Alec Bradley Fine & Rare BCN-143

“Alec Bradley Fine & Rare BCN-143 is one of the final blends that Alec and I developed with Alan Rubin,” said Bradley Rubin, brand ambassador for Alec Bradley, in a press release last November. “It embodies our passion for exceptional tobacco and our commitment to carrying the brand forward with STG. I’m really looking forward to sharing this new expression with Alec Bradley fans, old and new.”

Alan Rubin, the Alec Bradley founder, named his cigar company after his two sons, Alec and Bradley. So an alternate version of the first part of the quote is: this is one of the final blends that my dad and I developed.

The older Rubin is still present—I recently saw a photograph of him at an event where he seemed to be representing Alec Bradley—but Alec Bradley is no longer his company. Last February, Alan Rubin sold Alec Bradley to Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG), the owner of Cigars International, General Cigar Co., Thompson and others. While Bradley Rubin remains involved during this next chapter of Alec Bradley, his father no longer has a daily role at the company.

Anytime a company is sold, but especially when the founder departs as part of the sale, it’s always curious to guess which blends are the final of the original team and which products were created by the new owners. For me, it’s the most interesting part of the Alec Bradley Fine & Rare BCN-143, which says something because this isn’t a normal cigar.

Fine & Rare debuted on Nov. 11, 2011, i.e. 11/11/11, with a 6 x 52 toro. It’s been an annual limited edition series for Alec Bradley, containing different blends that share one common trait: each blend has ten different tobaccos.

This year’s release is BCN-143, a 7 x 50 Churchill that uses a criollo 98 wrapper grown in Trojes, Honduras over dual binders: a criollo leaf from Estelí, Nicaragua and criollo 98 from Trojes.

Underneath that are seven different filler tobaccos:

• Jalapa, Nicaragua corojo 99 viso
• Jalapa, Nicaragua criollo 98 ligero
• Jamastran Valley, Honduras corojo viso
• Jamastran Valley, Honduras corojo 99 viso
• Jamastran Valley, Honduras criollo 98 ligero
• Jamastran Valley, Honduras criollo 98 viso
• Trojes, Honduras criollo 98 ligero

The cigars were rolled by one pair at Raíces Cubanas, the factory that has made every Fine & Rare release to date. Just 2,500 boxes of 10 cigars were released in November 2023.

• Cigar Reviewed: Alec Bradley Fine & Rare BCN-143
• Country of Origin: Honduras
• Factory: Fábrica de Tabacos Raíces Cubanas S. de R.L.
• Wrapper: Honduras (Trojes Criollo 98)
• Binder: Honduras (Troyes Criollo 98) & Nicaragua (EstelÍ)
• Filler: Honduras (Jamastran & Trojes) & Nicaragua (Jalapa)
• Length: 7 Inches
• Ring Gauge: 50
• Vitola: Churchill
• MSRP: $25.99 (Box of 10, $259.90)
• Release Date: Nov. 11, 2023
• Number of Cigars Released: 2,500 Boxes of 10 Cigars (25,000 Total Cigars)
• Number of Cigars Smoked For Review: 3

From their size to the die-cutting to the sheer amount of information, the Fine & Rare bands have always stuck out to me. This time, my eyes are drawn to three red roses that pop out of a sea of blue and gray colors. As for the cigars themselves, it’s a very familiar story: a long cigar with a soft box-press. The wrappers are darker than average, though probably not the darkest for this series, with a good amount of veins that are integrated pretty well. The aromas are medium-full with two cigars being led by a cardboard-like smell with leather, earth, and acidity underneath. The third cigar has more of the acidity, none of the cardboard and some toasty notes that smell a bit like burnt flour tortillas. Again, two cigars are pretty similar with smells from the foot: chocolate—sweet or dark—oatmeal and leather. The third cigar has more ammonia and acidity with floral, cedar and port sensations underneath. All three are full. Cold draws are all over the map: one cigar is led by nuttiness and some potato chips, another is like Kellogg’s Corn Pops cereal but with some acidity, and the third has got chocolate and earthiness. Each cigar has a lot of different flavors and has a very thick profile that requires some work to fully understand what’s going on.

The Alec Bradley Fine & Rare BCN-143 starts with earthiness, leather and woodiness. Depending on the cigar, I get popcorn, minerals flavors or a milky creaminess, with black pepper and green pepper building on a medium-full start. After the first half inch, the three cigars have more or less come to the same place. Earthiness and leather lead to some toasty and mineral flavors. There’s some roux-like creaminess, bread and a soft vegetal flavor that I can’t fully place. As the finish starts, the black pepper really picks up, leading to a massive uptick in mineral and leather flavors with vegetal flavors, cedar and creaminess behind it. Retrohales have bread, leather, cedar, some tart mustard flavors and black and white pepper. Occasionally, there are some more exotic flavors like a meatloaf-like dry meatiness or floral flavors, but they rarely stick around for consecutive puffs. The finish of the retrohales is somewhat similar to the main finish: mineral and leather flavors pick up with black pepper and acidity behind it. Flavor is medium-full, body is medium-plus, and strength is medium. While the smoke production is very high off the foot, the draws are a tad loose on two cigars, which seems to hurt smoke production in the mouth and necessitates a touch-up on one of the three cigars.

Up until the halfway point, nuttiness takes the driver’s seat of the profile, slightly edging out generic woodiness and earthiness. Close to the halfway mark, the earthiness takes over with a familiar terroir flavor—think a drier and richer earthiness—playing a much larger role. Secondary flavors include leather, creaminess, minerals, black tea, black pepper, fruitiness and bread. It’s especially tough for me to tell when the finish starts as the earthiness and black pepper just methodically build and build with mineral flavors, creaminess and leather hanging out underneath. Retrohales are more bitter than I’d like, but deliver leather over some peanut butter. Oftentimes, it adds a sharp tingle to the mixture, which I enjoy as it awakens a different part of my palate. They finish creamier with the peanut butter and leather playing larger roles. Flavor teeters on hitting the full level with body medium-full and strength medium-plus, but building. The loose draws of two cigars are wreaking havoc on combustion. While the draws aren’t that loose, I rarely take a single puff that feels like I get the requisite smoke output I should be getting. Furthermore, each cigar requires at least one touch-up and two cigars stop producing any smoke at all, requiring a full relight.

Unfortunately, by the final third of the Alec Bradley Fine & Rare BCN-143, the combustion issues have brought down the flavor profile. There are occasional puffs that avoid the toastiness and bitterness, but for the most part, it’s an earthy profile that is accented by lots of toastiness and bitter sensations. Leather, white pepper, meatiness and some soft sweetness can be found, but the difference in intensity between those flavors and the bitter and toasty tastes is quite large. I would love to write that retrohales provide some sort of relief. Unfortunately, the loose draws mean that I’m often having to take multiple puffs to get enough smoke volume to push through my nose. When I do, the profile shows a bit more herbal flavors before the minerals and toastiness take over. White and black pepper remain enjoyable and vibrant, but given the overall flavor profile, they just don’t do much to improve the experience. Retrohales finish with bitter coffee and earthiness, a sign that the cigar might be too burnt in more ways than one. Flavor is full, body is full and strength is medium-full, at times getting to be full. All three cigars have a loose draw and require multiple touch-ups from the lighter to burn until the end.

Final Notes

• I try to avoid looking at my notes of previous cigars while writing the tasting notes of the cigar I’m currently smoking. After finishing the final cigar and seeing all of my notes together, I was surprised to see the word “dense” get used so much to describe the flavor profile. It is a very dense flavor profile that hides a lot of the complexities and requires a lot of attention to fully grasp everything I was tasting. I don’t think I ever really taste all of the flavors in a cigar I’m smoking, but the Fine & Rare BCN-143 is one of those cigars I feel even less confident about.
• These cigars weighed 14.44 grams, 16.24 grams and 16.71 grams. Compared to other cigars of similar size, this seems light. For context, most of the other cigars with similar dimensions are in the 18-20 gram range. While I never felt like the cigars were underfilled, perhaps that explains the slightly loose draws.
• Those loose draws were the downfall of this cigar, necessitating regular touch-ups and full relights on two cigars. That cost the Fine & Rare points for both construction issues and made the flavor profile more bitter and sharper.
• Given that these cigars were rolled by one pair, finding out where the issue was caused is, for better and worse, very straightforward.
• None of the cigars I smoked were the full 7 x 50. I measured them to average 6 11/12 x 48 with the largest cigar coming in at 6.94 x 49.
• General Cigar Co. advertises on halfwheel. Alec Bradley is distributed by Forged Cigar Co. Both Forged and General are owned by STG.
• Cigars for this review were purchased by halfwheel.
• Final smoking time was quite lengthy, just under three hours on average.
• Site sponsors Atlantic Cigar Co., Cigars Direct, Corona Cigar Co., Famous Smoke Shop and Smoking Pipes carry the Alec Bradley Fine & Rare BCN-143.