I’ve found Camacho to be an intriguing brand almost ever since I started smoking cigars. Owned then by the Eiroa family, who built it up from the beginning, it represented a stronger, more aggressive side of Honduran tobacco than I was used to seeing in some of the other major brands. After Davidoff purchased the company they changed up some things—starting with the Connecticut release, a stalwart of the “new order Connys”—but left many things the same with some tweaks. They continued the annual Liberty release for quite some time, but that seems to have been replaced now by the Limited Edition. And I honestly probably would have ignored it if the rep hadn’t raved about how good it is at a recent event.
The Camacho LE 2025 is a 6 x 52 toro using Honduran and “well-aged” Dominican fillers, a Honduran binder, and a Mexican wrapper leaf. It comes in a jar of 20 cigars and may still be available wherever you buy fine cigars.
The wrapper reminds me in texture of the Tatuaje Tuxtla leaves, also Mexican in origin, and it was just about as dark, too…although this particular cigar faded from dark chocolate brown to a more milk chocolate brown as it got close to the head. The wrapper smelled of earth and dark roast coffee, while I got sweet hay and vegetal notes on the foot. The prelight draw was good and had a cooling effect on my palate…it didn’t taste like mint, but had somewhat the same effect.
Firing up the Camacho LE 2025, I got notes of espresso bean, anise, leather, and dark chocolate with just the slightest sweetness. Despite all these darker flavor notes, I didn’t find the first few puffs to be overly full in body or bitter. Retrohaling gave me black and red pepper notes, along with more leathery notes on the nose. I paired this cigar up with some Old Grand-Dad Bonded, a product of Jim Beam that uses the same high-rye mash bill as their Basil Hayden.
The pairing was quite good and the cigar proved to be well worth the ~$19 price tag, which I recall being less than the Liberty releases and much more in line with the performance of the blend. Very good “heavy” blend that is full-bodied, but not so much it makes you feel punched in the face…it has enough complexity and nuance to stand up with just about anything under $20.
