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!

Cigar Review: Tatuaje Havana VI Torpedo

So I have heard all the rage now about Tatuaje and since it is coming from one of the industries greatest cigar makers, Don Jose Pepin, it should live up to some nice hype. So I went down and picked up a Red Label Havana VI Torpedo.

Immediately I was impressed by its look. For a $5 stick, it looked very well constructed, smooth even colored wrapper, nice cap and a simple, yet elegant label. This is a Nicaragua puro (all Nicaraguan leaf, wrapper, binder and filler) To the hand it seemed just the right amount of soft, springy leaf filler in a perfect wrap. To light it didn't take much effort and had a near perfect draw. As it burned it created quite a nice even, white ash, although about 1/3 of the way into it, I had problems with an uneven burn, and starting around the 2/3 mark it started wanting to be a quick burn, forcing someone as long-winded as myself in conversation, to pay more attention to how often I'm pulling from the cigar requiring a re-light once. But overall I'd say this was a pretty fine smoke.

The flavor that first caught my attention within the first few draws was distinctly woody, I'd almost go as far to describe it as mesquite but not quite. but mellows out to just a wooded flavor with a hint of nut. Later, about 1/3 to halfway through there was a hint of a spice I couldnt quite place, my friend experinced the same at the 1/3 mark, it was almost like a teasing hint of anise on the back of my tongue, just poking every now and then which I found enjoyable. By the end I found that this had a fairly consistent character and good dense smoke. I paired this with a medium coffee and found that to be a pretty comfortable after dinner match.