Flor de las Antillas Toro Review

Cigar: Flor de las Antillas
Size: Toro 6" x 52
Wrapper: Nicaraguan Sun-Grown
Binder: Nicaragua
Filler: Nicaragua
Price: MSRP ~$7.00

Initial Impression/Prelight
The Flor de las Antillas wrapper was a lovely caramel brown, and had a nice oily sheen. The sun-grown wrapper had almost no veins and was smooth to the touch. I got some red pepper aroma from the wrapper and foot. After I clipped the cap, I picked up some nice woody flavors from the firm prelight draw. The Flor de las Antillas sports one of my favorite bands - there's just so much detail and so many beautiful details and embossing in them.

I've smoked quite a few of these in various vitolas over the past year, but this is my first time taking real notes. This toro has been in my humidor at 65% for about 3 months.

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1st Third
Right away I got a nice, mellow black pepper, along with some sweet baking spices and a good bit of nutty sweetness. I also picked up some faint oak in the background. The draw was still a little tight which I think inhibited smoke production initially. The ash piled up nicely as you can see in the pictures, and hung on well over an inch before dropping.

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2nd Third
The second section came in a little more savory, with oak, leather, and some coffee flavors. There was still a hint of sweetness around the edges, and the pepper never went away totally. The draw opened up a lot, and smoke production improved accordingly to slightly above average, and became very rich and thick, even creamy at times. I'll say med+ flavor and medium strength to this point.

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Final Third
I still got some pepper in this final section, and some of that sweet baking spice came back in - think nutmeg or possibly cinnamon. The oak diminished, and the leather became a more dominant flavor towards the end, along with an underlying brown sugar or caramel sweetness. On the retrohale I got a slight woody sting. The smoke output backed off a little bit to maybe average, but stayed rich and smooth.

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Overall Impression
I really like these cigars in the robusto and belicoso, but I think the toro is the best of the bunch for showcasing all the flavors. Speaking of, the flavors were very good and distinct, never feeling muddled like I get on some cigars. You can see in the pics how the ash 'piles' up nicely, and while the burnline got a little wavy, I never needed to retouch.

These are a box-worthy smoke to me, a phrase which I realize I'm going to use a couple more times in the near future as I've got notes and photos to do reviews on a My Father lancero and a Jaime Garcia Sur Oeste. This one has plenty of flavor and the light sweetness plays almost perfectly with the pepper, but the cigar is never so strong I'd hesitate giving it to a fairly new smoker. For the price this one is really tough to beat. It looks good, tastes good, and I've yet to have a poorly constructed example.

Buy a box. I did.

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