Vitola: Short Robusto
Size: 4.5″ x 50 ring gague
Price ~$4.99 MSRP
Obtained From Drew Estate as a review Sample
Background
Today I’ll be doing another review in the series on the cigars I received from Drew Estate as review samples. You can check out Dave’s look at this cigar here. This blend isn’t a new one to me or to you the reader if you’ve been reading us for a while. You can check out my review of the original size, the El Brujito here. This size was released at the 2015 IPCPR and from what I can tell it is just shorter than the original size. They come packed in 25 count bundles, with 2 bundles in each box. This was the first one of this size I smoked.
Prelight
The wrapper was the normal very dark brown with some black-ish mottling to it. It had a good amount of tooth and some oils to it as well. Yeah it is a slightly rustic looking cigar with the pigtail cap and slightly bumpy sides. When I gave it a squeeze it was fairly firm and without any soft spots. I noted the same light barnyard aroma coming from the wrapper and coming from the closed foot. After cutting it and taking a cold draw on it I got a good draw with slight amount of sweetness on the tongue.
Flavor
The cigar starts off with a pretty good blast of red pepper spice on the tongue and retrohale. After a few puffs I start to get the flavors of chocolate and leather starting to come through. By the end of the first third the spice had mellowed out a bit. The cigar starts off at medium-full strength. As I moved into the second third the flavors changed slightly to chocolate, leather, earth and cinnamon. The spice was there but in the background. The cigar stayed at medium-full strength during this third. The final third didn’t see much change in the flavors but the spice did come back and the strength built a bit.
Construction
I did start to get a bit of a tunnel from the cigar, but luckily it never caused much problems with the draw. This is a problem I’ve had with many of the Nica Rustica’s I smoked. Sometimes they’ll be like this and not affect the draw too much, but others I have to let go out and relight. The burn line was pretty straight throughout.
Value
With this being priced less than the El Brujito I’m good with that.
Conclusions
It’s not a secret I like the Nica Rustica blend, so of course I liked this cigar. Like Dave mentioned it isn’t the most complex cigar, but I find it enjoyable. I was kind of wondering if maybe this size change would make a difference in the taste, but it really didn’t. It tasted to me just like the larger size, but just took less time to smoke.
By-The-Numbers
Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 1.5/2
Flavor: 4.5/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 9/10
Site sponsors Small Batch Cigar and Stogies World Class Cigars offer Nica Rustica for sale on their websites. Small Batch has the Short Robusto available HERE. Stogies has the original “El Brujito” vitola available HERE.
I have only had one or two Rustica’s but I really enjoyed them. I will def. pick this up if I find it
I like this cigar, smoke a lot of them.
I think my only complaint of the Brujito was the time commitment. I dig the new size and look forward to burning through a few of these.
Tunneling….I know all about that, seems to be by kryptonite lately. Like I said on Daves review, would love to try some of these.