Cigar Review: Henry Clay Tattoo

• Vitola: Toro, box-pressed
• 6” x 52 ring gauge
• Price $9.99
• Purchased at Burns Tobacconist

Background

Pete Johnson stated long ago that Henry Clay was one of his favorite old brands, so it wasn’t the biggest surprise in the world to hear that he was doing a collaboration with Altadis using that brand. When I was at the trade show, I didn’t get to the Altadis booth until the third day and by then all samples of the Henry Clay Tattoo were gone (if they ever actually had any to give out…I never even saw one in anyone else’s hands). So this ended up being, for me, one of the most highly anticipated new cigars that would hit the store. Turns out this stick is more than worth the wait.

A little background first. Henry Clay was a senator from the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the cigar brand named after him was started in Cuba in the 1840s. After changing hands several times, the brand ended up with Altadis, which produces the cigars in the Dominican Republic. The original blend consists of Dominican fillers and binder, with a Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper. I’ve had it a couple times and it’s truly a nice little smoke…cheap, too!

For the Henry Clay Tattoo project, Pete Johnson decided to work outside his comfort zone of Nicaraguan tobaccos, employing mostly Dominican tobacco for this blend…and keeping that Broadleaf wrapper because he is as much a Broadleaf nut as I am! Specifically, the fillers are Dominican Olor from 2012, Dominican Piloto from 2012 and Nicaraguan Ometepe Criollo from 2013. The binder is 2010 vintage Dominican Piloto and the wrapper is a 2010 vintage Connecticut Broadleaf. Reportedly, there are only 50,000 sticks being made. (some info from Cigar-Coop)

I smoked one stick when they first arrived at our shop, then bought 4 more. I smoked another the next morning with my coffee on the way to work…and ended up buying a couple more than next day. So Burns is out at the moment (although we might get more)…and you can probably tell where this review is headed already.

Prelight

For the most part I love the packaging of these cigars. The box is beautiful. It’s paper-wrapped with a dark background, details coming out in screens of black and trimmed in gold. The only thing marring it is the Surgeon General Warning label at the upper left. How to remove that stupid thing without wrecking the paper wrap underneath is something I haven’t thought about much yet…but I will.

The cigars inside are wrapped in mini-wheels of 10 each. When I cracked the cellophane on the mini-wheel the concentrated aromas from the cigars spilled out, flooding my nose with rich earth and chocolate notes. It’s one of those rare treats that I get a little more often than others since I work in a cigar shop. The cigars themselves recall the simple look of the old Henry Clay band, along with a “Tattoo” secondary band. The cigar is finished off in a folded-over pigtail.

While they call the wrapper “Dark Connecticut Broadleaf” it’s actually not that dark when compared with some other implementations of the leaf. I’d call it barely more than milk chocolate brown in color. In my memory, the original Henry Clay wrapper was fairly rough, but this leaf is smooth and oily, with just a couple larger looking veins. I got a rich cocoa powder and earth note from it, with notes of coffee and earth on the foot.

Clipping the pigtail off, I got a very good cold draw that had sweet earthiness, dried fruit and coffee notes to it.

Flavor

Each of these I smoked was a bit of a challenge to get lit initially…and to keep lit for the length of the cigar. Once I got it going, though, I was greeted with a medium amount of sweet chocolate, along with dry cocoa powder, earth and medium-roast coffee bean. There was a bit of cinnamon on the palate, as well, and a dash of pepper spice on the retrohale. The Henry Clay Tattoo was definitely in the medium-bodied range as it started and the flavors suggested to someone else that this would be a great cigar to go with coffee in the morning; I’m happy to say that they were absolutely correct on that call. About 10 minutes in, I started picking up on a bit of sour flavor…sort of citrus sour, but not exactly. I didn’t recall picking up on anything like that on the first couple of these I smoked, so it could have been an aberration. It faded a bit to more of a background note fairly quickly.

As I got into the second third, I got sweet hay and citrus notes, mixed with more chocolate and coffee bean. The pepper spice had stayed even on the nose, but had crept up to the back of my palate, as well.

The Henry Clay finished up with more earth, chocolate, hay and citrus flavors, while the pepper notes danced in the background.

Construction

This cigar, like the other two I smoked (and as reported by several others) was difficult to keep lit and burning. I puffed several times on it every time I wanted to get a puff of smoke; the first couple times to get it hot enough again to produce smoke, then a mouthful came through. Leaving it for any length of time without puffing was sure to result in a dead cigar. Connecticut Broadleaf is a fairly wet leaf and apparently the rest of the cigar is composed of leaves that were still pretty wet when shipped; it’s the only explanation I have. A few months at a slightly lower than normal humidity should fix it.

Other than that, I had a fairly straight burn and solid ash.

Value

It’s expensive for a Henry Clay, but cheaper than most Tatuaje limited edition cigars, so I’m going to average out the two and say “Good value!”

Conclusions

First things first…this is NOT a Tatuaje. It doesn’t have the body, strength and spice of a Tat…and that’s a good thing! What this is is Pete Johnson playing around, quite successfully, with Dominican tobacco. That island’s leaf has more sweetness, grassiness and citrus than Nicaraguan does. Here he has created a very worth follow-up to the original Henry Clay blend, with just a touch of Tat thrown in for good measure. I enjoyed the heck out of this cigar and believe it will get even better once the leaf has time to acclimate better and marry completely. Very good cigar and one that I hope will be re-issued in the future…once is simply not enough for this stick!

By-The-Numbers

Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 1.5/2
Flavor: 4.5/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 9/10