Herera Esteli Short Corona Gorda

[BlackIrish]

I was given this cigar by a friend who asked me to review it. It's been a long time since I've reviewed a Nicaraguan-made cigar, but this one was worth it.

Nutritional information

Serving size: 4.875 x 46
Origin: Nicaragua
Wrapper: Ecuador
Binder: Honduras
Filler: Nicaragua


Appearance: This short corona feels and looks great. It's solid and heavier than you'd think with a perfect feel -- firm, but not hard, with just a bit of give. It's very well filled, and the cold draw is firm but not tight. The wrapper has a copper tone to it, and while there's one moderate vein, the seams are very flat and smooth. I smell some earthy tobacco at the foot and taste earth, leather, and pepper on the cold draw.

Construction and combusion: I give this cigar top marks for construction. The wrapper leaf is high quality, with just a moderate vein. The rolling is terrific: well filled, but with a good draw ane a perfect ligero cone. The cap is sturdy from first slice to last puff.

The light was easy and the burn was very good. The ash is pretty strong, growing to about an inch before it drops. At times the ash is a bit flaky, but nothing serious. The burn is very slow -- I smoked this corona for over an hour. Good volumes of smoke -- and it's surprisingly cool, especially given the vitola.

Flavor: The flavors started out with less spice than I expected. I knew this cigar was produced by Drew Estate, and I've sampled the Liga Privada lines, where there's a fair bit of spice amidst the dark flavors. This is completely different. There is some pepper, but the spice is moderate and it's balanced by a delicious faint sweetness that's the hallmark of the best Nicaraguan tobacco.

The first third is earth, some pepper, an underlying sweetness, and some notes of coooa. It grows rounder and smooths out by the first inch, with a great balance of richness, spice, and sweetness. The body is medium plus.

Midway through, the flavors have devloped beautifully. The balance is excellent, with a fair amount of complexity (rich tobacco, earth/leather, faint sweetness) and just a little spice on the retrohale. A bit of cinnamon emerges, with other warm spices, maybe some cedar, still with some sweetness on the bottom.

The flavors then develop some nuttiness, occasionally showing a nice almond note, before the spice begins to pick up again in the last third.

I pitched it a little sooner than I ordinarily would because the flavors started to go flat and the spice took over. I wanted to remember the great flavors in the middle so I let it die.

Conclusion: Not your typical Drew Estate cigar, the Herrera Esteli corona has almost everything I'm looking for in a Nicaraguan cigar. It's got layers of flavor, with an underlying Nicaraguan sweetness, excellent balance, and great construction. And you can really enjoy the flavors, because the body is medium to medium plus. It's hard to find any faults with this one.