[Note: Postscript cigars have been featured on the Stogie Fresh 5 podcast at least 1 year in the past. These reviews are intended to revisit the cigars after yet another year of age in the Stogie Fresh humidors.]

The Hoyo de Monterrey Excalibur Legend was first featured in Episode 133 on Sunday, September 7, 2008. These cigars now have another year of age on them, coming in at 1 year and 8 months. This past week, I pulled out another of these sticks, which are 5.25 by 50 RG Robusto's, so that I could see how they were getting along with another year of age.

This cigar, which debuted at the 2008 IPCPR trade show, is purported to be the most full flavored of the Hoyo de Monterrey offerings.

As the boldest expression of the Hoyo de Monterrey Excalibur, the Legend has a filler blend that includes spicy Nicaraguan tobacco from the mainland and a proprietary tobacco from Nicaragua's remote volcanic island of Ometepe, which are then joined with a Dominican ligero leaf to round out the robust blend.

The Legend sports a binder of Connecticut Havana Seed leaf, and the wrapper is the same lush, well-oiled Connecticut Havana leaf that won praise for Hoyo de Monterrey Excalibur Dark Knight.

Former General Cigar Master Blender and president Daniel Núñez blended this cigar. Each of Excalibur Legend's sizes is housed in boxes of 20 cigars. The cigar comes in three sizes: the 5 ” x 45 RG Crusader, the 6 ” x 54, Conqueror and the cigar I’m revisiting today, the Challenger, which is a 5 ” x 50 RG Robusto.

This is a nice looking stick with a reddish brown wrapper color, a slight leather texture and some nice oils that glisten on the wrapper.

Flavor-wise, this Excalibur Legend starts out with a blast of spice. I am telling you that this smoke will curl your nose hairs when you retrohale. Big, spicy and peppery. And, in that sense, this cigar starts out the way many of Don Pepin Garcia's cigars start out. In fact, interestingly enough, Daniel Nuñez, the man behind this cigar blend, doesn't really prefer cigars that are as spicy and peppery as this one is. This cigar was obviously blended for the segment of the public that wants fuller bodied spice bombs and this certainly fits the bill. But Daniel has said before that if a cigar has too much Nicaraguan tobacco, it will become too peppery.

The extra year of age did not seem to tame this spice. I would really like to smoke this cigar when it starts to mellow more and see if the spice will become more balanced with the other flavors in the blend. Right now this stick is fairly one-dimensional, being dominated by black pepper spice and wood, but if you like bold spicy cigars, this one will likely strike your fancy.

Another bit of good news is that, of the 6-7 of these Legend’s that I’ve smoked, they always seem to perform well. This one has burned evenly and the draw has been smooth and even and the well-formed charcoal gray ash held firm until I tapped it off.

At around $6 per stick, this is a competitive smoke in the medium-full bodied category. The construction on these sticks seems to be consistently good and they deliver a kick in the pants spice. I definitely recommend this cigar to those who like medium to full-bodied, spicy cigars. The price is fair and the quality is high.