Cigar Review: Why CAO's La Triviata Maduro Is An Opera For Your Mouth

The stage is dark, you're sitting in your seat waiting in anticipation for the show to start, just as you would have the playbill clutched in your hands, CAO's La Triviata Maduro cigar is clutched in mine. Like the orchestra warming up, I begin to get the subtle hints of a gently spiced leather from this divine, chocolate wrapped, cigar. The lights begin to rise and a very large and well-dressed man, accompanied by a women of equal stature, comes to the center of the stage the same way the match begins to toast my well-dressed cigar. Then, the man center stage, clears his throat as I bring my lips to the cigar. Taking my first few puffs, you could almost hear the orchestra playing its first few harmonies as the man's voice first sings a dulcet tune, then, once lit, both tunes become a bellowing, booming duet of oak and leather with just the ever so slightest hint of spice and cocoa, like the orchestras gentle and playful tune.

CAO's La Triviata Maduro cigar, I chose the 5.5X52 torpedo, is constructed well with a sleek and oily Ecuadorean Habano wrapper, a Cameroon binder, and long filler from Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. It's draw is as effortless as the rapture of the music it plays on your tongue. While smoking, the ash of this cigar, which is off-white and striped with grey and dark grey streaks, clings like the woman's crescendo voice which seems to last for minutes!


Moving into the second act, the oak and leather duet sing beautifully with one another, while the spice becomes mellow and softer. As the ash drops for the first time, the flavor profile changes and drops into a musical melancholy for several minutes, before picking you back up onto its harmonies and carrying you triumphantly into the third act. The cigar's third act produces a floral hint, that can also be found in the cigars aroma, as though the cigar is preparing the flowers to be thrown at the end while our Prima Divo and Prima Donna reach the final chorus. When that time comes, that fat lady does indeed arrive with bellicose bluster, and with another clinging crescendo, holds you till you can no longer hold the cigar. By the end, you're left wanting to jump out of your seat and applaud CAO's La Triviata Maduro, not for the cigars complexity, but for it's simplistic beauty.