Dapper La Madrina Habano Natural Robusto

Dapper La Madrina Habano Natural Robusto is as international as it gets - made of Nicaraguan, Dominican and Pennsylvania Broadleaf filler, a Mexican San Andres binder and an oily smooth Ecuadoran Habano wrapper with nearly invisible seams and some bumps of tiny veins showing.

The band has gold on black lattice work and a centered depiction of a red rose held by a skeleton-like hand. There is no brand name or series on the band. Let’s play “Guess the cigar?”

This thing kicks off with an opening salvo of heavy pepper. It does calm down after a few minutes. When it does flavors abound - cedar, walnuts & peanuts, mild spice/pepper, caramel, dried fruit, honey graham, and a biscotti-like buttery toast/biscuit note. There’s a hint of another sweetness – maybe vanilla. I’m also picking up the taste of berries or blueberry jam on a few puffs.

That’s nice but the caramel, honey graham and butter biscuit flavors disappear during the second third. The cedar also turns mossy musty by the final third. Vegetal notes are now also present. All of this isn’t so much transition as it is a shift, a changed flavor profile and balance. It barely resembles the cigar I smoked during the first third. I can’t say it turns into a bad cigar but I prefer the initial flavors over the finish which also featured too much pepper – the way it began this journey. It’s medium-full bodied and strength.

Excellent open draw, reasonable smoke production, tight white ash that eventually dropped off, and a wavy burn line that required a number of touchups.

What started out as a flavor bomb turned into a rather average cigar. Dapper La Madrina Habano Natural ended up a decent smoke that could have been – and was initially - better. How do you grade all of this? A 5 for flavor for the first half and a 3 for the second half.

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