Cigar Review: El Baton

Double Torpedo, 6.25" x 56 ring gauge, $5.95
The El Baton is the latest offering from the J.C. Newman cigar company, best known for Diamond Crown and Cuesta Rey. Although the El Baton has been out the better part of a year, there is no mention of it on their website, so I had to gather information from other sources. To the best of my knowledge, this is a Nicaraguan puro with a Corojo wrapper.

When released from its plastic prison, the El Baton gave off a strong barnyard aroma. From the foot the smell was sweeter, more chocolate and coffee. The cigar looks well-made, although maybe not from the finest raw materials. The wrapper is quite veiny and the cigar is rather lumpy. Feeling the length of it, there do not seem to be any soft or rock-hard spots, so hopes are high for thoroughly good construction characteristics.

The prelight draw had flavors of coffee, baking cocoa and just a little bit of spice. After lighting there was black coffee, black pepper and a whiff of nutmeg. The draw is good and the volume of smoke was more than sufficient. During the rest of the first third, the coffee was the most common flavor, while the pepper diminished and the nutmeg popped up from time to time. The draw tightened up early on, requiring several measures to open it back up, none of which were completely successful.

The draw unexpectedly finally opened up in the second third, making the stick that much more enjoyable. The nutmeg and spice became distant memories as the undertones turned more nutty; the flavors of black coffee held on throughout.

Winding up, the last third continued the dominance of the coffee flavor with a healthy roasted nut supporting flavor. The El Baton is a very good cigar, while never treading in the path of greatness. It has a nice body, medium-to-full, and a decent amount of complexity. It is too expensive to fall into the bargain smoke category, but is still priced reasonably as an everyday cigar. Keith had told me that he had one of these earlier this year and it was quite bad; so bad that the cigar store owner was giving them out to get rid of them! The only thing I can figure is that something happened to that box, because this was not a bad cigar at all.

Body: 7/10
Strength: 6/10
Complexity: 7/10

AFP Scale:
Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 1.5/2
Flavor: 4/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 8.5/10