Cigar Review: Cerro by HVC Cigars

• Vitola: Sabrositos
• 4.5” x 46 ring gauge 
• $8.49
• Purchased at Burns Tobacconist

Background

I first heard of HVC Cigars about…well, about 4 weeks ago when this young Cuban guy stepped into Burns and introduced himself to me and a customer who happened to be there that day. The guy turned out to be Reinier Lorenzo, the owner of HVC. He gave us each a Cerro Sabrositos and hung out with us for a while and talked.

Reinier told us he had left Cuba in 2008 and was having his cigar produced by Casa Fernandez, although he was actually doing the blending of the cigars himself. From the first moments of lighting up that first cigar, I knew I had to do a review of one; this was not simply another CF cigar…it smoked quite differently and, to my palate, much better than most CF products.

HVC is shorthand for “Havana City,” the place Reinier identifies as “where the passion was born.” Cerro is Spanish for “hill” and refers to the Havana neighborhood where Reinier grew up. Sabroso is Spanish for “delicious or tasty” so the vitola name indicates that this is a “small tasty” cigar. It is a Nicaraguan puro and this review sample is the 3rd one I’ve smoked; the first one was given to me by the company owner and I bought the other two when we received them at Burns. (some background on the company from several pages at halfwheel)

Prelight

As always, I start by looking at the presentation of the cigar. All the HVC lines are shipped in simple wood boxes with no cellophane for the cigars inside. While it does undoubtedly look good, I wish companies would just stop fighting putting cellophane on their sticks…it protects the cigars against wrapper damage and makes them much easier to tag for inventory and sale purposes…rant over. The banding is simple and reminds me of traditional Cuban banding with the use of red, white and black, along with just a little gold (and silver in the secondary band here) and embossing.

The wrapper leaf was an even, medium-brown in color with some oils to the touch and very little mottling in evidence. When I gave it a sniff, I picked up clean, sweet almost-chocolate aromas from the leaf; the foot had some earth and cedar notes, but they were kind of faint. Overall build quality seemed very good.

After cutting, I got a very good cold draw that had mostly cedar flavors to it, but there were some subtle pepper and earth notes as well.

Flavor

At the outset, the Cerro primarily had cedar and pepper spice notes, with some underlying sweetness and a slight citrus tartness. The retrohale was peppery…almost painfully so. That doesn’t sound all that unique, but it took just a few puffs for that beginning to start fading into something else. Very quickly there were floral notes and an increase in the sweeter flavors, as well as a drop off in the cedar and pepper. A few minutes after that sweetness and floral notes were at their peak. I got some semi-sweet chocolate in the mix and the pepper was just a faded burn at the back of the palate.

I was thoroughly enjoying the medium-bodied Cerro as I headed into the second third. Here the sweetness increased a bit more and I got a bit of a honey note to it to go along with the chocolate. The pepper spice came back but not in an overwhelming way.

The last third displayed a recurrence of the cedar notes from earlier and more pepper. The sweetness in the mix diminished somewhat, but was still there to provide balance.

Construction

I had to touch up the burn line a couple times, but nothing big. The draw was great and the ash held up for over half an inch at a time.

Value

From what I’ve seen so far, all HVC products are in the sweet spot between $8 and $10 a stick. When they are this good, that is a tremendous value.

Conclusions

The HVC Cerro is an excellent cigar that was complex and tasty from beginning to end. I enjoyed the amount of sweetness that is unusual in most Nicaraguan puros. Although this is made in the Casa Fernandez factory, it is most definitely not a typical CF cigar, many of which are characterized for me by an abundance of cedar. While there is still evidence of its Aganorsa roots, this blend is a great example of what someone other than the regular blender can do with the leaf. If you like Nicaraguan smokes, I highly recommend finding this cigar.

By-The-Numbers

Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 2/2
Flavor: 4.5/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 9.5/10