Cigar Preview: The Crowned Heads Jericho Hill

Vitola: OBS (robusto)
Size: 4.75″ x 52 Ring Gauge
Price $8.75 MSRP
Obtained From Maxamar’s as a show sample

Background

Today I get to do a preview of the fourth regular production cigar from The Crowned Heads, the Jericho Hill.  The cigar inspired by the Johnny Cash song “Cocaine Blues”.  The sheriff that catches Willy Lee was from Jericho Hill.  This cigar comes in four different sizes that all have names that reference something in the song.  They are 44S (5 1/8” x 44), LBV (6 1/2” x 46), Willy Lee (6″ x 54) and the subject of this review the OBS (4 3/4″ x 52).  The cigars have a Nicaraguan filler and binder with a San Andres (maduro?) wrapper.  These cigars are made by the My Father Cigars in Nicaragua.  They are all slightly box pressed and come 24 count boxes.  This was my first experience with this cigar.

Prelight

The first thing I notice is the band.  The pearlescent cream and black of the band really contrasts nicely.  To me it makes it really stand out in the humidor as a very classy band.  The wrapper on this cigar was a medium dark brown with some almost black mottling to it.  There were some tooth and veins to the wrapper as well.  There wasn’t much oil, but with The Crowned Heads cigars coming uncellowed this is to be expected.  The “soft” box press was very well done.  When I gave it a squeeze it was fairly firm and there were no soft spots.  When I put my nose to the wrapper I got an intense barnyard aroma, with barnyard and hay coming from the foot.  After clipping it and taking a cold draw on it I tastes some light cocoa with a good draw.

Flavor

The cigar starts off with the flavors of leather, coffee, chocolate, and wood all with a lightly sweet finish.  I didn’t get the normal spice blast that I’m used to getting out of a Pepin cigar to start.  The spice was there and it started up after a few puffs.  The cigar started off in the medium range to me.  By the time I got into the second third the spice had settled down a quite bit.  The main flavors were of leather, earth and wood with the slightly sweet finish.  The strength was maybe at the upper end of medium by the end of this third.  The final third didn’t see much change in the flavor except that the finish definitely got sweeter.  The spice built back and the cigar moved maybe into the medium-full range.

Construction

The draw was perfect throughout the entire cigar.  It produced a large volume of smoke as well.  The burn was a little uneven and I had to make sure I kept rotating the cigar to make it burned evenly.

Value

Like the rest of The Crowned Heads regular lines this one seems to be priced moderately and is a good value.

Conclusions

Overall I very much enjoyed this cigar.  I’m looking forward to trying one of the actual releases of this size and the other sizes to see which one I like best.  They should be starting to show up in your local store, but if not one of our sponsors has them in stock right now.