This is a cigar from Pinar Del Rio, a company that was hit or miss for me years ago but has been pretty consistently good recently.

The first thing you notice about this cigar is that they were going for a classic Cuban look. The band looks like a Cuban band, the rosado wrapper looks Cuban, triple cap, and the cigar is box-pressed.

I gotta say...they did a really good ripoff job. I trust my palate, and I'm being serious when I say that this cigar tastes like a Cuban cigar. HOLD ON...before you scoff and laugh at me and call me a noob, let me clarify. It doesn't taste like a Cohiba or Monte. It tastes like a 'cheap' Cuban, like Piedra, Quinteros, La Flor de Cano, etc. It even burns a little uneven like a short filler CC. If you handed one of these to me unbanded and told me it was a Quinteros, I would believe it.

Certainly an interesting cigar, and one that I will hold onto to fool somebody in a blind taste test. :-) But even at auction prices (starting bid of $23 for a fiver), I'd rather smoke a Piedra or Quinteros.
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Thanks for the review, Mark!
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I have tried most of the PDR smokes when Cigarpage has them on sale (dirt cheap). Most have been surprisingly good.

_This_ is the one exception. I just can't get _any_ taste out of it--so I have put them in the bottom of the tupperdor (let me reword that, _a_ tupperdor ;-) ) to try again in a year....(sometimes that works, sometimes it does no good at all--part of the fun of this hobby).
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