Cigar Review: L’Atelier Selection Spéciale

Originally published at Tiki Bar Online

LAT46 (Corona Gorda), 5.625” x 46 ring gauge / $9.20, Burns Tobacconist

Last year, the L’Atelier LAT52 was one of my favorite new cigars. I still remember my initial reaction to my first one…a Keanu-Reeves-worthy “Whoa!” When I heard they were coming out with a smaller ring gauge version of it I was excited…I almost always like something in the 40s, ring-gauge-wise. This LAT46 came with an extra designation, though: Selection Spéciale. What’s that all about? The story is that the filler and binder blend is the same as the regular L’Atelier flagship line (and all Nicaraguan). The wrapper is also the same varietal and country of original: Ecuadorian Sancti Spiritus, a hybrid of Criollo and Pelo de Oro that the Oliva family developed. This uses a higher-priming leaf for the wrapper, though, resulting in a darker coloration for the leaf. The change in leaf selection along with the reduction of ring gauge would absolutely result in some flavor change…the question is “How much?” I bought a couple of these at Burns, smoking one immediately after purchase and letting one rest a couple weeks before lighting it up for this review.

You either like the packaging and banding for this, or you think it’s a deliberate rip-off of some Cuban cigar that I don’t think anyone has heard of (yes, that was sarcasm). Saying it’s a rip-off would presuppose that no one other than that brand uses gold foil on their bands, or pigtails on the caps of their sticks. Theoretically, nothing about the packaging of that other brand was new or terribly different from a lot of stuff that came before. I find the L’Atelier banding to be attractive and distinctive. The wrapper leaf was a dark chocolate color and quite oily to the touch, more so than I remember the regular release sticks to be, but I haven’t had one in a couple months, so I might need to revisit that before saying that definitively. The aroma from the wrapper was pure barnyard and earth, while the foot was earthy, but not so barnyardy…more like freshly plowed earth mixed with some hay. Cutting the end yielded an excellent draw with a lot of earth, but also a good amount of hay, wood and something…well, unidentifiable.

Lighting up was pretty easy with a single flame torch, although I had to hit it again to make sure everything was going after the initial light. The burst of flavor was unusual. There was something akin to what I got with that first LAT52, but it also seemed totally different in some ways. This had a lot more cedar on the palate, and it was an astringent cedar note as well. After a few minutes, I was also getting earth and a weak coffee flavor, along with a hefty pepper spice hit to the nose.

As I cruised into the second third, a few things occurred to me. First, this didn’t seem much like the original blend at all. I don’t know if it’s more the slightly different wrapper or the different ring gauge, but it had a fuller body right from the first. That wouldn’t be a problem for me, except for the second thing: it just didn’t seem to have the magic in the flavor profile that the LAT52 had. It wasn’t bad, but it just didn’t seem like the same blend. I have found that to be the case, though, where a certain size in a blend just hits the sweet spot and other sizes just don’t seem the same. I felt this was just very earthy, with a little chocolate sweetness and a substantial amount of pepper spice. Again, not bad, but more of a “typical Nicaraguan flavor profile” if such a thing exists. Construction was very good; I had a great draw, fairly even burn line and an ash that didn’t flake.

In the end, I liked the L’Atelier LAT46 SS, but not nearly so much as the LAT52. The flavor in the final third was more of the same from the second third: earthy, a little sweetness, a little citrus creeping in from time to time, more spice. It was a very nice cigar, just not what I was hoping for and not what I expected based on the LAT52. But, that’s just me. This cigar was on the low end of full in body and medium to full in strength. Maybe you will feel differently about the end result than I did and the price tag isn’t out of line so give it a try…and if you already have tried it, leave a comment and let me know what you thought.

Body: 8/10
Strength: 7/10
Complexity: 6/10

AFP Scale

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