Cigar Review: La Boheme by Aging Room

• Vitola: Pittore (Robusto)
• 5.125” x 52 ring gauge 
• $12.99
• Purchased from Burns Tobacconist

Background

Aging Room is a cigar brand that has achieved a lot of hype in a relatively short amount of time. A big part of that was achieving the status as Number 2 Cigar of the Year (and Number 1 “Free World” Cigar of the Year) for 2013 for the Quattro F55 blend. Beyond that rating, though, the brand has continued to do well, posting some impressive numbers in multiple magazines and websites. In 2014 they introduced La Boheme, a marriage of the brand owner’s 3 passions in life—Cuba, Cigars and Music—in an effort to “create a cigar reminiscent of the Golden Age of Cuban Cigars.”

The blend is made with Dominican Habano filler and binder leaves, along with an Ecuadorian Habano wrapper. Four vitolas are available and they are made in Jochy Blanco’s factory in the Dominican Republic. Impressively, it was ranked number 11 by Cigar Journal and number 12 by Cigar Aficionado for 2015, along with getting 93s by some of the most respected online reviewers around.

So, it took a while for me to get to this one, but we got a new rep for the brand at Burns recently and he actually showed up to do his job…and we brought in La Boheme for the first time. As the event started, he gave me a sample of the blend from his car stock and I have to say I was very impressed. I decided to review it and brought home another for that purpose.

Prelight

I have to say first off that the banding and boxes for La Boheme is absolutely beautiful…among the nicest overall packaging jobs I’ve seen come out in recent years. The boxes are dark stained wood outside with some gold writing on them. When you open them up, there is a thick velvet-covered padding around the cigars and a red velvet interior to the box lid, along with the artwork from the band displayed prominently on the red background. It just has a very old-school, classic feel to it. The banding continues that feel with the old-time opera singer, surrounded by a gold frame, palm trees, script writing and gold embossed coins. Simply put…if you’re trying to make a cigar seem “classic” and “old school” this should be the first example you look at.

Turning my attention to the cigar itself, I found the color of the wrapper to be quite a bit darker than what I’ve seen in the official photos on the manufacturer’s website. That could be down to different harvest years, but whereas the color on the web shows an almost cinnamon red-brown, the cigar I held had a more milk chocolate brown color to it. It had a nice, moderate amount of oiliness under my fingertips and an aroma that mixed earth and leather with just a touch of cedar. The foot had more earth, with touches of cocoa powder and coffee.

I clipped the head with my Xikar Xi and got a great cold draw that had flavors of earth and hay, bread and cedar.

Flavor

Lighting up the Aging Room La Boheme was a fairly simple matter, even with just a single flame torch. The cigar started off with a pleasant mix of earth and cedar up front, with a slight sweetness of graham cracker as a secondary note, and a slightly peppery finish. The retrohale had a sharp red pepper mixed with a roasted nuttiness. Further on in the first third, I got muted notes of cinnamon that took the place of the cedar. The smoke was creamy and medium-bodied.

The second third had an earthy front end with a lot of that familiar Dominican graham sweet breadiness as a secondary note. The pepper notes on the palate and nose had settled down to a very low amount, leaving just a roasted peanut taste and aroma.

At the end La Boheme was medium-to-full in body with plenty of earth and graham flavors still leading the charge, along with cedar and nutty notes coming in close behind.

Construction

The draw was excellent, the ash held on for up to an inch before dropping, and the burn line needed no touching up.

Value

This cigar has an above-average price tag, but the experience is far above average, as well, so I call it good value.

Conclusions

The hype on this one is true! La Boheme is an excellent addition to the Aging Room catalog and worth smoking if you like the “new school” of Dominican blending where earthy notes play a bigger part of the flavor profile than grassy ones. I really enjoyed each La Boheme that I’ve smoked so far and will continue to buy them as a part of my regular cigar rotation.

By-The-Numbers

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