Cigar Review: Tatuaje 10th Anniversary

Originally published at Tiki Bar Online

Belle Encre (Perfecto), 5.375” x 48 ring gauge / $10.50, Burns

While I was perusing the humidor at Burns East during the tweetup I noticed that there were two different sizes of the 10th that I hadn’t seen at my regular shop yet. Dave mentioned that they were a slightly tweaked blend for these two sizes only. I have heard that from other tobacconists but I can’t really find confirmation on if the blend has changed or whether it is just a special size. They come packed in gold foil in specially marked boxes. I picked up one of each of the special sizes and smoked this one here for review.

The medium brown wrapper showed lots of oils in spite of the fact that it wasn’t in cellophane. The band is almost the same color as the wrapper, which I don’t know if I like. It kind of blends in too much for me even with the gold foil. The wrapper was very smooth to the touch with only scattered fine veins. The cigar has a slight amount of give to it but no soft spots. As I put the cigar to my nose I noticed the fairly intense aroma of leather coming from the wrapper with leather and barnyard coming from the foot. After clipping it and taking a cold draw on it I was rewarded with a good draw with some hints of leather and cinnamon.

Lighting it up brought about the familiar wasabi like spice common to DPG cigars. After a few puffs I started to get flavors of cream, leather, earth, and cinnamon. The draw was pretty much perfect and it produced a large volume of smoke. As I smoked the cigar I noticed that my lips were beginning to be coated with the oils from the wrapper. The strength of the cigar to start off was firmly in the medium range.

As I moved in the second third the spice started to lessen in intensity but not disappear completely. I was able to taste flavors of cream, and coffee with a hint of cinnamon. The construction continued to be perfect with the ash falling off in nice chunks. The spice did start to build towards the end of this third.

The final third finished off strong with pretty intense flavors of coffee, chocolate, leather, earth and cinnamon coming though. The spice did build and I did start to get a slight nicotine hit from it.

Overall the was a very enjoyable cigar. The construction was perfect and it’s flavors were very tasty. The slight amount of strength helped compliment it as well. I will definitely be picking more of these up and this will cause me to look at the regular Tatuaje brown label cigar.

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

AFP Scale

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