Cigar Review: Casa Fernandez Miami Reserva

Toro 6" x 54 ring gauge / $9, approx.

I have seen a couple people posting that they were smoking this cigar on Twitter but I forgot about it until I walked into my regular cigar shop this weekend and saw that they had gotten them in. I decided to give this cigar a try and review it this week. You can read Dave's preview of it here. According to the Casa Fernandez website this cigar is comprised of "Medio Tempo Maduro, Ligero, and Viso, from specific Aganorsa Leaf farms in Jalapa Valley, Condega Valley, and Esteli in Nicaragua". So as you can see it is a Nicaraguan puro. The Reserva only comes in the toro size but the regular Miami comes in a robusto, toro, and torpedo. They are all packed in 15 count boxes. The cigar I smoked for review was the second one I've smoked.

The first thing that I noticed was the bands on this cigar. While they are fairly large I think they are very nice looking, with the top band almost having an Art Deco look to it. The wrapper was a milk chocolate brown with some veins and a good amount of oil to it. The cigar felt heavy in my hand. Normally that means a tight draw but I'll just have to wait and see. Giving the cigar a squeeze I'm not able to detect any soft spots and the cigar is fairly firm to the touch. Putting the cigar to my nose I get a sweet leather from the wrapper with cedar coming from the foot. After clipping and taking a cold draw on it I get the taste of sweet cinnamon with a good draw.

As soon as I light this cigar up I get a very intense blast of spice on the tongue and retrohale. After taking a few puffs and retrohaling the smoke I notice that my nasal passages are still tingling long after the smoke is gone. Once I got a short way into it the flavors of leather and earth with a creamy finish started to come through. The draw was absolutely perfect and it produced a large volume of smoke. The whitish ash held on for about three quarters of a inch before needing to be tapped off. Towards the end of the first third I started getting a slight herbal note with some cinnamon thrown in.

The second third saw the spice start to tone down a bit, but by no means did it go away. I also started getting a slight nicotine hit, much earlier than I usually get in a cigar. The flavors can best be described as cinnamon roll with leather and earth thrown in. I know that sounds kind of odd but it worked together and I was really enjoying this cigar. The draw continued to be perfect and the burn was slightly wavy. The wavy burn was probably due to the slight breeze that was going on while I was smoking this cigar.

The final third saw this cigar finish off strong. The flavors settled leather, earth and a slight saltiness, with a sweet finish. The strength of this cigar built until it was definitely full bodied. The construction continued to be almost perfect as I finished off this cigar.

Overall this was an awesome cigar. I will definitely be picking up more, and probably a box. I highly recommend that you try this cigar, however I will warn you that it is very strong. So if you are sensitive to that don't blame me if it throws you for a loop.

Body: 8/10
Strength: 9/10
Complexity: 7/10

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