Vitola: Short Robusto- 4.375 x 52 ring gauge
- MSRP $10
- Purchased at Burns Tobacconist
Background
Tatuaje Cigars announced the Tuxtla line earlier this year. It grew out of Pete Johnson’s love for Mexican San Andres wrapper leaf and the desire to put in on more of their regular production blends to showcase it. Tuxtla is a collection of 3 previous Tatuaje blends—7th (from the Brown Label “Seleccion de Cazador” line), Avion 13 (the same core blend as the Fausto), and the T110 (originally a store exclusive and rumored to be the origin of the Fausto line). Recently all 3 showed up at my local cigar shop so I bought a couple of each.
Because I’m in “wind down” mode for this review site, I didn’t want to do full reviews of all 3 blends at this time…and I’m honestly not sure I’m going to do a full review of any of them, but I thought I would fire one up and share some notes with you as I sipped some whiskey and recapped a few things that have been going on.
The T110 Tuxtla uses Nicaraguan filler and binder leaves along with a Mexican San Andres wrapper leaf. The name—Tuxtla—comes from the city of San Andrés Tuxtla in the Mexican state of Veracruz. The area has been the center of Mexican tobacco production since the 19th century.
Notes
The band on the T110 Tuxtla keeps with the “store exclusive” look that it apparently started with. It’s different than just about everything else in the catalog, getting closest to the RC releases in the Seleccion de Cazador Reserva Miami line. The secondary band is white with a dark green stripe and “TUXTLA” in reversed-out lettering. It is common across all 3 Tuxtla releases.
The wrapper is neither as dark, not as rough as a lot of Mexican wrapper leaf I’ve seen in the past 15 years. It had a nice oiliness and a rich earth aroma with just a touch of sweetness in the mix. The foot was earthy, as well, with notes of cocoa powder and cedar. After clipping, the cold draw had notes of cedar and semisweet chocolate.
The original T110 was supposedly a powerhouse of a cigar…like I said, it was rumored to be almost a prototype of the Fausto line, which is their most full-bodied regular blend. From the beginning and in the sample I smoked last night, it just didn’t seem as full-bodied as others in the Tatuaje lineup. That could be just down to the change of wrapper leaf, but I wondered if there were other tweaks to the blend to make the wrapper leaf work better, too. At any rate, it was very earth, with a little cocoa powder and a decent amount of red pepper flake, especially on the retrohale.
Now that I’ve got the cigar fired up and smoking, I can get down to some of the other business. I hadn’t intended to miss any more weeks as I finished up the reviews I had planned already, but life intrudes, doesn’t it. I went to California for a week…earlier than normal, but for the same reason as I always do. The last few years, I’ve taken the time to do a bit of a “travelogue” for the trip…finding things to do to make it interesting. The thing I did “interesting” this time around was take a guest and show her around my old haunts…and places I wish were old haunts, like Philippe’s (where the French Dip was invented) and Dodger Stadium (where I hadn’t attended a game in over 25 years…Dodgers beat the Angels the night we were there). Nothing else to say except that we both brought home a souvenir from SoCal…COVID.
The San Andres wrapper does seem to impart a slight sweetness, although I wouldn’t say it’s as much as a Connecticut Broadleaf. The good thing, in my opinion, is that Mexican wrapper seems to have come a long way in just the past decade or so, with longer fermentation times stripping the bitter chalkiness that I used to associate with them.n
She got it first and I tested positive a few days later. Because I went to the doctor the first day I had symptoms and I have a “risk factor” (I smoke cigars, in case you didn’t know), I qualified for an antiviral drug…you know, the type that paranoid conspiracy theorists are getting their circuits fried over. Between that and working to keep my insides sanitized (with bourbon), I was symptom-free the next day and throughout the 5 day “isolation period.” Smoked cigars every day of isolation, too, and never lost my senses of taste or smell. Granted, I didn’t smoke any Davidoffs for those days, but I did enjoy the sticks I smoked.
I definitely wouldn’t call this a mild cigar, but it’s a long way from being a powerhouse, either. I’d say it’s on the fuller side of medium-bodied, featuring a deep earthiness along with semisweet chocolate on the back end, and fleeting notes of cedar and pepper.
Getting back from the trip and the isolation period, I had to dive deep into work again…and it was a busy time. Business owners don’t get many days off and are never guaranteed holidays. So I found myself on the 4th of July weekend with quite a bit of work to do, including getting my review schedule back on track so I can conclude these pages in some sort of style.
