L'Atalier La Mission 1959

L’Atalier La Mission 1959 is box-pressed with a Nicaraguan binder and filler and covered in an oily toothy medium-dark brown Mexican San Andres wrapper with tight seams, tiny veins and a pigtail. You know how I feel about pigtails. Out comes the V cutter. The band features a red logo with a gold and black and a yellowish off-white background. It’s a classy-looking band.

The backstory on the cigar is interesting. Tatuaje’s Pete Johnson is involved – call L’Atalier a “side hustle.” Pete loves fine wine and named this cigar after one of the best Bordeaux (technically Pessac-Leognon) wines. The 1959 supposedly refers to a superior vintage year of the French wine Chateau La Mission Haut Brion – the inspiration for the cigar. The series’ cigars are released with vintage years that the Chateau received a 100 point Robert Parker wine rating.

It didn’t take long for this cigar to impress me. The flavors spring to life instantly – cedar. nuts, earth, leather, grass, milk chocolate, fresh brewed coffee, and spice with just the slightest amount of pepper. There are subtle notes of dried fruit, herbal, a cinnamon-nutmeg-caramel sweetness, butter, toast and an unusual citrus taste hiding in the background. There are numerous flavor notes in both foreground and background that balance perfectly.

The final third had a touch of chalkiness and bitterness, but it did not detract from my overall experience with the cigar. It’s full bodied and medium-full strength. The strength does build in stages from the first third through the finish.

Excellent open draw, a burn line that was a bit wavy and did require a couple of touchups, firm white ash that held to about an inch, never fell off but tapped off when necessary, smoke output reasonable.

It has been many decades since I have enjoyed a bottle of Chateau Haut Brion – elder First Growth sibling of La Mission Haut Brion. I have never tasted La Mission Haut Brion, but I could find comparisons between fine French wine and this cigar. Words like bold, elegant, balanced and complex would appear in reviews of both in my notebook. This was Cigar Aficionado's Cigar of the Year in 2020. Now I know why. L’Atalier La Mission 1959 is an excellent cigar.

BTW: I trust this reviews squares things between me and Cigar Aficionado, which threatened to cancel my subscription after my recent review of their Top 10 ranked Alec & Bradley Gatekeeper. Send me another A & B Gatekeeper and I’ll see if it can change my perspective.

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