Villiger Cigars has a couple of firsts with this cigar. It’s their first TAA cigar, exclusive to participating Tobacconists’ Association of America stores. Looking at the listing on the website, I’m not entirely sure they have the name right, they have it listed as “Villiger 1888 Edicion Regional USA”, where the band just says TAA Exclusive 2020. Considering this second point, it doesn’t have any relationship with the Villiger 1888, except that it’s made in the Dominican Republic. The second first for Villiger is that this is the first time they’ve worked with Ernesto Perez Carrillo Jr. to produce a cigar. It’s a box pressed toro, 6” x 54, with an Ecuador Sumatra wrapper, Nicaraguan binder and Dominican and Nicaraguan fillers.
When I lit this cigar up, before I looked at the blend and where it was made, I was 99% certain it was a Sumatra wrapper. It had that nice, sweet hard candy flavor I love. I wasn’t surprised when I read who made it either. Ernesto is a huge Sumatra fan, and he used a wonderful tasting Sumatra leaf on this cigar. I absolutely was enamored with the flavor of this cigar! It was a fantastic smoking experience. Like I said, it had that great Sumatra sweet flavor that I love, and it was medium bodied and not overpowering, very well balanced. Of course, as I got to the band it lost some of the sweetness and became slightly stronger, but don’t they all? Later I smoked the Villiger Cuellar Black Forrest toro (yummy), which, up until smoking the TAA, was my favorite Villiger to date. I suppose the limited nature of the TAA will force me to rein in my desire to stock up on these, my local Cigar Cigars stores are TAA members, and one can hope that they have these in stock (if I ever get out to visit one of them again!). By the way, if anyone from Cigar Cigars reads this, let the folks who run the TAA website know that they have the wrong website address listed for you!
That’s all for today, until the next time,
CigarCraig
