This was a good, consistent medium to full bodied cigar. The complexities of the flavor profile really kept me interested. Trying to find that elusive sweet flavor was a little frustrating, but you can’t fault the cigar for that. To sum it up – The Xikar Defiance was damn good!
Update – The Defiance has been discontinued and replaced by the HC Series Criollo.
This entry was posted on Monday, April 13th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Cigar Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Nebraska Cigar News and Friends Revewing Cigars - Cigar News - PuffingCigars.com April 13th, 2009 at 10:18 am
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