Hoyo de Monterrey Double Corona
Cigar Weekly Managing Editor Doug Kuebler (jazznut) offers his impressions of one of La Habana's benchmark cigars.
Country of fabrication: Cuba
Date of issue: Pre 2000
Date of review: Saturday August 22, 2009
Setting: A warm and sunny afternoon on the back porch
Accompanying beverages: Islay Mist 17 Year Old and a glass of cool water. The blended Scotch proved an ideal match.
Appearance of outer leaf: Richly toned Colorado with diffuse, subtle oscuro markings as well as a few crystallized oil deposits. Very fine tooth.
Ash: Bone grey-white to charcoal.
Combustion: Apart from a burn edge that tended to scallop unevenly, no problems were encountered.
Total time of session: Approximately 1½ hours.
Opening portion: Dry cocoa. Cinnamon. Cedar. Mild tobacco with a distinctively sweet, clay-like, earthy quality. Faint musk, which the Scotch whisky tended to accentuate.
Early stages: Chocolate mint wafers. Roasted sesame seeds. The cocoa beginning to shed its granularity in favour of a more toffee-imbued creaminess. Some soft baking spices flitting about the perimeter of the palate.
The heart of the smoke: Flavours tightly intertwined, the boundaries between core tobacco, cocoa and cedar blurring in a more cohesively conveyed thrust. Leaning decidedly to the milder end of the intensity spectrum. Very smooth.
Latter stages: Cocoa butter. Honey-laced carrot cake. Aniseed. The cedar component taking on a slightly briny tone akin to Alaea sea salt. Delicate and quite sublime.
Closing moments: Gaining marginally in strength. A taste of fruit skins emerging, evidencing the still present underlying tannins. Hints of Yemen coffee percolating through into the cocoa element. Balanced and satiating despite the overall mildness.
Assessment: Four years have passed since I last lit up one of these. At that time, I thought I had caught the Hoyo at its peak. Now, I’m not so sure.
Summary: A hard one to put to rest.
This review was originally posted in the Reviews Forum of the Cigar Weekly Community Forums and Discussion Groups.