Cigar Preview: RoMa Craft CRAFT 2014 Witchcraft

Vitola: Trometa-ish
Size: 5.5″ x 46/60 ring gauge
Price $15.00 MSRP
Obtained From Maxamar’s cigar as a review sample.

Background

Today I’ll be looking at the limited edition release RoMa Craft will be bringing to the California Mega Herf.  It is slightly different from the 2013 release (that I reviewed here) in that it will has a Connecticut Broadleaf ligero wrapper with an Ecuadorian binder which is the opposite of the 2013 release.  The cigar is quite limited and can only be purchased at La Marca Cigars at the kick off party they are having on the 23rd of this month.  Like last year’s release they come packed in 10 count boxes and from what I can tell they use the same free hand technique for manufacture.  I was able to smoke one of these for this review.

Prelight

The wrapper on this cigar was a nice reddish dark brown in color.  It has a good amount of oils and tooth to it as well.  Like a lot of RoMa Craft cigars it was slightly rough looking, but not overly so or ugly.  There were some veins to the wrapper as well.  The “double bands” at the bottom were a little uneven but since this was an IPCPR sample I figured it was a cosmetic second anyway.  When I gave it a squeeze there was a slight amount of give but no soft spots.  When I put my nose to the wrapper I got a lot of barnyard with raisins and leather from the foot.  After clipping it and taking a cold draw on it I got some hints of sweetness and cocoa from it with a good draw.

Flavor

The cigar starts off with the flavors of chocolate and lots of red pepper spice with the spice being pretty heavy on the retrohale as well.  After taking a few puffs on it I started to get some leather and nuts from it as well.  T0wards the end of the first third the spice had toned down a bit but had not gone away.  The flavors changed slightly as well to cocoa, earth and coffee with a slightly sweet finish.  The cigar started off in the medium full range in strength.  The second third didn’t see much change in the flavor but I didn’t consider that a bad thing.  The spice did start to tone down a bit but didn’t go away completely.  The final third saw the strength and spice ramp up and I started to get a pretty good nicotine hit from it.  The flavors in the final third were pretty much the same as the second third.

Construction

Getting the cigar lit with my single flame Xikar Allume was a bit of an issue.  I couldn’t tell what part was lit and what wasn’t so I didn’t get it started evenly which caused the cigar to burn slightly uneven.  It wasn’t too much of a problem however.  The draw was perfect throughout.

Value

I do think that $15 is a little high but it is a limited edition small run cigar.

Conclusions

While it didn’t change flavors a whole lot I definitely enjoyed it.  It seemed to be quite a bit sweeter than the 2013 release.  Since it was a full strength cigar I wouldn’t recommend it be approached by people sensitive to nicotine.  If you interested in this cigar come on out to the event on the 23rd, I hope to be able to be there and pick up my box of these cigars.