Macanudo Cru Royale Gigante

The Macanudo Cru Royale is not your typical Macanudo. Released in 2010 at the IPCPR (International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association), this cigar was masterfully blended under the watchful eye of the one and only Benji Menendez from General Cigar in the Dominican Republic. His team included some of the best cigar masters in the world including the general manager of General Cigar, Francisco Rodriguez. This team blended viso leaves from the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, then combined them with Brazilian Mata Fina, and carefully bound that combination with a Dominican La Vega Especial leaf. All of this is then wrapped in an Ecuadorian Habano leaf to give the cigar a fuller body than the traditional mild Macanudo cigar. When smoking this stogie, deservedly rated 91 by Cigar Aficionado, you will find strong flavors of nuttiness and cocoa with hints of licorice, pepper, and cinnamon that will open up to a nice meaty and chewy finish of leather and cedar. We often pair this medium bodied with a nice lowland scotch.

Though tobacco is indigenous to Hispaniola, the tobacco industry in the Dominican Republic existed in the shadow of Cuba’s dominance through the 1960s. When the exodus of Cuban cigar makers began in the wake of the revolution, many decided the Dominican Republic would be ideal for the resumption of their livelihoods. Unrest in Nicaragua in the 1980s fueled the Dominican cigar industry further. The country now makes more than half of the premium cigars imported into the U.S.

The Cibao Valley and the nearby city of Santiago are the center of cigar production in the Dominican Republic. Three main varieties are grown here: the mild and native Olor Dominicano; the intense Piloto Cubano, brought from the Vuelta Abajo of Cuba; and San Vicente, a milder and more acidic Piloto hybrid. Dominican puros were once unheard of as it was widely thought impossible to grow quality wrapper leaf on the island, but new growing techniques are now allowing some exceptional puros to be produced.