Romeo y Julieta (non Cuban) reserve maduro, unknown, (VVRW#1)

[Mrcpt]

I’m sure I’ll get some grief for this one, but here we go.. I first started smoking cigars back in college. At this point Habanos weren’t really even on my radar; as far as I knew the Altadis branded RyJ or Montecristo were the only RyJ or Montecristo. Anyway, some way or another I ended up smoking the Rome y Julieta Reserve Maduro quite regularly.  I’m sure the dark maduro wrapper made college me feel like quite the badass.. oh how the tables have turned. Fast forward about a decade, when I first started getting back into cigars, I ordered a bunch of these from one of those big box American cigar retailers. My journey down the rabbit hole of Habanos began soon after, but that’s another story.  Long story short, I have a bunch of these taking up space in a non Cuban cooler and I decided it was worth a revisit since it was once a veteran of my cigar lineup. 

Now, I guess the reason I gave you a food blogger level intro is because there just isn’t that much to write about this cigar. I go back to smoke non Cubans every now and then, but I’m honestly becoming less and less impressed. I rarely notice flavor transitions, and the notes I do pickup are usually some combination of chocolate, wood, or leather: not the most complex or original. In a lot of ways I compare the non Cuban, or American, cigar market to the IPA market. Don’t get me wrong, there are some great IPA beers out there, but there are so many new micro or craft IPA brands out there that I feel like any hipster with a garage and some spare time is trying to market their ‘unique’ beer. What I’ve found with the beer is that, more often than not, folks will just try to create some hop bomb that has no real complexity other than ‘intensely hoppy’ flavor, and they use that intensity to hide the fact that they really just have a mediocre beer for sale. I think the American cigar market suffers from this big time; in the states we are inundated with boring cigars that lack complexity or transitions, but we keep buying into the bravado marketing of “bold intense strong flavors” when we are really just buying a mediocre product with a maduro wrapper to try to hide the low quality filler and binder.

Sorry.. I ranted again, and even longer this time. Lets talk about the cigar.  The maduro wrapper is dark and dusty feeling, there’s a nice baking cocoa from the foot and cold draw is.. nothing, maybe some hay.  The draw is loose, probably perfect by non Cuban standards. This cigar is very smooth and very mild, probably too much so. It’s almost to the point where you cant tell you are smoking something.  As far as flavor, it is earthy, there is maybe some wood or leather, and a slight coffee taste on the short finish. It’s a bit more acidic than regular coffee, like French press coffee that’s been left too long before straining. About an inch in there was a bit of a strength jump, and some tingling on my tongue ang gums, but that went away pretty quickly.  And that’s about it; there was no real transition, just those straightforward and muted earthy tones.

Cigar smoking is a real learning experience, so I expect to make some mistakes throughout my journey. I’m not mad that I spent a lot of time and money amassing a collection of mediocre non Cubans that I’m probably never going to smoke; that’s just part of the learning experience. Maybe I’ll start handing them out more liberally once this pandemic is over and we can start getting together again, maybe I’ll hold onto a few just to go back every once an a while, like I did here, and try something that I used to love. If anything, I appreciate my Habanos much more after smoking something like this. 

I like to use a one to five scale to rate cigars: 1 - would not smoke again; 2 - would smoke again; 3 - would buy singles; 4 - would buy a box; 5 - go deep on boxes.  I would rate this cigar a 1: I don’t think I’d smoke this cigar again. Like I mentioned previously, I think I’ll still hold onto a few that I do have to try again maybe somewhere down the road.. but I don’t have any short term plans to break this guy out again.