La Reloba Seleccion Habano
The La Reloba Seleccion Habano is a product from Don Pepin Garcia. I obtained this cigar from a Pepin event at St. Pete Cigar not long ago. This cigar is offered with a Sumarta wrapper or the Habano, which I am smoking today. As usual, I don’t have a ton of information about this cigar. All I can offer you are my thoughts. I paired this cigar with water.
Wrapper: Nicaraguan Habano
Binder: Nicaragua
Filler: Nicaragua
Size: Robusto 5 x 50
Price: Around $5.50
Pre-Smoke & Construction:
Overall, the cigar looked like it was well constructed. The wrapper had small veins with no major flaws. The wrapper and foot had a mild cedary odor. When squeezing the cigar, I found it to be very tightly packed. This probably explains why the draw was a little stiff. The pre-light draw had an interesting dark, almost musty, earthy tobacco flavor.
The burn required several small corrections, and the ash held for about an inch. The stiff draw opened up a little and wasn’t a problem.
Flavor:
The first third didn’t really have a build up. It started right away with a mainly dark earthiness, wood, and a decent spicy pepper. The spice was mainly noticeable when passing smoke through the sinus. A sweetness developed a little later on in this third.
The second third had a significant decrease in the peppery spice, but it did not go away by any means. The core flavors were wood and a sweetness that was somewhere in between cocoa and caramel. Earthy notes were noticed, but only occasionally, and far in the background.
The last third kept pace with the second third. The main differences was a reduction in sweetness. In turn, cedar became the dominant flavor. The peppery spice became more noticeable as well.
Conclusion:
This was a good medium to upper medium bodied cigar. At times the flavor profile seemed unbalanced. But most of the time it was pretty smooth and good. In the end, I enjoyed this cigar.
This is definitely is not Pepin’s best blend, but I think it is worth a try.
This entry was posted on Friday, March 18th, 2011 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.
