This El Original Maduro is a 6-country blend of tobaccos from Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Peru, Mexico and Ecuador.

The El Original is manufactured in a small factory in the Little Havana section of Miami, Florida. The Master Blender, Santiago Cabana, has worked as a roller and Master Blender in Cuba’s cigar industry before arriving in the U.S. in 1995. The El Original cigars are sold direct from The Island Smoke shop in Key Largo Florida,

The wrapper leaf on this maduro is rugged and rustic and looks like, if you bit it, it would bite back. Regardless, the nose on this cigar blushes with chickencoop and barnyard; two of my very favorites. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: “One whiff will make you a believer.”

The feel on the cigar is a bit soft for my liking. It seems to have a couple of soft spots in particular. We’ll see if this portends trouble after I top and torch this stogie.

After clipping, the pre-light draws seemed fine so I fired up this stick.

One of the consistent findings about this cigar over the three prior reviews is that it starts out medium-full in body and flavor and I am impressed that it still has this much body and flavor at over a year-and-a-half.

The flavors are earthy and spicy with a good dose of pepper on the nose. The tobacco displays good maduro sweetness while maintaining a firm structure on the palate. In short, this is a goodie!

The burn is another matter however, the soft spot that I felt earlier, played out with a runner up the side of the cigar. I’ve smoked 10 cigars from this same batch and this is by far the worst burning of the bunch. That said, I am not overly concerned because this is NOT a consistent feature of the cigar, but rather one of the certainties of a handmade product: you will get a bad one now and then.

By the second half, I had burned past the tunnel and the cigar performed just fine throughout the remainder of the smoke. The flavors continued to intensify with rich coffee and chocolate nuances and there was a wonderful tangy spice on the retrohale. This is a great example of a maduro and I recommend it highly for those who want to see what a true maduro is all about.

Burn problem notwithstanding, I love these cigars and I will no doubt buy more when this batch is gone.

Having smoked these cigars over the span of 1.5 years, I am confident that they will continue to age gracefully. As a result I am giving them an AGING POTENTIAL SCORE of B = this cigar should age well over the first 5 years and is likely to develop further complexity and nuances

~Doc