If you’re hanging with someone in 4 countries, share stories and invite them to your home for a barbecue and a smoke, you can consider him a friend. I had the pleasure to hang with Juan Martinez from Joya de Nicaragua in my home country of The Netherlands, in his home country of Nicaragua and in Germany & the USA and last Sunday we barbecued at my place. He gave me a few of the yet unreleased cuatro cinco reserva especial cigars from Joya de Nicaragua that will be released at the IPCPR next week.
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The cigar is a tweaked blend of the limited edition cuatro cinco from 2013. The main difference is a Dominican binder instead of the Nicaraguan binder used in the original blend. I smoked a torpedo in the car, that was awesome so I decided to review the 3 vitolas I have gotten, only the toro review will have to wait.
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A dark wrapped box pressed cigar that looks like a candy bar with a stylish and big black band, actually 2 bands over each other, with subtitle Joya de Nicaragua logos printed on the bottom band. The cigar has a strong barnyard aroma and a nice predraw, little bit spicy and some raisin.
There is honey like sweetness and plenty white pepper straight from the get go, but the pepper isn’t too strong or unbalanced. I also taste toast and cinnamon.
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After a quarter of an inch I taste wood and toast with a little sweetness. Plenty of flavor, so far I love this cigar. A quarter of an inch later I taste nutty flavor, I love that, I love nuts but I’m sensitive to them so can’t eat them often, this cigar gives me the flavor without the side effects of real nuts.
After a third nuts with green spices and some pepper. Soon there is also a little citrus flavor joining the nuts, spices and pepper.
The last part is nutty with pepper, citrus is almost gone. Toasty flavor is back. Pepper slowly gets stronger, this cigar is smokable to the nub
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The cigar gave me lots of thick white smoke. The ash is silver gray and firm, when it breaks it still stays firm. This cigar is full flavored, medium plus bodied. Draw is perfect, as is the construction. Burn is straight as an arrow. The smoke time for me was an hour and 20 minutes.
Would I buy this cigar again? Yes, boxes and boxes of them.
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Appearance: 9
Construction: 9
Draw: 9
Burn: 10
Smoke & ash: 9
Aroma first part: 9
Aroma second part: 9
Aroma third part: 8
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