La Aroma de Cuba -Pepin Blend Review

[JGIORD]

MFG:

Now made by Jose ’Don Pepin’ Garcia in Nicaragua, La Aroma de Cuba is a bold blend of Cuban-seed Nicaraguan long-fillers insider a dark Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper. The smoke is zesty throughout with a smooth core of deep, earthy sensations balanced by a rich core of tobacco flavors. Medium to full in body and complex, La Aroma de Cuba is a flavorful, well-made, and aesthetically pleasing handmade.

Type: Monach
Size: 6x52

Nice stout looking cigar. Wrapper is dark, but not extremely dark for a maduro. Nice triple cap and the old band is retained but a red ribbon foot band is now added to indicate the new Pepin Blend.

Prelight draw reveals nothing, just a slight tobacco scent. The wrapper is fairly smooth for a CB with minimal veining but its covered with fine miniscule tooth. The cap fought a bit on cutting and the cigar gave an earthy prelight flavor, similar to a HdM Excalibur Maduro. Initial flavors upon lighting are heavy earth and loam with an underlying spice. Nice, not what you would expect from a Pepin. The draw is good and the cigar produces an abundance of thick coating white smoke. The Excalibur Maduro is the cigar that keeps coming to mind while smoking this. Although the LAdCuba has a degree of smoothness the HdM doesn’t,

The finish is earthy with some woody notes and lingers on the palette. The smoke is smooth and rich but just medium bodied.

Into the 2nd third the cigar picked up some increasing woody notes. This is a slow burning cigar, but it doesn’t grasp your attention.

The last third showed a significant increase in woody and cedar notes, which saved a somewhat boring smoke turning it into a respectable one.

The aroma has an earthy cocoa scent. The cigar burns fairly straight and produces a solid white ash.

Its a good enjoyable cigar, but for a Pepin blend its a bit of a let down. I don’t feel they are worth the price and would probably chose the HdM Excalibur over these as I found similarities (based on memory, so I'll have to pick up some Hoyos).

[andrewsutherland2002]

Thanks for the review.

[P_Roberts]

Thanks for the review. Have you had the old blend? Can you compare and contrast the two?

[ekengland07]

Thanks for the review.

[JGIORD]

Yes, I have smoked the old blend also. I found them to be inconsistent. The new blend is more of a maduro flavor profile, with the old blend being more sweet tobacco and spice. Construction is better under Pepin and I prefer the new ones.

The old ones were somewhat bland for me.