Vitola: Toro Extra- 5.5” x 58 ring gauge
- MSRP $10.00
- Purchased from Corona Cigar Company
Background
Saga Cigars is a fascinating company owned by the Reyes family and operating out of the Dominican Republic. The family grew tobacco and made cigars for other companies for some time before launching Saga about five years ago, headlined by the fantastic Golden Age. The Short Tales line started shortly thereafter as a way to feature unique blends and themes in a single, limited-production vitola. Since they are called “Short” they have tended to be on the smaller side…until now…honestly there’s just no way a 58 ring gauge cigar ends up being a “short tale” unless you are hotboxing the whole thing.
The blend does feature some Reyes family Dominican leaf as part of the filler and the San Vicente wrapper, but it also has Nicaraguan and “North American” fillers, along with a Mexican Andres Maduro wrapper, promising a full-bodied and complex smoking experience. Why are we looking at this blend? Because Mr. Will Cooper himself…the man, the myth…named the Saga Short Tales Tomo VI his 2019 Cigar of the Year on Cigar-Coop. Of course, I was going to find a way to try this one no matter what based on just that, but when this series came into my mind, I figured we should feature it.
So let’s go through this one more time shall we? This cigar review website (“blog”? yeah, sure, whatever) is made for entertainment and recording the views of the authors…which may or may not coincide with yours. This “Who Got It Right?” series in particular is done with tongue firmly planted in cheek and should be read with mirth and whimsy…and if you can’t maybe you should just go back to the drudgery that is your life. Whatever we might say, you may disagree…and you are allowed to comment as such…but don’t be surprised if we end up savaging you in replies…it’s just the mood we’re in right now. This is our rating system for this series:
1 – How much money changed hands for this review?
2 – Yeah, no.
3 – To Each His Own
4 – I Can See It
5 – They Got It Right!
And, yeah…that Aging Room Quattro Nicaragua was still one of the most disappointing “highly rated” cigars in the history of Cigar Aficionado magazine. Say what you will, I know a lot of people that smoked it and I don’t know a single one personally who thought it was worthy of COTY status…in ANY vitola.
Notes
The aroma on the wrapper was strongly manure with a somewhat sour note. Let’s just say “earthy in the extreme.” The foot had lesser earthiness with vegetal and cedar notes. After clipping we got coffee notes on the cold draw, along with milder semisweet chocolate and peppery notes.
Firing up I got leather and earth up front, with coffee and unsweetened cocoa powder right behind. The pepper I got was a mild black pepper mostly on the finish. I found it medium-to-full in body right out the gate. One smoker found it “chewy” and “dessert-like,” with notes of chocolate and coffee and red pepper. He also got some nuttiness in the blend. Another remarked that the retrohale was mild with only slight pepperiness…nothing that would be overpowering. “It has a lot of complexity on the tongue more so than on the olfactory sense, which is different from a cigar this dark.” The finish was described as “bready,” which makes sense with Dominican blend.
“This cigar makes you pay attention, not because you want to make fun of it, but because there’s so much going on. There’s a whole lot of subtle complexities.”
As we got into the back end of the first third, there was some sweet and slightly-sour cherry note. One smoker described it as “classic San Andres, but not as pungent on the tongue.” We all got a subtle white pepper on the back of the tongue.
Getting into the second third, I picked up more pepper in the retrohale, which was noted by another of our reviewers. The other said he noted that the strength ramped up, even though the body stayed about the same. I started to get a more pronounced sourness on the finish…a strange orange zest tartness.
Both of the other reviewers noted a drop in flavor at the midway point. One thought it got boring, the other didn’t find that. I didn’t find it to get boring, but I did note a bit of a drop off in intensity of flavor with more straight-ahead earthiness with leather backing it up.
By the last third, the sweet fruit notes had pretty much dropped out and there was a much stronger coffee flavor with more characteristic Mexican wrapper flavor. I found the body had increased to the low end of full and there was a more pronounced pepper.
We agreed that this should be sitting around “4” on our scale…we can all see how it would be Cigar of the Year, although none of us would have picked it.
