Featured Cigars - November 2013

In 2008—just when reasonably-priced quality handmade cigars were going the way of the dodo bird and beehive hairdo—Pioneer Valley Cigars debuted. This mild-bodied stick is made in Nicaragua. It’s named to celebrate its Connecticut Shade wrapper, grown in Pioneer Valley which, since the mid-nineteenth century, has been famed for producing the finest tobacco available for cigar wrappers. The Connecticut River Valley runs from...

Garo Bouldoukian, founder of Garo Habano, is still a practicing chiropractor. He entered the cigar market in 1996, not as a business, but to satisfy his own requirement for fine cigars, and to supply gifts to friends and colleagues. Unaware the cigar Renaissance had begun, he contacted a small Cuban expatriate's factory in the Dominican Republic that still makes several high-quality and well-known premium cigar brands. They supported him in...

Pinar del Rio is made in one of the best small factories in the Dominican Republic. PDR cigars are known for boutique charm and, more important, flavor. The PDR Small Batch Black Corojo Toro features a complex blend of Dominican Corojo ligeros and secos that are complemented by a healthy dose of Dominican Criollo 98 that is all held together by a Dominican binder with a silky Dominican Habano wrapper, all of which are extra-fermented.

These hand-rolled sticks are a blend of Dominican Piloto Cubano and Mexican long fillers, plus a Mexican San Andrean binder married with a golden brown, shade-grown Connecticut wrapper. This mild cigar had a lighter taste with notes of almonds, cashews and fresh herbs with notes of pepper joining in about halfway through. The aroma is so pleasant your non-smoking companions may find themselves moving closer to enjoy it.

The Habano 460 is well constructed with a smooth, oily Nicaraguan Habano wrapper the color of milk chocolate. The binder is also Nicaraguan. The draw is almost perfect, the burn is fine, and the smoke has a great, spicy aroma. Panelists found the need to touch the cigar up just once or twice during the entire 90 minutes it took some to smoke it. (Others smoked it in an hour.) They had a hard time pinpointing the flavors, agreeing that they...