Cigar Review: The Kingfish Lauren Torpedo--A Panamanian Puro!

So, back in mid-2009 I had made contact with a new cigar company out of Panama named Kingfish Cigars who had wanted to get the word out about their cigars. Kingfish Cigars is hoping to help build an industry reputation in Panama for puro cigars. I received a total of five cigar betas from Kingfish Cigars owner Ray Whitlow III to sample and review. At the time I had received the cigars, they had only been aged one year. Of the five cigars I had received, one was too damaged to smoke, but the other four cigars had survived just fine. I smoked these incrementally to see how aging these longer in my humidor would affect them. I smoked the last of the four cigars last night and that final one had aged nearly four years and I am pleased to find has a name now: The Kingfish Lauren, named in honor of the owners eldest daughter. I'm going to review how fantastic this new cigar is going to be, especially once released!

These torpedo cigars are a good healthy size coming in around a 7X54. The construction on these cigars is well done. The natural Panamanian wrapper is wrapped tight with no soft spots and feels firm across the whole cigar. After cutting, I test the draw before lighting and find that this cigar has damn near the most perfect draw of any cigar that I've had, which was consistent with all the other Kingfish Cigars prior, it was light but not airy and drawing a puff was effortless after lighting! The feature that struck me the most about the construction and quality of the cigar came with the ash. This cigars ash was a solid white that was almost unparallelled in all cigars I've smoked yet and it hung on like a professional climber on a rock wall! The ash only dropped twice while smoking and one of those times, I wouldn't even blame it on the cigar, as, I was in a busy location.



Again, since Panama is not known for quality puro cigars--most involve Cuban seed fillers--I wasn't too sure what to expect for flavor from this cigar. But during my pre-light draw test, I was greeting with spiced woody flavors and the wrapper left a pleasant spiced feeling on my lips. Upon lighting I get a distinct black pepper-cedar flavor that flashes spicy at the beginning and mellows out after a few puffs. The first third of this cigar is the spiced cedar with just a hint of almost a creamy flavor under it all. By the time I get to the second third of the cigar, the cream has disappeared and the cedar really stood up on its own with the black pepper accenting it quite nicely and maybe just the hint of a grassy flavor. The final third of this cigar is where the cedar receded and the grassier flavor became a little more pronounced but what really stood out was the spice!



Overall, this cigar surprised me a great deal. Especially since I have smoked all of the others before maturing as much as this final one had. The construction and flavor were amazing and the only real note I'd have negative is that toward the end of the last third the flavor had a hint of a sour flavor. However, these puppies aren't going to be released until January of 2013 which by that time will be almost 5 years of aging which should remove any remaining sourness. This cigar would go fantastically with an Islay scotch with a lot of salty peat like I did last night while playing cards!