Cigar Review: Savinelli Dos Campeones Coraje Trabajador

Short Robusto, 4" x 56 ring gauge / $6.99, Maxamar's

With 2011 being the 20th anniversary of Savinelli being in the cigar business they have come up with a couple innovative ideas for cigar blends. Today I'll be reviewing one half of the Dos Camepones line. These cigars were the brainchild of Steven Ysidron. Each box consists of 2 different blends. Today's Coraje blend is comprised of what they term vintage Nicaraguan filler, a Nicaraguan binder with Ecuadorian Habano wrapper. This blend is supposed to be the less intense of the two. This was my first one of these cigars.

The wrapper on this sample was a dark chocolate brown and had a good amount of oils to it. The veins on it were very fine. Giving the cigar a squeeze I wasn't able to detect any soft spots and it was fairly firm. Putting my nose to the wrapper I got a the aroma of barnyard with the same thing coming from the foot. After clipping it and taking a cold draw on it I was able to get the taste of cocoa powder with a good draw. One thing I'll note about the appearance is if you don't know where to look the word 'Coraje' gets a little lost on the band so it might be confusing to some which one they are smoking.

Lighting up the cigar brought the intense flavors of leather, chocolate and red pepper spice to the tongue. The draw was great and it produced a large volume of smoke. After taking a few more puffs on the cigar I started getting notes of wood and earth coming through. The burn started get slightly uneven but nothing that needed correcting at this point. To me this cigar was at the upper end of medium in strength and body. The light grey ash held on for about a inch before needing to be tapped off.

As I moved into the second third of the cigar the spice toned down quite a bit. It was still there on the tongue but pretty much gone from the retrohale. The flavors changed slightly to earth, wood, cocoa powder, and a herbal spice with a slightly creamy finish.

The final third saw the cigar finish off strong. The draw continued to be perfect and the burn pretty much evened itself out without any help. I continued to get flavors of leather, earth and chocolate, however a slightly sweet finish, almost a maple flavor, started to come through. The spice did start to come back and the strength of the cigar moved into the bottom end of full.

Overall this was a very enjoyable cigar and I see myself buying this one again. With the flavors I liked and great construction and a reasonable price I don't see why not. I do think it would be good for most smokers out there since it wasn't too strong and I didn't get a nicotine hit from it. I'm looking forward to trying the other blend in the box which I will be posting the review of next week.

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

AFP Scale
Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 2/2
Flavor: 4/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 9/10