Introduction To Rosalila, Part 1

Last month, on the “old blog,” I took a look at three versions of Leaf by Oscar, a new Honduran cigar blended by Oscar Valladares and distributed in the United States by Puros de Ballard. When Kevin Ballard sent me the samples of Leaf, he also sent me one sample each of four blends released under the Rosalila brand. Rosalila is the name of a “phase” of a Mayan temple found in Copán in Western Honduras, near the Guatemalan border. This is an excerpt from Wikipedia’s page on Copán:

One of the best preserved phases of Temple 16 is the Rosalila, built over the remains of five previous versions of the temple. Archaeologist Ricardo Agurcia discovered the almost intact shrine while tunneling underneath the final version of the temple. Rosalila is notable for its excellent state of preservation, including the entire building from the base platform up to the roof comb, including its highly elaborate painted stucco decoration. Rosalila features K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ placed at the centre of a mythological tableau, combining the founder of the dynasty with the sky deity Itzamna in avian form. The mythological imagery also includes anthropomorphic mountains, skeletons and crocodiles. Vents in the exterior were designed so smoke from incense being burned inside the shrine would interact with the stucco sculpture of the exterior. The temple had a hieroglyphic stone step with a dedicatory inscription. The stone step is less well preserved than the rest of the building, but a date in AD 571 has been deciphered. Due to the deforestation of the Copán valley, the Rosalila building was the last structure at the site to use such elaborate stucco decoration — vast quantities of firewood could no longer be spared to reduce limestone to plaster. A life-size copy of the Rosalila building has been built at the Copán site museum.

The banding for the Rosalila line has a design inspired by the temple recreation seen in the accompanying photo. As noted before, there are 4 total Rosalila blends. They were blended by Oscar Valladares and they are all available in a single vitola, a 6” x 50 ring gauge Toro. I will be taking a short look at two blends today and the other two next week.

MUNDO CELESTIAL

Mundo Celestial (Celestial World, according to Google Translate) features something I’ve only seen a handful of times before: Honduran-grown Connecticut Shade leaf. These days it seems the vast majority of Connecticut Shade is actually grown in Ecuador, with a smaller portion actually grown in Connecticut, but another small portion is being grown in Honduras. The other one that comes to mind when I think of Honduran Conny Shade is the La Gloria Cubana Retro Especiale, which was for a time, my favorite La Gloria blend. For that reason, I’m interested to see what happens with the leaf in this blend.

The band on this and all the other Rosalilas is absolutely beautiful. It is intricate, stamped liberally with gold foil and embossed heavily. While a bit gawdy, it does a good job of paying homage to the pre-Columbian Mayan culture of Honduras. The wrapper leaf was a perfectly nice Connecticut Shade leaf, with a bit of an oily touch and no visible flaws. It had a grassy, sweet hay aroma to it, while the foot had more hay along with some semi-strong earth.

The prelight draw was excellent and tasted of hay, mildly sweet citrus, cedar and just a tiny dash of pepper. Once lit the flavor was more pronounced than I had expected, almost exploding into a mix of citrus, natural tobacco and cedar, with a bit of cinnamon on the finish and dose of wasabi on the nose. A strong start to a cigar that I may not have given a second look to a month ago; there just aren’t that many Honduran puros that I have found all that exciting…and most of those have come out of a single company that has a long history of blending with Honduran tobaccos. Most of the time Honduran tobacco has a flat, muted taste to me, but so far every blend I’ve encountered from Oscar Valladares has had bright flavors (for the most part, anyway).

As I continued to smoke I picked up bready notes and more sweetness, along with an increase in pepper spice and earthiness. The cigar started around mild to medium in body but by the halfway mark it was firmly medium-bodied. Through the end the flavors continued to be strong and vibrant, surprising and delighting this Honduran-leaf-skeptic. I was left with the impression that this Rosalila Mundo Celestial is truly a remarkable cigar and I only found one thing lacking: more vitolas. It would be even nicer to get this much flavor in a Robusto or Corona.

MUNDO PRESENTE

Next up I went for the Corojo-wrapped version of Rosalila, referred to an Mundo Presente, Spanish for “This World.” The same band adorns this blend, which is again a Honduran puro. The Corojo wrapper here was the color of milk chocolate…a dark-ish brown, almost dark enough to be confused with Maduro, unless you have the Maduro version sitting next to it. The leaf was oily and had a slightly woody, slightly leathery aroma to it. The cold draw had notes of earth, wood, and red pepper.

Once I got it going, the Mundo Presente presented mostly earthy flavors with highlights of cedar, anise, coffee and red pepper. The flavors were not as bright as I experienced with the Celestial, but also not as muddied and muted as I have gotten from many Honduran-heavy blends. As I continued through the first third, the cedar notes got stronger then weaker several times over; the whole time there was a solid earthiness, though. It did seem like the flavor profile got a little less muted as the cigar progressed.

True to the marketing verbiage on the Puros de Ballard website, during the second third the cigar developed a distinctly nutty flavor profile with a hint of a graham cracker dry sweetness. In all, this was not my favorite blend by Oscar Valladares, but it was definitely a solid smoke that was interesting and somewhat complex.

Next week I’ll be taking a look at the Maduro blend and a special “lost treasure” that they make in very limited numbers.