Cigar Review: Gurkha Royal Challenge

I forgot to take pictures...this comes from the Gurkha website

Torpedo, 6.5" x 53 ring gauge / approx. $6
Today I'm featuring another cigar that Gurkha sent me recently for review and one of their releases from last year's IPCPR show: Royal Challenge. The company's website describes this as "a medium-bodied cigar that is smooth and majestic." It features Nicaraguan and Dominican fillers, a Honduran Habano binder, and an Ecuadorian Connecticut Shade wrapper. There was no indication of why this cigar is challenging, though...from everything I can deduce by looking at the country-of-origin of the various parts (and having smoked two of them prior to this review) it really just appears to be a mild to medium smoke, possibly in the same "new breed" Connecticut genre that so many companies have jumped to in the last couple years. So the real Challenge is this: how does Gurkha's contribution to this genre work out?

First up, how does it look? The bands are resplendent in gold leaf foil and embossing. It does look good and not overdone...which can be a fine line to walk sometimes. The wrapper leaf is a beautiful golden hue with no oversized veins or blemishes in evidence. It really is a great looking cigar and better than most other shade-wrapped sticks at this price point. Lifting the cigar to my nose, I got a whiff of hay and grass, along with a bit of sweetness; on the foot, I got an aroma of earth along with a bit of tea. Feeling along the length, the only soft part was near the foot, but that is fairly normal. I lopped off the pointy head of this torpedo and was rewarded with a very good draw that had a syrupy sweetness as well as grassy notes.

Lighting up was easy and I got initial notes of natural tobacco, hay, and molasses up front, with an earthy finish. The retrohale was nutty with some mild pepper spice. It did not take long for the milder notes to get overwhelmed by the earthier ones, though. By midway through the first third, I noticed mostly earth and roasted nuts standing out, with hints of the syrupy sweetness and grassier aspects drifting around underneath. It definitely was mild to medium in body right from the start.

...and this one I posted to Twitter.

As the second third burned, I picked up some citrusy notes that seemed to draw attention back to the milder aspects of the cigar. While earth was still fairly dominant, there were also mildly sweet hay and natural tobacco flavors coming through. The draw was very good so far and the burn line had remained very even.

In the final third, the flavors all came together in a nice balance of earth, hay, citrus, and even a building pepper spice, almost a cayenne burn. While the Royal Challenge started off a bit slow, it did finish very nicely; I smoked one of my samples with my morning coffee and can say that it proved a very nice accompaniment. What is impressing me most about this release, as well as the Cellar Reserve and 2010's Ninja and Viper releases, is that Gurkha seems to be breaking out of their box as a manufacturer of very expensive and fairly interchangeable mild to medium cigars. These last few releases have shown some nice individual character and the prices are all very reasonable. This Royal Challenge actually fits in very nicely with the other new breed of Connecticuts that have hit the market recently, delivering up nice flavors in a mild to medium body.

Body: 5/10
Strength: 4/10
Complexity: 6/10

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

Don't forget to enter the Gurkha Giveaway that we're having right now on the Tiki Bar. Details on how to enter to win free cigars can be found HERE.