Punch Bareknuckle Belicoso

Punch is one of the oldest Habano brands, founded in 1840 by Don Manuel Lopez of Juan Valle & Company and intended for the booming British market. The name Punch is drawn from a famous comic book, "Punch & Judy"; the clown, Mr. Punch, is still seen today on every box with his sly smile and cigar. Unlike most medium-bodied Punch cigars, the Bareknuckle has kicked it up a notch and is a smooth full-bodied powerhouse. This baby is jam-packed with Honduran and Nicaraguan long-fillers laced with ample ligeros, tightly bound with a Honduran long-leaf, and draped with an oily, dark Ecuadorian Habano Sun-Grown wrapper. As you light ‘er up, flavors of pepper, earth, sweet cedar, and espresso are met with lots of smoke and a razor-sharp burn. As the second third nears, you may notice more pepper – but little change in the flavor profile itself – as well as the razor sharp burn picking up the pace. All the way down to the nub, you will have a complex and impressively smooth smoke. We took our smoke out to the porch and enjoyed it with a Maker’s Mark.

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.