Maroma Dulce

This cigar is one that I received as a "gift"....meaning that a friend was cleaning out his "crap" cigars and asked if I wanted them. Since I'm an equal opportunity smoker, I'll take any cigar that is given and give them a fair shake.

Maroma Dulce 5"x50 Robusto

Construction:

Maroma is known for making value cigars....which to me means using second-string tobaccos from second-string houses. With that said, sometimes the second-string guys perform the same if not better than the first-string guys....just look at Pierre Thomas....nuff said. Anyway, this stick had fairly invisible seams, but some very visible veins, and was spongy in some places. This particular stick also had seen some abuse at the hands of its previous owner....cigar abuse is a major party foul, just sayin'.

This cigar is wrapped in a Connecticut Shade wrapper, around a Cuban Sandwich blend of Nicaraguan and Honduran tobaccos that gave off a solid aged tobacco aroma. For those wondering, as I was, Cuban Sandwich means the roller sandwiches short-filler (shred) among the long-filler tobaccos.

Smoke:

I opened the cigar and gave it a cold draw and immediately noticed that this one has a sweetened cap, which is typical of old-school Cuban cigars. That spice and raisin flavor of aged tobaccos wasn't very prominent, but was still there. Once lit, there was a nice solid mild tobacco flavor followed by a slight grassy note on the finish. The blemishes on the wrapper caused the cigar to burn a little wonky, but once past those the burn evened out. The one thing I noticed was that this cigar burned fairly quickly; this is something I'm attributing to the short-filler.

Overall this cigar is not a bad stick. It's not great and is rightly placed in the value section, but not something I would call a "crap" cigar. This isn't something I would look to buy, but I will definitely tell my friend that I'll take all his "crap" cigars if they're like this one.

Keep Smokin'!

Mick