Nub Studio Tobac Sumatra 460

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 Sumatra we’re featuring this month has a ring gauge of 60. (The largest of the line is a whopping 66 ring gauge.) Each size is supposed to be equivalent to a more traditional-sized cigar. Your 460, for example, contains as much Nicaraguan filler tobacco in it as a 6.75″ x 50 Churchill, and it burns nearly as long as any Churchill. The “Studio Tobac” designation is given to particularly special small-batch releases, so we were very excited to sample this one. The Sumatra 460 is well constructed with a smooth, oily Sumatra wrapper the color of milk chocolate. In fact, the Sumatra wrapper is the same as featured on the famed Serie ‘V’ Melanio. With filler and the binder also Nicaraguan, our panel had a hard time pinpointing the flavors, agreeing that they seemed to meld into one rich tobacco taste with a strong woody core and a smoky aftertaste. Not surprisingly, this is a cigar you can nub. Enjoy it with a bold red wine.

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.