Cigar Extra: Aruhiba

After a few months of trying to come up with a way to accurately describe our “short un-rated cigar review” format, I decided to just go back to what we used when we were “The Tiki Bar”…welcome back the Cigar Extra, a review that is usually shorter than normal, doesn’t have nearly as much background detail, doesn’t have a numerical rating, might be of a cigar we’ve reviewed before (but in a different vitola), and might be a review of a cigar paired with an adult beverage.

Vitola: Petite Corona
Size: 5.5” x 44 ring gauge
Price ~$8
Gifted

Background

When you can’t get out of the country, it’s good to have friends that go places. A few years ago a friend brought back some cigars from the Philippines; they were…interesting. This year, a friend went to Aruba. Unlike most places in the Caribbean and Central America, Aruba is a real-life desert island. Arid. Cactus. Wind-swept. Sounds like a terrible place to grow tobacco…except they are. And a local company is making “Aruhiba” cigars using the leaf grown on the island. I was gifted one, and I usually don’t review “gift” cigars, but he said to go for it, so…

The Aruhiba website has no information about the exact make-up of the cigars (if there are any countries of origin besides Aruba) or sizes, so this is almost a blind review.

Notes

The Aruhiba isn’t bad looking…it doesn’t look unlike just about any other dark Connecticut Shade or “natural” wrapper. It didn’t smell like much of anything…a little grassy, perhaps. The foot had a bit of earthiness, as well as grassiness.

The draw was very good and had a sweet flavor…because it was obviously a sweetened tip, usually made by using sugar in the vegetable glue. There was also some grassiness in the mix.

After lighting, the sweetness just blended in to the profile, making for a mildly sweet hay flavor, with a touch of earthiness underneath and a white pepper on the retrohale.

Overall, this wasn’t a bad cigar at all. It was very mild and would be most suitable for those who don’t smoke much. Always good to see what’s happening at countries out of the norm in tobacco production.