Aladino Cameroon Reserva

While there are lots and lots of new cigars coming out, a truly new blend tends to be fairly few and far between. Yes, tobacco from different farms gets used, that tobacco gets fermented in unique ways, but reading the blend details will often reveal the same basic details are repeated fairly regularly.

But in the case of JRE Tobacco Co.’s newest cigar, it truly is a new blend, as the Aladino Cameroon Reserva is made entirely of Cameroon-seed tobacco grown in Honduras.

It is offered in just one size, a 6 x 52 toro that is rolled at the company’s factory in Honduras. Pricing for the Aladino Cameroon Reserva is set at $22 per cigar and $264 for a box of 12 cigars. Along with a new and distinctive blend, the bands, boxes and color scheme are also new.

The cigars debuted at the eight Aladino-branded lounges in late June 2024, while other retailers received the cigars in July. In addition to being available in the U.S., the cigars are sold in Hong Kong, Malaysia and the United Kingdom.

The Aladino Cameroon Reserva is the latest evolution of a process of growing Cameroon-seed tobaccos that Julio and Justo Eiroa and their team began several years ago. In 2020, the company released the Aladino Cameroon line, which uses the Cameroon-seed wrapper grown in Honduras, but Honduran corojo is used for the binder and filler. That line is considered a successor of sorts to the Camacho Select, a blend that used a Cameroon wrapper—from Cameroon—over the Eiroa’s Honduran tobacco. That cigar was introduced in 2006, shortly before the Eiroa family sold Camacho.

• Cigar Reviewed: Aladino Cameroon Reserva
• Country of Origin: Honduras
• Factory: Fábrica de Puros Aladino at Las Lomas Jamastran
• Wrapper: Honduras (Cameroon-seed)
• Binder: Honduras (Cameroon-seed)
• Filler: Honduras (Cameroon-seed)
• Length: 6 Inches
• Ring Gauge: 52
• Shape: Round
• MSRP: $22 (Box of 12, $264)
• Release Date: June 2024
• Number of Cigars Released: Regular Production
• Number of Cigars Smoked For Review: 3

The bands are certainly more eye-catching and design-forward than previous Aladino releases, which have felt a bit minimalist, serving the function of simply identifying the cigar and little more. The wrapper has a slightly waxy feel to it, sometimes just enough to add a little friction as my fingers inspect it. Other times it is smoother, reminding me of parchment. Some puckered veins dot each leaf, seam lines are flat, and the coloration is pretty even outside of some variation around the heads of the cigars. The first cigar is firm with a touch of give, the second cigar has a bit more give, while the third is the firmest of the trio and shows the least variance. The foot has aromas of orange peel, a wooden cutting board, cereal dust, and some floral touches. The cold draw is smooth, nearly ideal in terms of air movement. The first thing I pick up is a buttered dinner roll, followed by some creaminess, and then dry wood in the third cigar, but there is very little pepper or spice, making for a pretty subdued flavor overall.

A woody, almost cedar flavor starts off the Aladino Cameroon Reserva, with a bit of orange sweetness to help expand the flavor to more taste buds. The first retrohales are creamy with a fairly tame pepper, but it is still capable of tingling my nostrils. A little creaminess joins the flavor in the first inch, right out of the gate in one cigar, while in another, it waits until the one-inch mark. Its addition makes for an enjoyable, if somewhat familiar profile. Given the unique make up of the blend, I was really hoping the profile would be truly distinctive from the first puff, but the first and third cigars don’t quite deliver that. While the second picks up a more identifiable sweet and spicy combination after about an inch, there’s not much change in the profile once that first inch concludes, with the cigar largely driven by creaminess, a bit of cedar and varying degrees of a citrus and pepper combination that gives the profile its most distinguishing aspect but also the most inconsistent in its contribution. Flavor is medium, body is medium, and strength is mild. Construction is very good and issue-free.

As the second third gets going, pepper really picks up in the retrohales, so much so that I stop a retrohale and close my eyes as a reaction to the sensation in the first cigar. The other two cigars don’t elicit that same reaction, but both intensify the pepper rather noticeably. The creaminess thickens up just a touch, the cedar diminishes a bit, but the profile doesn’t change that much, so once I adjust to the stronger pepper, I find myself retrohaling the cigar more and more as passing the smoke through my nostrils is providing a more rewarding experience than just puffing on the cigar. The profile is decently peppery at the midpoint, as puffs leave a lingering tingle on my tongue, a sign that some stimulation is coming back to my taste buds. Just past the midpoint, I get a flavor that reminds me of something that has chocolate in it, not a chocolate bar per se, but something like chocolate cake donuts. There’s also a touch of earth and a flavor between a latte and a mocha for a few puffs, before the dry wood returns along with some peanut shells. Flavor is medium on average but spends time on both sides of that mark, while body is still medium and strength is medium-minus. Other than some flaky ash, the cigars generally perform well with the draw, burn line and smoke production, although the second really struggles with combustion.

The final third starts with some harshness on the roof of my mouth, not quite a chili pepper burn, but definitely not just run-of-the-mill pepper. Creaminess is still a fairly significant part of the profile, and at the start of the final third, the other flavors have a bit harder time cutting through it, particularly in the third cigar. But in the second cigar, once it dials back just a touch, it creates a runway for the wood and pepper from which to launch. There’s a spot where the woodiness in the flavor and retrohales shift just slightly and it reminds me of walking into a box factory, where wood is quite literally in the air. That begins the cigar’s final transition to a very woody and peppery finish, with a heat to the smoke that delivers a red chili pepper sensation, again of varying intensities among the three cigars. Flavor is medium-plus though can touch medium-full, body is medium-plus, and strength is medium-minus. An occasional relight is needed but the cigars continue to draw well, put off good amounts of smoke, and maintain an even burn line. The ash gets a bit flaky, which is more of an annoyance than anything, as after most puffs, I find myself needing to wipe up some gray flecks from my desk.

Final Notes

• An hour or so after I smoked the second cigar, I was driving to an appointment when thoughts of that cigar popped into my head, specifically, that it didn’t have any dusty earth flavor, something I consider to be a hallmark trait of Honduran tobacco.
• In 2018, Charlie Minato visited JRE Tobacco Co.s Finca Corojo and Las Lomas factory.
• The Aladino Cameroon Reserva didn’t hit me with much nicotine strength until the very end of the cigar, when I felt just a touch of nicotine.
• The cigars for this review were purchased by halfwheel.

• The company lists these as a 6 x 52 toro. The numbers above are the measurements we found for the three cigars used for this review.
• Final smoking time was two hours and 25 minutes on average.
• Site sponsors Atlantic Cigar Co., Famous Smoke Shop, and Smokingpipes carry the Aladino Cameroon Reserva.