I’ve taken some time off from smoking the Davidoff Chinese New Year cigars for a couple reasons. First, when the Year of the Tiger came out, the price increased about 15% while the size of the cigar was significantly smaller than the previous year. The next year, the size came back up and the price soared another 20+%. Since then, the price has increased an additional 30%…for a grand total of about 80% price increase in the last 7 or 8 years. Second, the blends have been a tale of diminishing returns. The Tiger was alright, but not “amazing.” I tried the Year of the Rabbit, I believe…and found it really fell flat. So I didn’t even bother Year of the Dragon last year. But I’ve heard some good things about this year’s Year of the Horse, so perhaps against my better judgement…I bought one.
This is a 6.5” x 55 ring gauge toro made completely of propriety hybrid seed tobaccos with a “combined age of an impressive 43 years.” It features three Dominican tobaccos in the filler, along with Ecuadorian binder and wrapper leaves. The packaging is exquisite, and you would expect nothing less from Davidoff. The wrapper leaf was a medium-brown color…approximately the color of milk chocolate. It had a faint oiliness and a barnyard aroma. The foot of the cigar had a dense mix of aromas of chocolate, bread, earth, and hay. The cold draw was easy and featured notes of hay, cedar, and a bit of pepper spice.
I lit up the Davidoff Year of the Horse 2026 and got a rich array of flavor from nuts and black pepper to dark chocolate and grassiness. They rate this as a medium-intensity, usually their indication of “body,” but I was finding it bold and complex in the flavor department regardless of where the body was (definitely in the medium-plus range). And that continued through the rest of the cigar…this is a definite winner from a standpoint of flavor and complexity. But that leaves us with the issue of price. At $65, I remain unconvinced that the experience is really worth quite that amount. Inflation and supply chain issues have caused everything to increase in price during the last 5 years, but 80% is just too much to justify.
