Cigar Review: King of Kings Broadleaf

Vitola: Toro
Size: 6” x 50 ring gauge
Price ~$8.50
Cigar gifted by King’s Cigars

Background

When last we left our new friends at King’s Cigars, they had attended the 2013 Chattanooga Tweet-Up, made some new friends and contacts, and were on their way to being quite successful with their Baron, Conde, and King of Kings blends. By the time they came back for the 2014 event, they had expanded to a King of Kings Broadleaf in several sizes, plus a couple other surprises for us. In the spirit of trying to get the word “King” in as many times as possible, I’d like to dedicate “King” by King’s X to King’s Cigars and their King of Kings line:

Now back to our regularly scheduled cigar review…

Finding out information on King’s Cigars online has become difficult as their current website is—I hate to say—all but unusable. I found some photos on it. I saw a couple comments left there, but no company or blend information. Maybe the site is “under construction?” (Pete, if you need a good WordPress site, you have my number.) I’m going to reference the one and only Will Cooper and Cigar-Coop.com for the information on this blend. The filler uses Kings Proprietary leaf (they won’t even disclose country at this point), the binder is Nicaraguan, and the wrapper is Pennsylvania Broadleaf. I bought a couple of the 6 x 64 box press Quadrados and smoked one already, but this is the first time I’ve smoked this Toro vitola. It was given to me by Pete Tyndale, Kings’ master blender.

Prelight

The King of Kings band is ornate and showy, with a European-looking crown and coat of arms, rendered in 4-color process printing, gold foil and embossing. Without the foil, the band would be so dark as to get lost in the background of the dark wrapper leaf, but the gold gives off “brights” and catches the eye. The wrapper leaf was a dark chocolate brown and oily to the touch. The aroma from it was a mix of earth, anise and leather, while the foot gave off more of just an straight-up earth.

As usual, I used my favorite Xikar Xi cutter to put a straight cut on the KoK Broadleaf. The result was a great draw that had cold flavors of anise, espresso and pepper spice.

Flavor

Lighting up the Broadleaf King of Kings was quick and easy and I soon was getting a heavy anise flavor, a distinct citrus tartness, and an undercurrent of dark roast coffee and earth. The retrohale was a little tart and a little peppery.

As the second third began, I noted that the flavor was still quite tart, but more earthiness was coming through and the anise was subsiding a bit. The blend started off in the medium-plus body range and had moved into the low end of full by this point. The pepper trailed off on both the palate and retrohale.

At the end, the pepper spice started coming back and flavors of coffee and earth got stronger, while the tartness faded away.

Construction

The ash was plenty solid and the draw was consistently good, but I did need to correct the burn line fairly often, something not all that uncommon with wetter, oilier wrappers like Broadleaf.

Value

All Kings Cigars offerings have proven to be very reasonably priced and deliver very good value.

Conclusions

I was thrilled to learn that Kings Cigars had made a Broadleaf wrapped stick. I was a little let down by the fact that it appeared to be dyed; both the wet-finger test and the tart flavor seemed to confirm that (though I don’t believe the same is true for the Quadrado vitola). (UPDATE: Since this review was originally posted, I talked with a couple people from Kings about the “dyed” issue. They have assured me they do not dye their wrapper leaves. They use a “cooking” process on them, which isn’t the same.) Despite this, I did enjoy the King of Kings Broadleaf as it did bring something different to the table than what many other Broadleaf cigars have been doing lately. It didn’t have the sweetness that I enjoy in its Connecticut-grown cousin, but it was tasty and had a nice full-bodied profile. The price is reasonable so it’s easy to recommend giving it a try. Although I typically stay away from large ring gauge sticks, I think I may just like the 64 ring gauge Quadrado better for this blend…and I may just have to work on a review of that one in the near future.

By-The-Numbers

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