Cigar Review: La Palina Fuego Verde

Vitola: Robusto
Size: 5.5″ x 50 ring gauge
Price $7.50
Review Sample from SmallBatchCigar.com

Background

It’s not very often that you see a company release a new cigar with a candela wrapper.  If you aren’t familiar with this wrapper type, it was a wrapper type that was popular in the US from the 1950’s through the 1970’s.  The wrapper isn’t improperly aged, but uses a particular process to keep the chlorophyll in the leaf during the processing.   They do tend to have some flavor notes that can be polarizing and some people nowadays don’t like smoking a green colored cigar.  I happen to enjoy candela cigars from time to time and was interested when I saw this cigar in the shop.  This looks to be a limited production release of just this one size.  They come in 20 count boxes and have a Nicaraguan filler, a Honduran binder and a Honduran candela wrapper.  This was the first one of these I smoked.

Prelight

I’ll be honest in saying that first glance I though the cigar was from Rocky Patel and it took me a minute to figure out I had that wrong.  Something style wise had me thinking along those lines.  The wrapper is a very even yellowish green in color with some oils and tooth.  When I gave it a squeeze it was fairly firm without any soft spots.  After putting my nose to the wrapper I noted the scent of hay with more of the same from the foot.  After clipping it and taking a cold draw on it I got a slightly tight draw with some wood and hay notes.

Flavor

The cigar starts off with some spice on the tongue and retrohale.  After a few puffs I got the flavors of hay, grass, and wood with a sweet finish.  It starts off at medium strength.  As I moved in the second third the spice mellowed out a bit.  The flavors changed slightly to leather, wood, hay, grass and hints of cinnamon.  The cigar stayed medium through most of the second third, building slightly towards the end.  When I got to the final third the flavor was pretty similar to the previous third.  The spice did start to build back up during this third as well.  The cigar finished off at medium full strength.

Construction

In spite of the tight cold draw it didn’t have any problems after I lit it up with either the burn or draw.

Value

I’m glad to see companies continue to release cigars at a reasonable price point.

Conclusions

This candela was definitely stronger than a traditional candela it wasn’t as flavorful as some of the other cigars I’ve had.  I did enjoy it and will probably pick a couple more up to have on hand.  If you want to give this one a try head over to SmallBatchCigar.com as they have them in stock.

By-The-Numbers

Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 2/2
Flavor: 4/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 9/10