Cigar: Gurkha Cellar Reserve 18 Years
Size: 4 x 58 (Koi Perfecto)
Wrapper: Colorado Maduro
Binder: Dominican Republic
Filler: Dominican Republic
MSRP: $9.00 per cigar or $66.95 per five pack from Mike’s Cigars
Looking at the rest of the month’s calendar, I realized this week that because of scheduling, I had one more spot left for review purposes before I get busy in the week preceding Christmas. Digging around the bottom of my humidor, I remembered I still had a couple of cigars left that my friend Matt sent me a few months prior. Matt and I send each other cigars we find throughout the year. This particular one, the Gurkha Cellar Reserve 18 Years, was new to me but has been out amongst the market since ICPCR 2014. Realizing that I have not smoked many Gurkhas this year, I was more than happy to give this a shot.
No construction issues on the cigar sent for review. The pre-light aromas had an interesting mix of wood and fresh grass while the cold draw was all leathery notes. The pig tail head on the cap came off without a hitch thanks to the guillotine cut; however, the initial draws from this cigar took some work to open up. I would imagine the reason for this was the shape of the foot of the cigar. Let’s just say that it took a couple of lights to really get the air moving through the cigar. After that, the draw settled down giving me only a slight resistance to the pull. Once I got the draw normalized, I was able to start giving a proper analysis to the Cellar Reserve’s flavor profile. The opening notes included the noted leather and wood from earlier, coupled with white pepper. This particular Gurkha I would characterize as straight up medium bodied with a quick finish on the palette, so this isn’t anything that should scare anyone away. The cigar smoked as described for the next 22 minutes, after which I began noticing a slightly different woody flavor (reminiscent of freshly cut wood) moving forward on the palette. 20 minutes after that, the strength of the cigar began ticking up slightly (but staying within the medium bodied range) while heavier wood and leathery notes finalized the remaining 15 minutes of smoking time. The final tally on the Gurkha Cellar Reserve 18 Years was 0:57.
Besides the initial draw issues detailed at the start, this cigar was more or less problem-free. It got a thumbs up from my wife who commented on the wonderful aromas coming from the smoking of this cigar. All in all, it was an enjoyable cigar but doesn’t quite do enough to stand out. I will detail below:
By-The-Numbers
Pre-light: 2/2
Construction: 1.5/2
Flavor: 4/5
Value: 0.5/1
Total: 8/10
To recap the Gurkha Cellar Reserve 18 Years:
- Solid flavors in a compact little package. In terms of flavor, it is what I would normally expect from a company like Gurkha.
- This is easy enough on the palette that all levels of cigar smoker can enjoy this.
- While it is under $10 a cigar, I can get a similar sized and strength cigar for less, sometimes by a couple of dollars. Because of that, I would like to see the price come down on these.
- The cost and draw issues hurt the cigar but I did enjoy it. I would consider picking up more should I ever see these for sale.
A huge thanks to Matt once again for the cigar sample and thank you very much for reading.
