Let me tell you right off the bat. I did NOT pay $750 for this cigar. In fact, I did not pay any money at all for it.

Here is the story. As you may or may not know, I have a list of cigars on the site that I would love to get my hands on to review. Well, one day about two weeks ago, I got an email from an Army medic who served in Iraq telling me that he had a Gurkha HMR that he was willing to trade out, and that he could not get a hold of a lot of the limited Tatuajes and other sticks that he wanted to try. Well, I have quite a few of those, and I figured it would be a win-win situation for both of us; he gets some sticks he would not otherwise get a hold of, I get to review a stick that not very many people have seen, never mind smoke, and I get to help out a soldier in the process.

So, we made the trade, and that is how I got a hold of a $750 cigar to review.

Limited to less than 75 boxes a year, these cigars are made with a one-year-old Connecticut maduro wrapper and 12-year-old Dominican binder and Filler, then infused with an entire bottle of Louis XIII Cognac, per box.

This is not the only cognac infused cigar from Gurkha, there is also the Grand Reserve and the Royal Reserve, both of which use inferior cognac, apparently.

Gurkha His Majesty's Reserve 1.png

  • Cigar Reviewed: Gurkha His Majesty’s Reserve
  • Factory: n/a
  • Country of Origin: Dominican Republic
  • Wrapper: Connecticut Broadleaf
  • Binder: Dominican Republic
  • Filler: Dominican Republic
  • Size: 7 1/2 Inches
  • Ring Gauge: 52
  • Vitola: Churchill
  • MSRP: $750 (Box of 20, $15,000.00)

The first thing I noticed when I opened the package was that the glass tube was quite a bit thicker on this stick then, say, the Grand Reserve, which I will be comparing it too, and that the wax on the tube was green instead of gold. When putting them side by side, the HMR is a bit bigger and has a much darker wrapper to be expected of a maduro wrapper, of course, but it was a very dark wrapper, and seems to be rolled quite a bit better as well.

I was expecting a blast of cognac smell when I opened the tube, but was disappointed when all I smelled was tobacco with a bit of cognac. The stick was well rolled and slightly spongy when squeezed, and the wrapper smelled a bit like chocolate and leather and cognac, of course.

It punched easily, and, on lighting, the first few puffs tasted like toasted nuts, a little pepper, and a sweet taste that was present, but not overpowering at all. I expected a change in taste after that, but alas, was disappointed that the flavors stayed pretty much the same for the first third, pretty boring really.

Gurkha His Majesty's Reserve 2.png

During the second third of the cigar, a little more pepper was present, along with some chocolate notes. At the end of the second third, though, the stick started turning bitter, and not in a this tastes like bitter chocolate/espresso/coffee way, more like a this tastes a little like hot tea brewed about 20 minutes longer than it needed to be way.

Gurkha His Majesty's Reserve 3.png

The last third was where this cigar really fell apart. I wish I could say that it pulled it out in the end, but that was just not the case. There was no more flavors of chocolate, no more cognac, no more tobacco, no more pepper. Instead, the bitter, sour taste actually increased to the point that it was almost unsmokable. It was almost a taste like old, wet cardboard; a very odd and annoying taste that made me want to chuck the last of the stick into a garbage disposal. I still numbed it, after all, I figured out it was about $20 a puff, but it was a real struggle.

Gurkha His Majesty's Reserve 4.png

Final Notes:

  • I was expecting to be overwhelmed with the taste of cognac after reading about this cigar and how it was infused, and while I did taste some of it, it was not near as present as I thought it would be. Sad to say, but a taste of cognac would have been preferable to what I ended up with.
  • The band on this cigar is exactly the same as every Gurkha I have seen. Honestly, you would think that for a cigar that costs this much, they would use a different band, but alas, that is not the case.
  • Final Smoking time on this stick was one hour and 57 minutes.
  • Draw was great, but the burn was just ok. I had to touch it up a few times but nothing major.

Update (February 7, 2014): A representative from Gurkha has stated that Tabacalera Las Lavas S.R.L is not the factory that produces the Gurkha HMR. In addition, as of late 2013, the MSRP is now $1,000 per cigar.

55 Overall Score

This stick would have been an ok $6 stick. As it is, I would call it overpriced, overhyped, boring, bitter crap. Not exactly a surprise, but I was really hoping that it would shock me. The only redeeming quality of this cigar was that it stood up for the final photo without falling over.

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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.