Graycliff 10 Year Vintage Maduro Pirate Torpedo

Founded by Graycliff Resort owner, Enrico Garzaroli, the Graycliff Cigar Company has achieved fame worldwide for high-end, handcrafted cigars produced in the lush tropical setting of the prestigious Bahamian resort by the same name, as well as at their Honduran, Dominican, and Nicaraguan factories . The site of the Graycliff Resort was originally a church built in 1666, one of Nassau's first structures and certainly most prominent. Known as the "Pride of the Bahamas," this historic site later served as a fort before becoming home to the 5-star resort it is today.

Before it was home to a five-star restaurant, a chocolatier, a cigar company, and one of the world’s largest wine cellars, Graycliff had quite the history. It all starts with Captain John Howard Graysmith, a pirate who plundered ships all throughout the Caribbean. His buccaneering not only made him one of the more famous pirates of the Caribbean but also one of the more wealthy pirates of his time. When Captain Graysmith retired from piracy in the 1740s, he built a mansion at Graycliff near the church, and that structure in part is what is used as the hotel. During his time at Graycliff, he became a privateer, a legal form of pirate backed by the British Crown. Over the years, the mansion served as a pirate hangout, the American Navy’s headquarters and garrisons in 1776, the officer’s mess for the West Indian Regiment during the American Civil War, and a hot spot for the rich and famous during Prohibition. Owned by British royalty in the 1960’s and early 1970’s, the Garzarolis acquired the property in 1973, turning the private home into the elegant hotel we know today. If those walls could talk!

The Graycliff 10 Year Vintage Maduro Pirate is another top-notch cigar to come out of Honduras. This medium to full bodied smoke offers an ultra-refined and fully matured dark and oily Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper, a delicious Honduran binder, and extensively aged, exquisite long-fillers from Honduras and Nicaragua. Light it up and find lots of smoke with a razor sharp burn and rich, deep flavors of cedar and cocoa, with a creamy, earthy core. Our panel said that this one pairs perfectly with a Diplomatico Single Vintage Rum.

Honduras has been a tobacco growing and cigar manufacturing area for hundreds of years, but it was the Communist revolution in Cuba that really put Honduras on the map. In the 1960s, many Cuban cigar makers fled their homeland and arrived in Honduras to re-establish their way of life. The immigrants took advantage of the climate, soil, and geography, which were well-suited to tobacco growing, and began producing high quality cigars. The center of the Honduran cigar industry is the city of Danli and the nearby Jamastran Valley. The majority of the world’s pure Corojo tobacco is grown here, now that Cuba has stopped production of this iconic, spicy, and rich variety in favor of Corojo hybrids. Other important areas of Honduran cigar production include the Talanga Valley, Copan, and Trojes.