Cigar Review: Foundry Cigars West Orange

Vitola: West Orange (Long Robusto)
Size: 5.5” x 50 ring gauge
MSRP $7.95
Purchased at Burns Tobacconist

Background

In it’s second year of existence, the Foundry Tobacco Company (part of the General Cigar family) produced an astounding number of blends. Some would be “core lines” that will stay around, but most were small batch, one-and-done types of blends. If I’m remembering correctly, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 21 blends that were released on an unsuspecting cigar-smoking public all at one time, some exclusive to brick-and-mortar stores, others exclusive to online cataloguers. I’ve taken a look at several of the Compounds, Elements and Musings series cigars, so now I thought it would be nice to take a look at a couple of the “War of Currents” lines.

War of Currents refers to the battle between Thomas Edison’s Direct Current (DC) and Nikola Tesla’s Alternating Current (AC). I’ll make a long story short here…Tesla’s intellectual prowess beat up Edison’s…AC is how the world gets its electricity from point A to point B today. However, Edison won the money battle and became of his con, you have “Southern California Edison” supplying AC power to southern California…among other examples. When I went to school they didn’t teach about Tesla…I never even heard of him until I was nearing the end of my teens and the rock band named after him tried to set the record straight (with electric guitars!).

image courtesy General Cigar

Move over Wells and Cayley. Michael Giannini and the Foundry collective present War of Currents. This is the first extension of Foundry, with two new full-time frontmarks of the same unique blend.

Representing one of the most legendary intellectual battles in history, War of Currents was inspired by Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, and their titanic struggle against one another to power the world. Just as the inventors were fueled by inspiration and competition, Michael and his team worked tirelessly to shift the paradigms of the premium cigar category. To deliver the truly new and unique, they sourced leaves cultivated outside of the traditional Caribbean and Latin American growing regions.

Foundry: War of Currents frontmarks are named after the inventors’ labs: Shoreham for Tesla, and West Orange for Edison. True to the Foundry method, leaf origins will not be revealed.

The exact blends of these cigars are unknown except to the folks that make them. While I do tend to have pre-conceived notions about certain leaf, in general I’m happy to say, “I really don’t care where it’s from as long as it tastes good.” I bought a single stick of this vitola for this review, although I did smoke another of this blend (I can’t remember what size it was) previously. (And, yes, I know that I have “Edison’s Cigar” when I tend to sing the praises of Tesla, but…it was what was available at the time.)

Prelight

A lot of time and energy was spent on making seemingly dozens of different boxes for the Foundry 2013 releases. Sadly a lot of that is for naught when stores rip off lids to make the boxes fit correctly on shelves, or just take the cigars out of the box they shipped in if it’s too large, then put them in a smaller box so they can fit more cigars on the shelf. To give them credit, Michael Giannini and crew have done a great job with making this round of Foundry products visually interesting.

The bands are similar to the first release of Foundry (the one with the gear around the band), although in shades of blues this time, a surprisingly good look against the almost-Shade hue of the wrapper leaf. The wrapper leaf was a dark gold in color and quite oily to the touch, giving off aromas of hay and cedar. The foot was subtle in aroma…some earth and wood, but nothing too strong. I cut the head and tested the draw; it was very good and had subtle flavors of cedar and grass.

Flavor

The part that has made me nervous about every Foundry I’ve had from the 2013 releases was lighting up. That’s where the 2012 original Foundry release fell apart on me. I know some people really like that cigar, but for me, I have to honestly say it was my least favorite cigar in 2012. This War of Currents, West Orange, had an immediately good flavor, mild-plus in body with notes of citrus, graham cracker, cedar, and sweet hay on the palate…a white pepper on the nose.

In the second third, the pepper diminished a bit, but the notes of citrus and graham increased. In the final third I started to pick up more grassiness while the citrus notes faded into the background a bit.

Construction

The Foundry War of Currents was very well made. The draw was excellent, the burn line was very even with no touch-ups, and the ash was solid.

Value

I judge the $8 price of entry on this cigar to be fair, based upon the experience it delivered. Not a steal, but not a ripoff, either (funny how either “steal” or “ripoff” makes me think of Edison again).

Conclusions

Overall, the War of Currents is a solid second core release for Foundry. While the first core line was just not to my liking, this one was tasty and fairly complex, offering up non-typical flavors for a cigar produced by one of the largest purveyors of premium cigars in the world. Although I still have an issue with any General subsidiary calling themselves “boutique” with this release they have broken away from the “same-ness” that seems to have invaded many of General’s core lines.

By-The-Numbers

Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 2/2
Flavor: 3.5/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 8.5/10