Caldwell Cigar Co. The King is Dead Premier (Robusto) Review

Cigar: Caldwell Cigar Co. The King is Dead
Size: Premier (robusto) 5"x50
Wrapper: Dominican Negrito
Binder: Dominican
Filler: Dominican
Price: MSRP ~$8.00

Initial Impression/Prelight
The King is Dead uses a wrapper leaf I'd never even heard of - Negrito. The cigar was well-rolled, and my sample had a good deal of oil on it. The color reminded me of burnished bronze, and the wrapper was smooth to the touch and fairly heavy in the hand. The cigar had a nicely applied triple cap and pigtail.

I picked up some nice pepper and light barnyard aroma from the wrapper, and a hint of syrupy sweetness from the foot. I clipped the cap and found perfectly firm resistance, with more pepper, leather, and hints of licorice on the cold draw.

This cigar has been in my humidor about a month at 65%, courtesy of Tobias Lutz in the MAW thread. I usually try not to review a gift cigar, or at least I don't post the review if I didn't care for it, but Tobias put me up to this so I decided I'd post a write-up regardless of liking the cigar or not.

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1st Third
I immediately got a nice chicory taste and smooth but full leather. The chicory flavor faded within the first inch, replaced by a definite BBQ meatiness, especially in the room note. I found a zing of cayenne pepper and tanginess on the retrohale. Good smoke output and burn so far, and the ash hung on well over an inch each time before I tapped it free. Medium/medium flavor and strength so far.

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2nd Third
The second section was characterized by more of that BBQ-type flavor. It became reminiscent to me of a smoker, like mesquite or hickory, and the cigar kept up that nice, underlying tang that was somewhere between citrus and sweet-and-sour sauce. The King is Dead wasn't ever creamy exactly, but it wasn't dry either - just rich and smooth. The red pepper picked up a little, and I could still taste leather throughout, although the smoke output dipped a bit in this section.

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Final Third
This last part came with a big uptick in red pepper and spiciness. The tanginess became more citrusy, and reminded me of grapefruit, especially on the retrohale. I still tasted light leatheriness and some dark toastiness as well. I did need one relight and a couple small touch-ups in this last bit, but the smoke output really boomed towards the spicy ending. The flavor and strength both picked up too, to at least medium-full.

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Overall Impression
This was a very good, almost great smoke.

• As a fairly new and fairly small-batch release, there's not a ton of information, at least that I could find, about Caldwell Cigar Co. Most places selling Caldwell had a similar blurb about the owners running down small batches of good tobacco that weren't in sufficient quantity to interest the big boys.
• It was cool smoking a wrapper I'd never had before, or even heard of. The Negrito really wasn't dark enough that I'd think of it as meriting that name, but who cares - it was good. I was reminded of some of my favorite Corojo flavors for sure, especially the red pepper and leatheriness.
• One the other hand, the citrus and sweet-and-sour reminded of the Room101 Daruma and Master Collection One lines a little bit.
• One the third hand, the BBQ tanginess and meatiness reminded me of a Viaje lancero I smoked a while back.
• The flavors were all good, and all worked well together with no one flavor dominating or muddling the others.
• I can't leave without mentioning the super cool band. It had a nice parchment paper embossing, cream colored with tan trim and gold text and artwork, and it looked great. The middle artwork, if you can't tell, is a golden throne split in half, with the words 'The King' on one side and 'is Dead' on the other. Very much took me back to my time in Chicago and all the trendy, hipster art.
• I got pretty buzzy at the end despite a slow pace - this cigar burned slow (over an hour and half for me) and packed a nice wallop at the end.


So I've got to thank Tobias again for sending me 3 cigars from Caldwell that I otherwise never would have had the chance to try - this one along with a Long Live the King, and an Eastern Standard. I'll admit my method for selecting which to smoke first was based solely on appearance. This cigar was a real looker. I never really picked up much of the promised sweetness from the prelight, but I wasn't disappointed. The flavors reminded me of several of my favorite sticks all rolled into one and I have a hunch that a little age won't hurt this one at all either. I will smoke the other Caldwell cigars pretty soon so I can decide if I should buy a few samplers, or just a bundle of these. They're definitely worth the price of admission.

Buy a 5-er or a box.

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