In 2009, El Rey del Mundo released the Choix de L’Epoque, a French name, translating the choice of the age, which honestly seems a bit pretentious to me in retrospect, an Edición Regional exclusively distributed by Hunters & Frankau. There were 2,000 dress boxes of 25 produced, and is the smallest of the 20 Regional Edition cigars released in 2009, and priced at about $15 each.

Here is a photo of it next to an Opus X Pussycat, for comparison purposes:

El Rey del Mundo Choix de L´Epoque ER Unido 2009 1

  • Cigar Reviewed: El Rey del Mundo Choix de L´Epoque Edición Reino Unido 2009
  • Country of Origin: Cuba
  • Factory: Briones Montoto
  • Wrapper: Cuba
  • Binder: Cuba
  • Filler: Cuba
  • Size: 4 1/3 Inches
  • Ring Gauge: 52
  • Vitola: Petit Edmundo
  • Est. Price: $15.00 (Boxes of 25, $375.00)
  • Date Released: 2009
  • Number of Cigars Released: 2,000 Boxes of 25 Cigars (50,000 Total Cigars)

The cigar itself is a 4 1/3 x 52 petit robusto, a size I have come to like quite a bit despite my disdain for most large ring gauge cigars, with a light to medium brown wrapper that smells of sweetish hay. It is obviously well-rolled with a great triple cap and very few veins showing.

El Rey del Mundo Choix de L´Epoque ER Unido 2009 2

The Choix de L´Epoque starts off fairly mild, and the dominant flavors are hay, cedar and a bit of honey, but almost no spice or pepper at all until the end, and then just the faintest trace. A very smooth cigar overall and the sweetness in the cigar also increased from the beginning to the end, but was never more then a bit player in the total package.

El Rey del Mundo Choix de L´Epoque ER Unido 2009 3

The draw is a bit loose for the entire smoke, but nothing too horrible. However, the burn is annoyingly erratic, great one moment, crap the next. The final smoking time is an hour and five minute.

81 Overall Score

This was yet another one of those fairly uninteresting, one dimensional, inoffensive cigars released under the premise of a new and exciting Edición Regional size/blend/vitola that does not live up to its promise. Although far from a bad cigar, there was nothing overtly bad about it; the overall blandness of the smoke did nothing to excite me in the least. Just a nice, easy, mild boring smoke, perfect for breakfast, if that is your thing. You could smoke a whole box of these, and wake up the next day trying to remember what you burned the night before

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Brooks Whittington

I have been smoking cigars for over eight years. A documentary wedding photographer by trade, I spent seven years as a photojournalist for the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star Telegram. I started the cigar blog SmokingStogie in 2008 after realizing that there was a need for a cigar blog with better photographs and more in-depth information about each release. SmokingStogie quickly became one of the more influential cigar blogs on the internet, known for reviewing preproduction, prerelease, rare, extremely hard-to-find and expensive cigars. I am a co-founder of halfwheel and now serve as an editor for halfwheel.