Crowned Heads Juarez Willie Lee – Bury the Leaf There are cigars you review. Then there are cigars that spend the entire evening reviewing you. The Willie Lee turned out to be the second kind. By the time this smoke was over, I’d spent nearly two and a half hours trying to determine whether I…
Trinidad Espiritu No. 1 – Bury the Leaf I broke one of my own rules for this cigar. Normally, a cigar arrives, gets logged, gets admired, and then gets sent to humidor detention for a proper acclimation period before I ever think about lighting it. That’s especially true when the poor thing has spent more…
Bury The Leaf I think cigar media has a problem. Not a serious problem. Not a “call Congress and demand hearings” problem. But a problem nonetheless. Every review seems to be chasing the same thing. Limited releases. Rare releases. Annual releases. Ultra-premium releases. If a cigar isn’t wrapped in endangered moon dust and blessed by…
Oliva Serie V Showdown – Lancero v Torpedo Some cigar reviews are about flavor. This one turned into a psychology experiment. The idea started after watching my buddy Mr. @LordoftheLancero over on Instagram spend enough time around skinny cigars that I finally decided to stop treating Lanceros like mythical woodland creatures only spoken about in…
Rojas Bluebonnet – Bury the Leaf Spice, Earthspice, and the rise of Rojaspice. Some cigars try to impress you with elegance. Some try to overwhelm you with strength. Some cigars chase complexity so aggressively that halfway through the smoke you feel like the cigar is trying harder to impress you than you are trying to…
Bariay 1492 Red – Bury the Leaf The Bariay 1492 Red Label Robusto feels like a boutique cigar built by people who genuinely care about tobacco texture, refinement, and restraint instead of simply trying to weaponize strength and call it “premium.” This was smooth. Consistently smooth. Not sweet enough to become gimmicky.Not spicy enough to…
Brick House Natural Toro – Bury the Leaf The JC Newman Brick House Toro Natural spent the entire evening proving one very important point: Sometimes a cigar doesn’t need refinement, elegance, complexity, or a twelve-paragraph dissertation about fermentation techniques. Sometimes a cigar just needs to show up, punch you directly in the taste buds with…
Drew Estate 20 Acre Farm – Bury the Leaf The Drew Estate 20 Acre Farm Toro walked into the lounge dressed like a polished Connecticut and spent the rest of the evening quietly trying to convince me it had Habano aspirations. After the first cigar catastrophically split directly out of the cutter and immediately earned…
Alec Bradley Magic Toast – Bury the Leaf The Alec Bradley Magic Toast Toro never once attempted to become something it wasn’t. It didn’t chase complexity.It didn’t reinvent itself every third.It didn’t soften its edges trying to appeal to everybody sitting at the table. Instead, it planted its feet in dark earth, pepper, heavy wood,…
Oliva Serie O Box Pressed Toro – Bury the Leaf The Oliva Serie O Box-Pressed Toro is the cigar equivalent of that dependable old pickup truck that starts every single morning, never asks for much, and somehow keeps outperforming vehicles three times its price. This cigar never delivered one gigantic “stop the presses” moment. There…