Vitola: Figurado- 6.5” x 64 ring gauge
- ~$16.99
- Purchased from Burns Tobacconist
When LFD announced the Andalusian Bull at last year’s IPCPR show, I didn’t pay much attention to it. Honestly, it may have been because we were sort of “between reps.” I don’t know who exactly was the rep when showtime hit, but following up the great Sean Hardiman is difficult (our current rep is a “work in progress”). It was an expensive cigar available in only one vitola; since our previous management had always ordered too heavily on LFD’s super-premium offerings, we had not been ordering much in the way of their $15+ sticks for a while…not until we started to draw down some of the old stock. None of us had tried Andalusian Bull when Cigar Aficionado named it #1 Cigar of the Year for 2016.
Suffice to say, I was on the phone with our rep 20 minutes later trying to get some sticks…we had a small “meet-n-greet” event planned with him just over a week later. He was able to get us 1 (one) box of Andalusian Bull for the event…and nothing else for nearly 3 months until our backorder finally showed up a couple weeks back. I didn’t get a chance to try anything from that box back in December, so this is my first experience smoking this pick for Cigar of the Year.
The story is that Litto and Tony Gomez collaborated on the blend for this cigar. It uses Dominican fillers, including Criollo 98, a hybrid, and some Pelo d’Oro, along with an Ecuadorian Corojo wrapper. The cigar is a big, bold cigar with a peanut butter-colored wrapper with plenty of darker mottling on it. The aroma from the wrapper was mildly sweet and slightly woody, but mostly just natural tobacco. The foot of the cigar was a mix of hay and earth notes, along with an almost bell-pepper sharpness.
The banding on this one stands out from the rest of the LFD lineup. It uses black, gold and green, with a matador silhouette inside a large oval, surrounded by…rings?…buttons?…Target logos? Whatever…The sides of the band show some intricate scrollwork and name of the cigar is written in a Picasso-like font on the secondary band. It’s an impressive display with 10 of these sticks lines up in a box.
The cold draw had plenty of grassy Dominican notes, along with some cedar and vegetal flavors. Lighting up the 64 ring gauge foot with my single-flame torch took some patience, but I was eventually rewarded with a rich combination of cedar and sweet hay, citrus and graham, and a bit of a white pepper burn. The oddest thing from the outset was that it defied the expectations that LFD has raised over many years…that anything special and expensive from them would be full-bodied and powerful. This simply wasn’t…it was low in the medium-bodied range with a great opening blast of flavor.
As I burned my way through the Andalusian Bull, I was surprised by the constantly high level of flavor and how the balance was so well achieved…having plenty of flavor in a very large ring gauge stick without it being a powerhouse. At this point, I’m not sure how highly I would rate this cigar and whether or not I would have it featured on my own Top 10 list…but it’s definitely a very good cigar and I plan to come back to it for a full review sometime later.
