Cigar Review: Punch Rare Corojo

Punch Rare Corojo 2014Vitola: Rare Salomones
Size: 7.50″ x 57 ring gauge
Price $8.00, MSRP
Obtained From General Cigar as a review sample

Background

The Rare Corojo has been a yearly release from Punch Cigars for a little more than 10 years now.  This year they introduced a new limited edition size, the 7.50″x57 Salomon that I smoked for review.  This size is in addition to the seven other sizes that the Rare Corojo comes in normally.  These cigars are all the same blend of Dominican, Nicaraguan and Honduran fillers, a Connecticut Broadleaf binder with an Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper.  You can take a look at Dave’s Short Take of this cigar here.  I was able to smoke one cigar for this review.

Prelight

The wrapper on this sample was a dark rusty brown in color.  It also had a good amount of tooth and oils to it with some medium veins.  You can tell the limited size from the rest of the Rare Corojo line from the bands with the cream colored background, which I think they started doing just a few years ago.  It is also very nice to see the year on the band so if you forgot it would be easy to tell how old it is by just looking at it.  When I gave it a squeeze there was a slight amount of give but no soft spots.  There was a light barnyard aroma coming from the wrapper with more of the same from the very narrow foot.  After clipping it and taking a cold draw on it I got notes of sweetness and leather with a slightly tight draw.

Flavor

The cigar starts off with flavors of leather, wood, spice and cream.  The retrohale also produced a slightly wasabi like burn.  Towards the end of the first third I started to get some coffee, cinnamon and sugar flavors starting to come through.  The cigar started off in the upper end of medium range.  The flavors only changed slightly to wood, cinnamon, green herbs, and sweetness in the second third.  The spice had died down quite a bit by this point however by the end of this third the strength had built into the medium-full range.  The final third saw the flavors of this cigar finish off well.  The ones I could taste were of leather, coffee, wood, cinnamon with a sweet cream finish.  The spice started to come back and it finished off at the bottom end of full strength.

Construction

The draw needed a little help from the bleeder tool from my MTX to open up the draw to where I was enjoying it.  The burn started off uneven, but that could be completely my fault as I normally can’t get a salomon lit evenly.  After an application of the torch the burn evened out and needed no more help.

Value

A limited edition cigar, of this size and good flavors for $8 is a great price in my book.

Conclusions

I definitely enjoyed this cigar.  I can say that the Rare Corojo blend is my favorite from the Punch line and is something I forget about picking up seeing as most of the cigars I smoke today come from smaller companies.  I can recommend giving the Rare Corojo blend a try in any size with it’s very reasonable price point.

By-The-Numbers

Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 1.5/2
Flavor: 4/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 8.5/10

Keith Hollar

Keith has been a cigar enthusiast since 2003 and it's rumored that he remembers details about every single cigar he's ever smoked. He wrote for Tiki Bar Online for four years before co-founding Leaf Enthusiast. Twitter: @Keith1911

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4 Responses

  1. Mark VanSledright says:

    Thanks for the review. This cigar would work for me if I ever see one.

  2. Craig Bowden says:

    Kind of cool to see a “limited” edition that most people can find or pick up. Ill keep my eyes open.

  3. czerbe says:

    I need to smoke more Punch product I have never had one I didn’t like but I seem to pass over them the Corojo is a great smoke and I certainly haven’t smoked many Salomones in my day so this will be a good one to hunt down!

  1. December 17, 2014

    […] Punch Rare Corojo:  I seem to forget about this cigar from time to time, but when I do remember it is always a flavorful cigar at a reasonable price. […]