Hoyo de Monterrey Excalibur Dark Knight

Here's another cigar in this month’s lineup from a maker with an extensive history in the tobacco industry. This highly sought after brand originally began in Cuba in 1960 and was produced by leaf grower and founder Jose Gener. His family farmed in the Vuelta Abajo region for many years during the late 1800s—a very fertile area in Southwest Cuba renowned for its tobaccos. Now made in Honduras, Hoyo De Monterrey’s popular “Excalibur” line was recently amped-up and re-blended. These cigars boast the finest of all Hoyo De Monterrey’s tobaccos, with a three nation blend of fillers from the Dominican Republic, Honduras and Nicaragua. Dark Knight is the most recent addition to the Excalibur line, following Merlin, King Arthur, Galahad and Lancelot. However, Dark Knight is unique within the line because it uses the darker, richer, more complex wrapper of a Connecticut Broadleaf instead of the Cameroon variety used to coat its brethren. Expect deep, leathery notes and smooth yet powerful tobacco flavors, right through to the spicy finish. Pair with a chardonnay.

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.