[Note: Postscript cigars have been featured on the Stogie Fresh 5 podcast at least 1 year in the past. These reviews will have no scoring, as do most of our reviews, but are intended to revisit the cigars after yet another year of age in the Stogie Fresh humidors.]

The J-Fuego-Delirium was first featured in Episode 123 on Sunday, June 29, 2008. This cigar has been resting in my humidor for 1 yr and 1 month and I pulled out another this week to check on its progress.

Jesús Fuego is the 5th generation in his family to be in the tobacco industry. His family grew tobacco in the Pinar del Rio region of Cuba for generations and Jesús grew up on the family tobacco farm in Cuba called, "El Corojo."

Jesús heads a company named Tabacos S A. Under the J.Fuego label there are four cigars. The first is the Natural, a three-country blend of 100% Criollo tobaccos.

Their second cigar, the Gran Reserva Corojo No.1 is a four-country blend of 100% Corojo tobacco. This has been my favorite J. Fuego cigar to date.

There has also been the 777 by J. Fuego an extremely limited release cigar, which is medium to full-bodied. But the cigar I’m featuring today is the J. Fuego Delirium. The Delirium is a four-country blend including tobacco from Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Brazil.

The Delirium project actually started a few years ago, but was put on hold until Jesús and Tabacos S. A. could be sure that they would have complete control over the tobaccos used in the cigar.

This cigar has a complex blend with well-aged tobaccos. In fact the youngest tobacco in the blend is the dark and seductive Habano seed Brazilian maduro wrapper, which is over 5 years old.

The J Fuego Delirium Lancero is the subject of this postscript revisit. It is a 7.5-inch x 38 ring gauge Lancero with a beautiful Brazilian Habano Maduro wrapper. This is really a beautiful cigar and the nose on the wrapper leaf is ripe with earthy notes. By the way, earthy is just a kind way of saying that this cigar smells like manure and dirt. Not to worry, though, in this context, trust me, manure is the bomb. Wow, and it's pungent too! Really nothing better than to have a cigar that shows this much promise before you even light it.

My first impression of this cigar is that it is really delicious and savory. There are notes of coffee bean, chocolate and earth, yeah, I mean manure, but it's great in a cigar, trust me. And it possessed a feature that all maduro's should have: sweetness. I love the sweetness of a good Maduro and that is because maduro tobacco has been fermented longer and hotter and as a result it ripens and becomes sweeter. And that is what the word "maduro" means in Spanish: "ripe."

This cigar started off in sketchy fashion and developed a runner up the side of the cigar. When you see the burn line run up one side of the cigar, this means that there is a tunnel in the cigar, usually on the opposite side from the runner. And this was the case, although I have to say that the ash held on a long time. At least two inches before I tapped off. And, by the time I tapped off, the rest of the cigar corrected itself and the burn was almost even at that point.

When I first featured this cigar on my podcast, it had a huge dose of pepper on the retrohale. After a year of extra aging this cigar still has some pepper, but is way more balanced. I am really loving this cigar right now and the aging has done wonders.

You might ask the question, why would an extra year make any difference when the tobaccos in this cigar had so much age on them prior to making the cigars. That is a fair question and one that can be explained by the manufacturing process itself. All of the tobaccos in this cigar have been aged for several years before being awakened from their slumbers and rolled into cigars. When the tobaccos are taken out of the aging warehouse, they must be moistened to revive them from their slumbers and to make sure there is no damage to the leaves, specifically the wrapper leaves because they must be stretched over the binder and filler leaves and they must be prevented from tearing during the manufacture process. So, by the time the cigar gets put together, there is mismatch between the moisture in the wrapper and the moisture in the filler and binder. This moisture difference can make the cigar burn poorly and can affect the flavors negatively. In any case, this cigar is really smoking nice right now and I believe it will continue to age gracefully for another several years into the future. How long they will age, will remain to be seen, but right now they are smoking and tasting great.

The J. Fuego Delirium is a great maduro cigar and it has everything you could ask for in a great maduro: sweetness, balance, and plenty of complexity. This is a cigar you should try and make no mistake, this is a quality smoke. At $6-7 per stick, it's a bit pricey, but that shouldn't dampen your enthusiasm. This is a fine smoke.

~Doc