Very Mild Bolivars

[AusDyer]

I had a Belicosos Finos today. I've not had one for years and while it was very good and exceptionally rolled, it was unusually mild. Mild up to a solid medium, and the opening third was indistinguishable from a good Dominican Connecticut shade cigar. I recently sampled the new La Gloria Cubana Turquinos and that tasted particularly Dominican also. I've had some gorgeously rich cigars lately also, but I genuinely am starting to wonder if there's Dominican tobacco being sneakily added into blends to increase supply and profits. I've actually also had a few Cuban cigars over the last couple of years that had a distinct Nicaraguan earth and spice element, not like the usual Cuban earth and more delicate and sweet spice. I've never tasted this in any Havanas before, though I suppose it's also possible many blenders there are adjusting them in that direction?

That BBF, for one, did taste partly like the usual Bolivar but oddly watered down with some very mild leaf with that Graham cracker, slightly sour citrus and minerality that every single Connecticut shade style Dominican cigar has. I've noticed the same thing in different degrees with Bolivar Petit Coronas, some Hoyos and others. Just curious if anyone else has noticed anything like this with unusual blend changes.

(No, it 100% has nothing to do with fakes 😂)

[ViscountDick]

4 out of the 5 or so BBF I’ve smoked over the past few months from 2023 boxes have been mild. Only one was strong which is what I enjoy and hope for from these.

[El Presidente]

The majority of Cuban cigars are mild - medium. 

 

Never let that get in the way of a good conspiracy theory however 

[AusDyer]

I mean, I've never suspected that before but they sure taste quite a bit different than they used to. It's not as if it'd be at all difficult for them to have a bit of filler sent over from their Dominican farms which they make Dominican Montecristo and the rest of them with, would it? 

Given the way pretty much all big business is now, plus what's actually going on with Cuba and the cigar industry in general, it just wouldn't actually shock me anymore.

[BrightonCorgi]

The better question is which current Bolivar (if any) still pack any kind of punch? I cannot think of one that does.

[AusDyer]

7 hours ago, BrightonCorgi said:

The better question is which current Bolivar (if any) still pack any kind of punch?  I cannot think of one that does.

Yeah, I've been going back to Bolivars lately and found most Royal Coronas, BBF and Petit Coronas lately have been VERY mild. But it's not just mild, it's mild in a very unusual way for Cuban cigars. In all my 20 years smoking them, I've never had any Cuban cigars, even the mildest of El Rey or La Gloria, taste partly Dominican like that. It isn't just a strength thing, I know my cigars and have even twice won blind tasting competitions guessing country of origin. I wouldn't just throw this out there willy nilly just because a cigar was milder than usual, because that can happen, but this is different lately. It also struck me compounded after the last few years I also noticed some oddly Nicaraguan qualities in some which I've never tasted in Cuban cigars before, not even slightly. They're quite clear differences to me anyway. It started just very occasional and I assumed maybe my palate was just off that day, but now it's happening a lot, and within the same boxes often it seems like 2/3 or more of the cigars are blended differently.

Back to what you said, just last week I had a few Royal Coronas form the same two boxes at my local. 3 were that very mild blend with unusually un-Cuban elements in there, and one was suddenly just how I remembered them - medium-full, rich, very Cuban profile, complex and gorgeous. Slight differences in taste within boxes has always been a thing, but usually that was predominantly due to rolling inconsistencies, this wasn't. They were all mostly immaculately rolled, but the blend was clearly different, often even bordering on almost no real flavour for the first inch or so. Now this I have NEVER had before with any Bolivar, especially not ones rolled so well.

I suppose it could simply be that the tobacco shortages in Cuba are forcing them to scrape together whatever they can and using too much bland volado to fill out blends? Maybe the odd Nicaraguan qualities I was finding in some mostly a few years ago were the other end of the scale, using more ligero due to seco shortages or something like this. I'm still unsure why I've suddenly been tasting quite distinct Nic or Dom qualities in them, but possibly this can happen with Cuban tobacco when blends are fudged in ways we've never normally had before.

[Corylax18]

1 hour ago, AusDyer said:

I suppose it could simply be that the tobacco shortages in Cuba are forcing them to scrape together whatever they can and using too much bland volado to fill out blends?

It is 100% this.

Cuba doesn't have the money to pay doctors, or keep their electricity on. Tabacuba doesn't have enough money to buy fertilizer, pay farmers or buy their fancy boxes and bands from outside the country. 

They sure as hell don't have enough USD floating around to buy tobacco from other parts of the world. Even if they did, why would they? It would crush their profit margins. They essentially steal the tobacco they get from the farmers, which is the main reason why they are producing less tobacco than they ever have. Farmers are sick of their hardworking generating nothing for them and their families. 

[AusDyer]

1 hour ago, Corylax18 said:

They sure as hell don't have enough USD floating around to buy tobacco from other parts of the world. Even if they did, why would they? It would crush their profit margins.

Why would they have to buy their own tobacco from the Dominican Republic? Altadis, a subsidiary of Habanos SA, also owns their counterpart brands and their tobacco farms in the Dominican Republic. They'd merely have to transport a few bales of their own Dominican tobaccos to Cuba now and then, and with Cuban cigars now priced like they're diamond encrusted, increasing production of their Havanas a bit with some tobacco meant for their increasingly less popular Dominican Montecristos, RyJ, Bolivars etc etc, this would considerably increase their profits, not lower them. Is this not accurate?

Just an added element that could add to this, possibly, is the fact that recently an umbrella group of still anonymous Chinese investors bought half of Habanos SA. That's some serious investment. Therefore, the idea that they'd be stuck for cash if there were some kind of scheme which would result overall in increased profits, is not true. There's now a huge and still secretive investment from China suddenly come into play. Again, no idea if that might be part of it or if this is in fact going on, but it's 100% possible, especially in today's world of big business and dodgy dealings.

 

[Shakey]

You revived an old thread on another forum to say the exact same thing and, as people wrote over there, it would be very hard to buy meaningful amounts of tobacco from Nicaragua or DR and export it to Cuba without many people noticing. 
 

You also have the business relationship backward.  Altidas (Spain) owns part of Habanos SA (Cuba), not the other way around.

[SCgarman]

5 hours ago, Corylax18 said:

It is 100% this.

Cuba doesn't have the money to pay doctors, or keep their electricity on. Tabacuba doesn't have enough money to buy fertilizer, pay farmers or buy their fancy boxes and bands from outside the country. 

They sure as hell don't have enough USD floating around to buy tobacco from other parts of the world. Even if they did, why would they? It would crush their profit margins. They essentially steal the tobacco they get from the farmers, which is the main reason why they are producing less tobacco than they ever have. Farmers are sick of their hardworking generating nothing for them and their families. 

I would imagine tobacco strains of today are just milder than the older strains from decades ago. Several old timers stated PSD4, Bolivar used to be so strong and tannic you would have to rest them in your humidor before they became smokeable/enjoyable. When I started seriously buying Cubans in 2008, virtually everything was smokeable ROTT.  As Rob and others here stated, there would be a "bill of lading" documenting bales of tobacco being imported into Cuba from other tobacco producing countries. Cuba would need piles of cash to purchase bales from Nicaragua, Honduras or the D.R. which we all know they don't have. 
I 

[TacoSauce]

36 minutes ago, SCgarman said:

As Rob and others here stated, there would be a "bill of lading" documenting bales of tobacco being imported into Cuba from other tobacco producing countries. Cuba would need piles of cash to purchase bales from Nicaragua, Honduras or the D.R. which we all know they don't have.

While the argument about documentation seems to have some merit, the argument that there isn't any money available to import exogenous tobacco seems absurd on its face. The cost of raw tobacco is a rounding error when compared to the revenue generated by the finished product. Sales revenue generated from increased volume produced would likely cover the costs of any imported tobacco. Thus, from a naive monetary perspective alone, I don't see any hurdle in having the necessary funds to import tobacco.

Instead, for the monetary argument to make sense we would need to invoke additional considerations. For example (and I'm just making this up as a hypothetical), we can speculate that it is Tabacuba that would need to pay for the imported tobacco, and perhaps they, specifically, don't have the necessary funds. This could be because it is Habanos SA (not Tabacuba) that receives the delta between production and wholesale costs, and they don't share enough of that with Tabacuba to enable the possible pursuit of extranational sources of tobacco.

[AusDyer]

13 hours ago, Shakey said:

You revived an old thread on another forum to say the exact same thing and, as people wrote over there, it would be very hard to buy meaningful amounts of tobacco from Nicaragua or DR and export it to Cuba without many people noticing. 
 

You also have the business relationship backward.  Altidas (Spain) owns part of Habanos SA (Cuba), not the other way around.

I posted a reply on a couple of months old Reddit thread I found asking the exact same question, yes, because I am interested to hear what other cigar smokers have experienced on this matter. I'm not sure why you felt the need to say that, making it feel as if you're spying on all my internet activity or something. Just a little bit creepy to be honest. You then merely repeated a pretty unconvincing stock reply which someone else made there, as you said. Obviously I already saw the posts on the Reddit thread, so you repeating them to me here doesn't make them any more convincing. What they had to say about it not being possible doesn't seem correct, sorry. Thanks for correcting my error about Altadis owning Habanos SA and not the other way around, but can you explain exactly why that means they can't just transport a bit of their own Dominican farms tobacco over to Cuba? I'm still wanting anyone to actually explain any of these assertions with any detail as to why they seem to think it couldn't be done.

It would be utterly basic business corruption, the likes of which in fact does go on all the time everywhere in all kinds of businesses. Major supermarkets and restaurants have been caught out and exposed before after many years of selling things like black market horse meat mixed in with minced beef product, for example. And that's the food industry where rules are extreme and things get inspected in labs. Nobody inspects tobacco products to check the plant genetics to make sure all the filler leaves are indeed from the island claimed. Documentation? It's the government and same business running the show, and the cigar industry shipping some tobacco around wouldn't even get a second thought from anyone working at a dock or on a boat or anything, they'd be clueless, it's what they do there. FAR more "restricted" goods get exported and shipped around the Caribbean also, it's hardly the strictest place on earth, is it? Even completely independent criminals successfully ship tons and tons of all kinds with actual forged documentation and everything else, and you do realise that the majority of these smugglers never get caught? The ones we hear about are the few who did. Habanos SA and the Cuban government transferring a bit of their own tobacco between islands would surely be laughably easy if they wanted to, and they have every motivation to want to now.

Again, I'm not convinced either way, but I'm just asking questions as I'm curious how many other cigar smokers have noticed very glaring changes in the taste of many Cuban cigars and think it's strange. If I just keep getting basically brief little "shut up" replies, I am obviously going to ask further questions, it doesn't mean I'm believing anything is so or not.

Regarding the era of stronger Cuban cigars which died off in the 90s, that was because they used more ligero, as was the fashion/taste at the time. The tobacco didn't have some totally different quality of flavour profile, it was just more of the strength, earth and leather of the same style, still familiar in the later blending. Then it was the quality control slump at the end of the 90s into early 00s as global demand skyrocketed before they got back on it along with altering blends to be softer and creamier with less ligero. Since the 00s Cuban cigars have never once showed any signs of actual profile changes in the tobacco used, only differences in strength and roll quality that also affects taste. Over 20 years, Cuban tobacco has tasted quite clearly Cuban, and it's only just suddenly had some major change of some sort or other. If your favourite lager suddenly tasted like it had been mixed with a bit of IPA or a wheat beer, you'd notice an obvious difference and wonder why, it wouldn't just taste a bit stronger but the same. Maybe they have genetically engineered very different tobacco plants suddenly...maybe it is just using way too much volado or something in a way I've never tasted before, maybe both those things combined. I don't know, but I'd sure like to find out because it's fascinating to me, cigars are my passion and have been for a very long time.

If this annoys anyone, I apologise, but if so you don't have to read and reply here. If anyone actually knows some hard facts about any details of this, I'd love to learn.

[Corylax18]

9 hours ago, AusDyer said:

And thanks for correcting my error about Altadis owning Habanos SA and not the other way around. How exactly does that make it more difficult for them to merely transport some of their own tobacco from their own Dominican farms to Cuba?

Two things here. First, Imperial Tobacco sold their stake in HSA (and all of Altadis) to a Chinese company almost 5 years ago. Also, I don't believe Altadis owns any farms in the DR, or anywhere else anymore. HSA and Altadis are marketing/distribution firms, that own "brands", cigar stores and whole sale operations. The link below explains the deal better than I can.

Cigar production has been moving this way for a while now. There are some cigar brands like Davidoff, that are almost entirely vertically integrated, but many have moved away from farming and production into buying whole sale tobacco from farmers, shipping it to a factory owned by a third party for rolling before they take delivery of the boxed/banded cigars for distribution. Cuba has been doing it this way for decades now. The MOFOH and Bond Roberts cigars are a perfect example of this. The Robs don't own tobacco farms, they don't own Fabrica 5, but they don't need to. They can let those specialists do what they do best, so that the Robs can focus on what they do best. 

Second, Tabacuba, a company entirely owned by the Cuban Military, is responsible for Tobacco and Cigar production within Cuba. Altadis/Imperial Tobacco/HSA has never owned or participated in the farming of tobacco, or the production of Cuban cigars. They simply own the right to market and distribute the cigars that Tabacuba produces. Tabacuba and HSA are related, but different businesses, different boards, different balance sheets, different goals. 

People are shooting down what you're saying because it's silly on the face of it and gets sillier the more you dig into it. Unless the executives you mentioned are out humping bails of tobacco from farms into their own trucks, onto privately owned boats, then flying to Cuba to unload the bales and drive them to the factory so they can roll the cigars themselves, somebody else would know this is happening. Yet, there isn't one lick of evidence, anywhere, that this has happened. 

https://halfwheel.com/huabao-international-expected-to-purchase-imperial-brands-cigar-divisions/367699/

[AusDyer]

29 minutes ago, Corylax18 said:

Unless the executives you mentioned are out humping bails of tobacco from farms into their own trucks, onto privately owned boats, then flying to Cuba to unload the bales and drive them to the factory so they can roll the cigars themselves, somebody else would know this is happening. Yet, there isn't one lick of evidence, anywhere, that this has happened.

This is nonsense. As I already mentioned, major businesses around the world operate corrupt practices often far more immoral than this and get away with it. Even ones that have been caught out, such as the supermarkets mixing black market horse meat into their beef products, were getting away with it for many years (unknown too, possibly decades) and they were caught by officials/inspectors, not workers exposing them. I also do not think, for one example, Tesco executives were doing it all, were they? No, they had all kinds of people transporting and processing for them. If your assertion here is correct, that would mean that no businesses would ever get away with anything dodgy, because people are so wonderful and intelligent that they'll notice and expose it. You also do not seem to comprehend that it's extremely easy to ship anything around without people knowing what exactly it is or what exactly it's for, it goes on all the time with hard drugs going through serious ports and the vast majority of people handling the shipments are clueless. If an actual government is involved, that kind of makes it extremely simple to do.

However, this isn't even part of the equation really. Cuba officially imports some Dominican tobaccos anyway. It already happens in an official capacity, they use it for blending in their cigarettes and machine made cigarillos. Nobody would know this was happening...the idea that it's some crackpot elaborate moon landing hoax conspiracy theory that sounds "silly" is bizarre. It may well not be true, but it isn't silly or difficult to do at all.

[Shakey]

3 hours ago, AusDyer said:

I posted a reply on a couple of months old Reddit thread I found asking the exact same question, yes, because I am interested to hear what other cigar smokers have experienced on this matter. I'm not sure why you felt the need to say that, making it feel as if you're spying on all my internet activity or something. Just a little bit creepy to be honest. 

My friend - I mentioned that other thread because you replied to me in that thread. I also own a box of recent production BBFs and have not noticed any of the flavors in the single cigar you smoked. 

[vinnyvega]

This makes me sad. Remember the good old days, 2006-2011, when a fresh Boli would burn you on a retrohale and you were sweating half way through the cigar?

I had a LRE 09 or 10, can't remember, PC cutting the lawn yesterday. Very strong and flavorful!

[SCgarman]

4 hours ago, vinnyvega said:

This makes me sad. Remember the good old days, 2006-2011, when a fresh Boli would burn you on a retrohale and you were sweating half way through the cigar?

I had a LRE 09 or 10, can't remember, PC cutting the lawn yesterday. Very strong and flavorful!

I had an LRE 09 box of RASS which came after the epic TEB code. Off the charts fantastic, and $180usd for the box!! The "good 'ol days" for sure.

[Capn_Jackson]

I still love BBF, and they are my favorites. That said, the ones from (if I recall the years correctly) 2003-2007 I remember being quite a bit stronger, whether ROTT or rested a couple years. Those smokes almost ruined me for all other cigars 😆, couldn’t get enough of ‘em! The ones from the last 10 years or so, I’ve noticed, are lower intensity, but I still love the flavors. Maybe even more, it’s so hard to say because of the years from then to now.

As for BRC, I haven’t enjoyed these since the mid-teens. Any royal I’ve smoked since about 2017, 2018, I just don’t find a lot to enjoy. Less Boli spice than they used to have, and more cocoa. 

BPCs, I can’t really say as I only started smoking those around 2017. Probably my favorite of that size, though.

[BrightonCorgi]

Once the bands came on the cabs, the profiles evolved quickly to the modern style of today. Those bands ruined everything!

There is plenty of articles on updated curing and processing techniques along with newer strains. I'd imagine it's the newer/improved curing methods that play the biggest role. 

Kind of like old world and new wine making techniques. Taste an old school version of a CA cab and then a modern on from the same vineyard. Same grapes and soil, but different tasting wines. Not saying one is better than the other; just different.

[JermzCC]

3 hours ago, SCgarman said:

I had an LRE 09 box of RASS which came after the epic TEB code. Off the charts fantastic, and $180usd for the box!! The "good 'ol days" for sure.

That price hurts me in the wallet. Wow prices have increased.

[Corylax18]

On 10/14/2024 at 10:39 AM, AusDyer said:

This is nonsense. As I already mentioned, major businesses around the world operate corrupt practices often far more immoral than this and get away with it. Even ones that have been caught out, such as the supermarkets mixing black market horse meat into their beef products, were getting away with it for many years (unknown too, possibly decades) and they were caught by officials/inspectors, not workers exposing them. I also do not think, for one example, Tesco executives were doing it all, were they? No, they had all kinds of people transporting and processing for them. If your assertion here is correct, that would mean that no businesses would ever get away with anything dodgy, because people are so wonderful and intelligent that they'll notice and expose it. You also do not seem to comprehend that it's extremely easy to ship anything around without people knowing what exactly it is or what exactly it's for, it goes on all the time with hard drugs going through serious ports and the vast majority of people handling the shipments are clueless. If an actual government is involved, that kind of makes it extremely simple to do.

However, this isn't even part of the equation really. Cuba officially imports some Dominican tobaccos anyway. It already happens in an official capacity, they use it for blending in their cigarettes and machine made cigarillos. Nobody would know this was happening...the idea that it's some crackpot elaborate moon landing hoax conspiracy theory that sounds "silly" is bizarre. It may well not be true, but it isn't silly or difficult to do at all.

I'm not saying that every crime committed has been exposed. Far from it. But we know drugs and other illegal goods move, despite the fact we only catch a small percentage of those shipments. Believe me, I know you can ship just about anything, anywhere. I'm a Cuban cigar smoker, who lives in the US. Most criminals get caught, because most criminals are stupid. The people who would be executing this scheme in Cuba are far from the cream of the crop. We're talking about a company who cant keep 60-70% of its product line on the shelves. A government that cant keep the electricity on, or pick trash up off the streets. Nor can they hide either of these facts from the rest of the world. That is one of the MANY reasons that your statement is silly. Not only would they need to keep the transit quiet. They would need to keep everyone throughout the production process quite. Warehouse and factory managers, blenders, etc. Their Information security is about on par with a teenage girl on social media. Factory Codes, new releases, photos of new packaging, etc. leak out through these sources long before they are announce by official channels. 

I'm not an expert in Cuban Cigarettes, but I've never heard of any of the brands manufactured in Cuba using non Cuban tobacco. Again, I don't know why they would. Do you have a source for this? Have you found any chopped Virginia, or Burley tobacco in your BBFs lately? It seems like you're just swinging in the dark at this point.

Cuba grows plenty of lower quality tobacco throughout the island that would be much cheaper and much easier to blend into their cigars. It would also be much easier to hide. Beyond the LE program, I've never heard of this happening, nor have I seen any evidence of it happening. But it would be much more feasible and easier to believe than Cuba importing tobacco.  

[NSXCIGAR]

On 10/13/2024 at 1:05 PM, SCgarman said:

I would imagine tobacco strains of today are just milder than the older strains from decades ago.

I would say there's something to this as well as the rumored new processing techniques but my belief is that soil depletion is a far greater factor today in lack of flavor, richness and character. @Corylax18 alludes to this in terms of lack of resources like fertilizer, barns and equipment. Cory is much more able to comment on this but the farmers are pushing their fields to the limit unable to lay any land fallow to replenish. Everywhere else farmers use crop rotation and grow other crops that use different nutrients than tobacco does. But in Cuba they often don't have access to the other crops they need and also those alternate crops may pay less than even inferior tobacco. 

[VeguerosMAN]

Perhaps Cuba just can't make full bodied cigars anymore since 2000s...pretty interesting article on EL Corojo. 

https://www.cigaraficionado.com/article/the-death-of-el-corojo-7051

 

[Corylax18]

12 hours ago, NSXCIGAR said:

I would say there's something to this as well as the rumored new processing techniques but my belief is that soil depletion is a far greater factor today in lack of flavor, richness and character. @Corylax18 alludes to this in terms of lack of resources like fertilizer, barns and equipment. Cory is much more able to comment on this but the farmers are pushing their fields to the limit unable to lay any land fallow to replenish. Everywhere else farmers use crop rotation and grow other crops that use different nutrients than tobacco does. But in Cuba they often don't have access to the other crops they need and also those alternate crops may pay less than even inferior tobacco. 

I think the strain changes are part of it, but only a small part. I don't remember people complaining about weak/flavorless Cubans much 15 or 20 years ago. The newer strains are just hybrids of the older ones, were priority was shifted purely from the richness/flavor of the tobacco, to a more broad set of requirements, including flavor, pest resistance and hardiness. The lack of resources is another part. Some farmers are still able to get what they need and produce excellent tobacco, but many aren't. This leads to smaller crops, smaller leaves (especially wrapper leaves) and a general decrease in the average quality of a crop. I think there is another contributor as well. It's not as well documented, because I don't think it's been intentional, but they seem to be fermenting and aging filler for longer the last 7-10 years than they did before. Mostly because they don't have enough wrappers to fill. If they're doing that, good quality tobacco will be ready to smoke much sooner. Lower quality tobacco may not react as well and show signs of being over processed. To the point they loose a lot of the flavor/strength they had. 

When everything goes right, the cigars are still amazing. The best Cuban cigars are almost as good as they've ever been, but I think the average quality is lower than it's been in a long time. If you get a bad box, they may be as bad as Cubans have ever been. It's more of a crap shoot than ever. 

[VeguerosMAN]

I haven't smoked many Cubans recently due to the price fiasco. If Bolivar (which is supposed to be the strongest line from Habanos) is mild, is it safe to say that Connecticut shade wrapped Non-Cuban cigars have more taste and strength than any Habanos out there?