Cigar Extra: Herrera Esteli, Drew Estate Lounge Edition

• Vitola: Cuadrado
• 6” x 50 Box Pressed
• ~$10
• Provided by Drew Estate

Background

Another of the cigars in the recent Drew Estate “Care Package” was a sample of the Herrera Esteli box-pressed Toro, made exclusively for Corona Cigar Company in Orlando, Florida, for their Drew Estate Lounge. This particular Lounge Exclusive is available for sale online, so if you want to try it, click HERE.

The Herrera Esteli was Willy Herrera’s first project when he was hired on to Drew Estate several years back and it was a hit right out of the gate. He combined some of the finest Nicaraguan fillers and binder with an Ecuadorian Habano wrapper leaf and came up with a fantastic cigar that is punchy, spicy, flavorful…some would say “Cuban-esque.” I personally have smoked through a couple boxes of Herrera Estelis since they made their debut, including a box of the Lonsdales that was gifted to me during one year of the Chattanooga Tweet-Up, so I’m really looking forward to trying this new size.

I previously looked at the Lounge-exclusive Box-Pressed Toro Liga Privada #9 and found it exceeding most other LP #9s in taste and overall performance…that has caused the expectations for this stick to be a little higher than they were before.

Notes

I punched this one, as I did the Liga Privada #9, because of the boxy shape of the head. The cold draw was very good and had notes of cedar and earth mostly.

Taking the first big draws on this cigar, I tasted a strong earthiness, followed by cedar and subtle sweetness. The retrohale was a blow torch on the nose, fiery with pepper spice.

By the time the second third rolled around, I was still getting plenty of earth and cedar. the sweetness took the form of a subtle dried fruit and the pepper was present on palate and nose.

The flavor profile of this vitola was not terribly different from most of the other Herrera Esteli cigars I’ve had, which is to say…it’s great! The draw through the punch wasn’t fantastic, though, and the mouth feel felt felt a little “off.” This was very good, but I’d rather have a Lonsdale (or that amazing Lancero LE from a year or two ago).