Nub Habano Sun Grown Double Perfecto

Nub, the brainchild of Sam Leccia, who spent a number of years working for the Oliva cigar family, is a novel concept. Sam believes that every cigar has a sweet spot where, at some point during the smoke, it achieves the pinnacle of its flavors. He was driven to see if he could create a cigar that would capture this sweet spot from the very first puff and hold it to the very last. Thus, the Nub brand was born. The design is for function, not novelty. Anyone can create unusual shapes, but each of the Nub blends has a shape created to summon and deliver the blend’s sweet spot right off the bat and hold it at its peak right through to the end. Nub cigars are very short with huge ring gauges. The smallest of the line is a 54 ring, but the majority of them are 60 and above. The Sun Grown Habano we’re featuring this month has a ring gauge of 64. (The largest of the line is a whopping 66 ring gauge.) Each size is supposed to be equivalent to a more traditional-sized cigar. A very curvaceous cigar, this smoke is hand-rolled in Nicaragua and is packed to the gills with Nicaraguan long-fillers and secured with a Nicaraguan binder that is wrapped up in an oily Habano Sun-Grown leaf. Medium to full bodied, this smoke lends creamy notes of baked bread and spices. Pair it with an espresso after dinner.

The Nicaraguan cigar industry originated when Cuban cigar makers escaped the revolution and re-established their livelihood in Nicaragua with Cuban-seed tobacco. Blessed with dark, rich soil, their new home was ideal for tobacco cultivation and Nicaragua quickly became known for cigars that rivaled Cuban quality. Unfortunately, revolution and war came to Nicaragua in the 1980s and devastated the industry, but it’s rebounded dramatically and is once again producing tobacco considered by many to be the finest in the world.

The Esteli Valley is in many ways the heart of Nicaraguan production and is known for its very powerful and spicy tobacco. The Jalapa Valley produces arguably the finest tobacco in the country: somewhat sweeter and less intense than Esteli, but extremely complex. The tobacco of the Condega Valley is often described as a blend of the other two regions.