Angelenos Lonsdale

Now, Fuente seems to have surprised a few people with the number of newer cigars it will be introducing this month including some vitolas in the Fuente Fuente OpusX blend, specifically the Love Affair, Magnum O and Shark are all become part of the normal OpusX release.

One of the new releases is the Angelenos brand, blended by Carlos Fuente Sr. and marketed by Prometheus, who also has the God of Fire and Opus22 sets under its belt. The Angelenos will come in four different sizes: Lonsdale (6 1/2 x 44), Toro (6 x 50), Double Robusto (5 3/4 x 52), and Gran Toro (6 1/2 x 54)

Only the Lonsdale and Toro are being released for Christmas with the other two vitolas will be available in April of 2010. Each size will also be limited to 5,000 cigars and will be released in 10-count boxes.

According to the website and info packet, the Angelnos was created to honor the city of Los Angeles:

The Angelenos cigar may be the first to honor a city where cigars are not produced, but enjoyed with gusto and enthusiasm matched nowhere else. I am referring of course to Los Angeles, home of many of the world’s most passionate cigar lovers.

The website also has some tasting notes on the cigar, which I will share with you here, in case you are too busy or jaded to go to their website to read it:

On first light, the Angelenos surprises the palate with flavors of gingerbread and eggnog. Its taste recalls the flavors of nutmeg, brown sugar, and cream, and the aroma is fragrant with subtle hints of cinnamon and ginger.

Unlike most other cigars, the Angelenos has an opening act and a second act. About halfway through, its flavor evolves noticeably. The sweet and spicy notes fade as the leathery, full-bodied taste of the Ecuador-grown wrapper starts to dominate. The Angelenos finishes with a well-rounded flavor that remains robust and smooth all the way to the end. Enough of that, let’s get down to business, shall we?

• Cigar Reviewed: Angelenos Lonsdale
• Country of Origin: Dominican Republic
• Factory: Tabacalera A. Fuente y Cia
• Wrapper: Ecuador
• Binder: Dominican Republic
• Filler: Dominican Republic
• Size: 6 1/4 Inches
• Ring Gauge: 44
• Vitola: Lonsdale
• MSRP: $12.00 (Boxes of 10, $120.00)
• Date Released: December 2009 & April 2010

The cigar itself has a very light brown wrapper and it is slightly box-pressed. The wrapper is very smooth to the touch, and has no obvious veins. It also has almost no oil or smell at all, which surprised me a bit. Having said that, the construction looks great on it.

Immediately after lighting, there was just a touch of spice on the tongue, but it disappeared fairly quickly, and was replaced with a very strong flavor of cedar, almost like I was smoking a chunk of wood instead of a cigar. This lasted for the whole first third, and underneath was just a bit of floral note, but not enough to change the overall flavor.

The second third was much the same as the first. Cedar was the dominant flavor, but it was dialed down a bit, not quite as intense as the first third. Still no spice or pepper, but I did get just a little bit of sweetness, sort of a vanilla taste, but very faint.

The final third was much the same as the previous two: very mild, no pepper or spice at all, quite a bit of cedar. Interestingly, the flavors at the end were seemingly gelling together fairly well. It stayed that way until I got down to the end, where it turned quite bitter.  I was able to nub it, but honestly, I did not want to.

Final Notes:

• If you have not gotten the picture yet, this was a very mild and boring cigar, almost like smoking air.
• This cigar had a fairly fast burn for the size of it, and the final smoking time was one hour and 10 minutes.
• The draw and burn were decent for the length of the cigar, but not great.

Brooks Whittington

I have worn many hats in my life up to this point: I started out as a photojournalist for the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, then transitioned to photographing weddings—both internationally and in the U.S.—for more than a decade. After realizing that there was a need for a cigar website containing better photographs and more in-depth information about each release, I founded my first cigar blog, SmokingStogie, in 2008. 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, and it was one of the predecessors to halfwheel, which I co-founded.