Cigar Review: Avo Syncro Fogata

Vitola: Robusto
Size: 5″ x 50 ring gauge
Price $9.99
Purchased at Maxamar’s Cigars

Background

When I walked into Maxamar’s this weekend and saw these I had to look them up to see what they were.  I hadn’t heard anything about them and was surprised that the Syncro line would already have an extension.  The term Fogata means campfire.  I was hoping they weren’t going to be trying to get on the smoked tobacco fad from a couple years ago.  Luckily from what I can find they are trying to showcase the strength of the Nicaraguan tobaccos in with with the smoothness of the Dominican tobaccos.  It’s sort of an interesting concept.  The cigar is comprised of fillers from Esteli and Condega, Nicaragua along with tobacco from the Dominican Republic, all held together with a Mexican San Andres binder, with an Ecuadorian Habano wrapper.  They come in 4 non box pressed sizes, a 4.5 x 52 short torpedo ($8.90 MSRP), a 6 x 54 toro ($10.90 MSRP), a 6 x 60 Special Toro ($11.90 MSRP) and the subject of this review the robusto, 5 x 50 ($9.90 MSRP).  This was the second one of these I was able to smoke.

Prelight

The multi-hued orange bands definitely give the impression of the colors you see in a campfire.  The wrapper on these cigar is slightly lighter in color that the other blend.  Also not being box pressed helps distinguish them as well.  The wrapper on this sample was a medium peanut brown in color.  There was some oils to it but not really many veins or much tooth to it.  When I gave the cigar a squeeze there was a slight amount of give I didn’t find any soft spots.  Putting my nose to the wrapper I noted the aroma of leather with peanuts coming from the foot.  After clipping it and taking a cold draw on it I got notes of peanut and a hint of sweetness with a good draw.

Flavor

The cigar starts off with a good amount of spice on the tongue with flavors of wood, leather, cinnamon with a slightly sweet finish.  It starts off at the upper end of medium strength.  As I moved into the second third the spice intensified a bit, with flavors of wood, cinnamon, leather and a slightly sweet finish coming though.  The cigar moved into medium full strength during the second third.  The flavors I noted in the final third were very similar to the last third, with only the sweet finish intensifying.  It finished off medium-full strength.

Construction

The draw was just about perfect throughout, but it did have one of my pet peeves as far as construction; way TOO MUCH freaking glue on the bands.  I waited until the cigar warmed up and was getting close but both bands had overflowing glue that ripped the wrapper.  This seems to be a consistent problem (was on both of these) for Avo across the lines.  Which is mind boggling seeing as they are made by Davidoff and I don’t think I’ve ever had this issue with one of their cigars.  So people at Avo, please fix this easily preventable problem!

Value

They seem to be priced very similarly to the original release which isn’t that bad for an Avo.

Conclusions

If they’d fix the glue problem they would have a very enjoyable cigar.  Having the wrapper rip and it causing ash to go everywhere wasn’t fun.  I did enjoy the flavor of the cigar in spite of it.  I don’t know if I’d call it earth shaking, it was definitely different than the original Syncro blend.  It even felt like it might be a bit milder as well.  I’ll give the cigar another try, but the exploding wrapper because of too much glue might spoil it.  Our sponsor SmallBatchCigar.com has this and the original release in stock right now.

By-The-Numbers

Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 1/2
Flavor: 4/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 8/10