I had the opportunity to smoke a couple new offerings from Gran Habano Cigars this week.  Gran Habano is a pretty good sized cigar company, sadly I don’t see their cigars in my local brick and mortar stores.  I’d probably smoke more of them if they were, I really like the Corojo No.5 and Persian King cigars.  Anyway, I’ve always had good interactions with George and Natasha Rico.  I was excited to try the Gran Habano 20th Aniversario, and was quite delighted with it when I did.  I smoked the 5″ x 52 “El Sueño” size.  This has a Nicaraguan Corojo shade grown wrapper, Nicaraguan binder and fillers from Nicaragua, Columbia, and Peru.  The Columbian tobacco is notable because George Rico’s family comes from Columbia. I find that Peruvian tobacco adds an interesting spice.  This was a really unique tasting cigar, in a good way.  There’s a sweet tobacco flavor, I hate to say this, but if you’ve ever stuck your nose in a pouch of Redman chewing tobacco, it’s kinda like that. I don’t like that description because it comes off rather pedestrian, and this cigar isn’t that at all.  It was delicious, interesting spice flavors and well aged tobaccos.  I liked it very much. 

I said that I like the Persian King, especially the maduro, so I was very interested in trying the Type-Mod 60.  This 6″ x 60 cigar is interesting in that it’s made in such a way that it can be smoked either way.  It has a torpedo cap on one end, and a standard cap on the other, and is blended to provide a different experience dependent on which end you light.  It has a Nicaraguan Corojo wrapper, and the ends are capped with Ecuador Connecticut.  The rest of the cigar is Nicaraguan.  I smoked the first one as a torpedo, and I broke from my usage of the CigarMedics The Baller cutter for these cigars, as a straight cut seemed like it would work better. My go-to straight cut is the Magpulse™ by Screwpop, I love that thing.  I lopped off the head and foot of these cigars, I’ve tried burning through the cap, but that doesn’t ever work. The first one, smoked with the torpedo end as the head of the cigar, was very tasty.  I didn’t get a real transition from bold to smooth as advertised, but it was a decent cigar with toasty, leathery kind of flavors, solidly medium bodied.  On the second one I lit the torpedo end.  Oddly, this cigar was very mild, so much so that it was hard to get a handle on the flavors.  I figured it would open up when it got to the full diameter of the cigar, but it remained super mild.  I know I did this as an experiment, but I was quickly regretting my decision.  This isn’t the first time I’ve smoked a cigar that’s designed to be smoked from either end, with a different experience, the Fratello ViceVersa (due in stores early in 2023) is another one, which didn’t have the polar opposite flavors that this one did. I can’t wrap my head around the phenomenon, I expected the second one to build in strength, it never did.  Very interesting, and I’m glad I tried it, but I would smoke this like a torpedo, if I chose to smoke it again.  I may just stick with the standard Persian Kings.

That’s about all I have for today, until the next time, 

CigarCraig