Vitola: Robusto
Size: 5.5″ x 52 ring gauge
Price $11.00
Review Sample from SmallBatchCigar.com
Background
Earlier this year Matt Booth announced he would be coming back to the cigar world. Instead of Camacho making the blends for his company he choose AJ Fernandez’ company and Robert Caldwell’s company to both be making cigars for him. The first cigar was called Hit & Run and was made at the Caldwell cigar factory. You can check out Dave’s review of it here. Today I’m looking at Matt’s second release and this one was made at the AJ Fernandez cigar factory. And if you know anything about AJ’s cigars it should come as no surprise that this is a Nicaraguan puro. They come in five different sizes ranging in price from $10.50-$12.00. Four of the five sizes come in 20 count boxes with the Short Churchill being different in only coming in 10 count boxes. This was my second experience with this cigar.
Prelight
The wrapper is a nice medium dark brown in color with lots of tooth and some oils to it. The box press on this cigar very well executed. When I gave it a squeeze there was some give but no soft spots. Putting my nose to the cigar I got the aroma of barnyard from the wrapper and foot. After clipping it and taking a cold draw I got a good draw with some flavors of chocolate.
Flavor
It starts off with a good amount of spice on the tongue and retrohale. After a few puffs I noted some chocolate, copper and curry flavors from it as well. The cigar is medium-full to start. As I moved into the second third the sweetness intensified with flavors of chocolate, coffee and earth coming though. The strength built a bit to the upper end of medium-full. When I got to the final third the flavors were pretty familiar at this point, of coffee, chocolate, leather with a sweet finish and some spice on the retrohale. It built a bit more in strength to the bottom end of full by the end.
Construction
Throughout the cigar the burn and draw were great.
Value
While it is definitely one of the more expensive cigars to come out of AJ’s factory I don’t think that it is prohibitively expensive.
Conclusions
I really enjoyed both of the examples of this cigar I smoked. You can definitely tell it is an AJ product that was tweaked a bit by Matt. It is also definitely different than what Matt previously released as well. It won’t be for all smokers though as it was pretty strong flavor and intensity. I can see this one being something that I will definitely purchase in the future. If you’d like to give this cigar a try head on over to SmallBatchCigar.com as they have all the sizes in stock and even a sampler to try all of them out.
By-The-Numbers
Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 2/2
Flavor: 4.5/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 9.5/10
