Cigar Review: Herrera Esteli TAA 2016

Vitola: Toro
Size: 6″ x 52 ring gauge
Price $12.00 MSRP
Obtained From Drew Estate as review samples

Background

With my local shop not being a TAA member I’m not always on the leading edge of knowing what is out there.  I do remember Dave posting about getting these in at Burns but I didn’t think I’d get to try them, that is until Drew Estate kindly sent me 2 of them to try.  Thank you to the people at DE for sending these my way.  Dave explains the differences between this release and the regular release, including speculations about the wrapper here.  This was the second one of these I smoked.

Prelight

The first thing I notice is the band colors are reversed from the regular release, which is something we’ve seen on their other shop specific releases.  The band does still contain the “warrantee” typo even after I’ve pointed it out to Willy at an event.  The wrapper was an oily dark brown in color.  It had a good amount of tooth to it and wasn’t very veiny.  Giving it a squeeze there was a slight amount of give without any soft spots.  From the wrapper I got the aroma of leather with a light barnyard coming from the foot.  After clipping it and taking a cold draw I got notes of sweetness and wood with a good draw.

Flavor

The cigar starts off with a lot of sweetness and not the spice I used to in the regular line.  After a few puffs I noted the flavors of wood, leather and red pepper spice starting to come through.  The spicy burn on the retrohale didn’t show up until about 1/8 ” in.  Towards the end of this third I started to note some chocolate flavors added in there.  The cigar starts off medium-full strength.  The second third saw the flavors change slightly to cinnamon, coffee, wood, and earth with a sweet finish.  The spice was still present on the tongue and retrohale.  The cigar stayed medium-full strength.  Once I got into the final third the spice started to mellow out.  The flavor of wood, coffee, earth, leather and cinnamon started showing up.  The cigar never got stronger than medium-full but by the end I did notice a slight nicotine hit from it.

Construction

At the beginning of the cigar I felt like I had to keep puffing on it otherwise it would go out.  This resolved itself once I got into the second third, but I was worried that the cigar was going to get too hot to handle soon.  The draw was good throughout and the burn was only slightly wavy.

Value

While it definitely costs more than the original blend, it isn’t too high a price for a limited run.  Although at that price it would only be an occasional cigar for me.

Conclusions

I definitely had different experiences between the first and second samples of these I smoked.  I’m going to guess my palate was the culprit for this though.  This second sample was much more enjoyable and flavorful.  I would like to pick up a couple and see what age does to them.

By-The-Numbers

Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 2/2
Flavor: 4/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 9/10