Vitola: ER13 (Toro)
Size: 5.875” x 52 ring gauge
Price $9.99
Purchased from Burns Tobacconist
Background
L’Atelier Imports started releasing cigars in 2012 as a new brand from Pete Johnson, creator of the Tatuaje lines. Pete joined up with his brother, KC, as well as industry friends, Casper Johnson and Dan Welsh, to market and distribute a flagship line named L’Atelier, as well as the Surrogates blends and a couple bundle-level blends, all of which are made in My Father Cigars facilities. In a year and a half, the flagship line has seen a limited edition using a different priming of the Santi Spiritus wrapper (a hybrid of Criollo and Pelo de Oro), as well as a Maduro version (using a very tasty Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper). Then at IPCPR 2013, the company unveiled a new surprise: Extension de la Racine (“extension of the root”), which featured a couple new twists.
First, Racine would only be available to those who attended the IPCPR show and ordered it there. If, as a shop owner, you decided it wasn’t in your best interest to attend…sorry, you don’t get to carry this line. To some shops that might not be the biggest deal in the world, but for a lot of shops, it absolutely does matter. LEs are quickly becoming lucrative for shops…get a limited number of boxes in, turn them in a short amount of time, then have space for something else new and in limited supply. The future plan is for a new size in this blend to be released each year under the same circumstances.
The second twist was the blend. Racine uses all Nicaraguan filler, as does the original (although I’ve seen no indication that this is exactly the same filler), but while the original uses the Ecuadorian Sancti Spiritus leaf as a wrapper, the Racine uses it as binder, which is then covered with a Sun Grown Criollo wrapper from Nicaragua. I purchased two L’Atelier Extension de la Racine cigars from Burns in Chattanooga. This review is based on my second sample. Some information for this background was taken from the New Havana Cigars website. Keith reviewed this same cigar a few weeks ago; read his take on it here.
Prelight
As Keith noted, I think the bands on these look great. I love how they have taken what was a fairly simple, classy design with the original band, then just alter the colors a bit to turn it into the Maduro band…alter the colors in a different was for Racine. The red stands out very well on the shelf in a B&M’s humidor. The wrapper leaf underneath was quite beautiful, too…oily to the touch and glistening in the light, it had an aroma that was a mix of fresh barnyard and hay. From the foot, I got a stronger earthiness, with a little sweetness mixed in.
Once cut the L’Atelier Extension de la Racine had a great draw with a very nice cold flavor that combined cedar with sweeter fruit notes and a bit of pepper spice.
Flavor
Fired up, the cigar started out with a light hay note, before quickly getting into a heavier cedar one…that was all in the space of about 5 puffs in the first minute. I slowed down a bit from the lighting process and observed that the smoke was quite light, sweet and grassy at first, before showing more woody notes in the middle and finally some red pepper on the finish. Speaking of red pepper, it showed up quite strongly on the retrohale. Quite a complex cigar with a lot of subtlety from the outset; if I hadn’t been paying close attention to it, I probably would have missed some of what was going on.
As I moved toward the second third, I got an increasingly woody flavor profile, mostly cedar, but also some cinnamon from time to time (you do know that cinnamon is tree bark, right? Just checking). Underneath that was some creamy coffee and mild earthiness, but a lack of any real sweet notes, which I missed. Good cigar so far, but to me, it was becoming a bit unbalanced at this point.
During the second third the balance did improve when some sweetness crept in to keep the cedar company. The last third was a very nice balance of cedar and dark fruit sweetness, along with a slight resurgence of red pepper, ending the cigar on a very good note.
Construction
Everything was tip-top in terms of build quality on this cigar. I had a great draw, very even burn line that needed very little touching up, and an ash that was roughly the consistency and color of concrete, falling off in discrete chunk of a half an inch or more.
Value
$10 is on the high end of the cigars in the L’Atelier line, although not as much as many other LEs that issue forth from the My Father factories, so not really bad.
Conclusions
Aside from a time when the flavor profile was too dominated by cedar notes, the Extension de la Racine was a very good cigar that I enjoyed. It was medium to full in body and slightly over medium in nicotine strength. Overall, though, I prefer the regular L’Atelier blend to this and much prefer the Maduro…but that’s just me and my ongoing Broadleaf kick. This was nice for a change in pace, but not something I would go back to over and over again. I would be interested to see how it ages, though.
By-The-Numbers
Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 2/2
Flavor: 4/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 9/10
This article was originally published at Tiki Bar Online.
