Cigar Review: Herrera Esteli by Drew Estate

Originally published at Tiki Bar Online

Lonsdale, 6” x 44 ring gauge / $9.45, Burns

I thought it was a little strange when Willy Herrera left El Titan de Bronze, a company owned by his family, to go to work for Drew Estate…when ETdB was mentioned, the first thing I thought of was Willy! After making the move, though, he went right to work developing a new line of cigars, eventually to be dubbed the Herrera Esteli. The first time I got a chance to try these new smokes was at the 2012 Chattanooga Tweet-Up. Willy was one of the Drew Estate contingent that came to the event and spent a good amount of time making fresh roll samples of the blend, as well as handing out some pre-release samples that already had bands. I took this to mean that it wouldn’t be long before we saw them in the stores, but it was not until early March 2013 that they started showing up. The Herrera Esteli is said to not be a limited edition cigar, but distribution is somewhat limited, at least to begin with: only 50 Drew Estate accounts in the country are on the list to begin with (more will be added later on as production can be ramped up, but they want to make sure those original accounts have an ample supply). Luckily for me, two of those accounts are within 90 minutes of my house and I’ve bought several sticks from both Silo Cigars in Knoxville and Burns Tobacconist in Chattanooga. I’ve smoked a couple Short Coronas and a Lonsdale before this review sample. The blend on this cigar features Nicaraguan fillers, a Honduran binder and an Ecuadorian Habano wrapper.

The band on the Herrera Esteli has what can only be termed a “simple and classic” design: white background, red type, gold trim with a bit of embossing. Looking closer, I see they have used a higher-end paper for the band as it has a bit of texture…a grain, if you will. One end of the band is quite verbose, reading, “We warrantee the tobacco used in the Herrera Esteli are the finest vintage aged air cured black leaf leaf.” Interesting, although I’m not sure exactly what it means. How exactly would I discover that the leaf contained within was not the “finest” or whether or not it was “air cured”? At least it doesn’t read like an ESL student wrote it, though. The wrapper leaf looks fairly typical for an Ecuadorian Habano: medium brownish-gold, subtle hints of red, and some medium-sized veins that were fairly apparent because they were a lighter color than the surrounding leaf. Typical-looking…although that’s hard to say because there are so many variations in Ecuadorian Habano leaf…still a very nice-looking leaf and nothing I’m knocking. Bringing it to my nose, I got a sweet honey and molasses over hay aroma. The foot had a barnyard earthiness with more hay. I clipped the head with my regular Xikar Xi and got a very nice draw as a result. The cold flavors were of sweet tobacco, hay, and tea.

I fired up this Herrera Esteli on a breezy, warm pre-Spring afternoon. It sprang to life with flavors of natural tobacco and earth, along with touches of black coffee and molasses, all accompanied by a nice medium-strength nasal pepper spice burn. What started off as a straight-ahead medium-bodied nice smoke didn’t take long to morph into something else, though. By the middle of the first third, my mouth was on fire as the pepper spice became a full-palate experience instead of just a retrohale thing. The other flavors were still there, but the spiciness really overshadowed everything else at this point, perhaps emphasizing the Nicaraguan leaf at the core of this blend. Soon after, I noted that the spice on the nose had toned down, leaving a more nutty retrohale.

As I burned through the second third, the spiciness abated a bit and more molasses sweetness and dark roast coffee came through. The draw was proving to be excellent and the burn line needed no touching up to this point. I was having an issue with the ash, though. I tapped off the first time at about half an inch, but since then, the ash had dropped into my lap unexpectedly at less than that length…twice. I hadn’t had this problem with any other samples, so I could only surmise that this was an anomaly or that this stick might have been dropped before I bought it, damaging the structure of the interior leaves.

In the last third, the level of spice in the Herrera Esteli stayed fairly constant while other flavors weaved in and out. I got some bitter earthiness at one point, some citrus zing at another, and more molasses sweetness at yet another. It was almost as if the blend was trying to figure out what it really was at times. Overall, though, this is definitely a winner–a very pleasant smoking experience with medium to full body and a definite nicotine hit. Because of those two items, it’s not something I could recommend to newer smokers, but for more experienced enthusiasts, it delivers excellent flavor that is never boring. At less than $10 per stick on average, I found the price reasonable as well.

Body: 7/10
Strength: 8/10
Complexity: 8/10

AFP Scale

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