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Review: San Cristóbal Oficios (2009)

First released in 1999, the San Cristóbal line is the newest Cuban line. When it was first introduced, the brand had only four different vitolas. Each of the original cigars were named after different forts that protected Havana in colonial times. Three more sizes were added to the line in 2004 when Habanos S.A. released the San [...]

Redux: OpusX ForbiddenX 13 Nacimiento 1912

Midway through December of 2011, select Fuente retailers received a surprise release of a brand new ForbiddenX blend to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Arturo Fuente brand. Each box contained 13 cigars, and all had a secondary band with the number 13 inside a clock face on it. Fuente recently shipped a smaller second batch to retailers in [...]

Redux: Coronado Maduro Corona Especial

Released way back in April of 2009, the Coronado by La Flor Maduro Corona Especial never really caught on with consumers. Intended as an experiment of sorts, this release is the exact same blend as the regular Coronado by La Flor, with a Maduro wrapper from Ecuador replacing the Nicaraguan rosado wrapper on the original blend. Only 83 [...]

Review: Tatuaje Mini Mum

The Mini Mum is part of Tatuaje’s new Little Monsters, a limited edition run based on Tatuaje’s popular Monster series. Pete Johnson’s Monster Series is an annual Halloween release that is unequivocally the most-anticipated domestic release currently made. We’ve documented the Little Monsters fairly extensively over the past six months, but in case you are unaware [...]

Review: Rodrigo La Fortaleza Absoluto

In late of 2011, George Rodriguez of Rodrigo Cigars sent out a holiday e-mail that contained info about his newest project, La Fortaleza. Details were slim at the time, but slowly it was learned that this would be a limited edition Dominican puro that would bring Rodrigo into the full range. Like the other like Rodrigos, [...]

Review: La Flor Dominicana Double Claro No. 42

In late 2010, Litto Gomez added his name to the growing, yet still small, hat of manufacturers to produce a Candela cigar. Unlike recent initial launches from both Dion Giolito of Illusione (~hl~ Candela) and Andre Farkas of Viaje (WLP Candela), Gomez announced that his release would be regular production from the get go. (Giolito’s [...]

Review: OpusX ForbiddenX 13 Nacimiento 1912

For those of you that don’t know… Midway through December of 2011, some interesting boxes of Fuente products started showing up at various stores across the country with nearly no forewarning at all. Almost nothing was known about these cigars when they were released and people on the boards and Twitter had a field day [...]

Review: H. Upmann Crystales (1940s)

For those of you that don’t know… H. Upmann is a Cuban brand that has a long and interesting history, and the Crystales was a major part of that history until relatively recently. From cigars-review.org: The H. Upmann brand dates back to 1844, when Herman Upmann, a German banker, began using specially imprinted boxes of [...]

Review: E.P. Carrillo Short Run 2010 No.4 (Prerelease)

Today we will be taking a look at a limited store release, the E.P. Carrillo Short Run 2010 No.4, a Federal Cigar anniversary exclusive! A couple months back Rick Gadway, owner of Federal Cigar in New Hampshire, told me about a E.P. Carrillo cigar he had coming down the pike, he explained that it would [...]

Review: Illusione ~ULTRA~ MKULTRA

Today we will be taking a look at a cigar from Dion Giolito and his brand Illusione, the MKULTRA! In 2006 when Dion was reworking some of the blends for his national brand Illusione there was a cigar called the MK, a 5 1/8 X 42 cigar dubbed, “the teaching machine”, and there was a much [...]