AJ Fernandez Bellas Artes Maduro

Purchased: 5-pack Toro (6 X 54)
Price: ~$38
Store: CigarPage.com
Buy again? Yes, but on a special sale only

Don’t get me wrong. This cigar is good. When I first took it out of the wrapper, I marveled at its toothy, oily wrapper. The label art was spectacular. Chocolate, cedar, yogurt-like sourness when smelling the foot and wrapper. The cigar was also packed! And being box-pressed, I immediately wondered if it would be plugged. But once punched and I took a cold draw, the draw was exactly how I like it! Just a little resistance, so no worries about it being plugged.

Then I lit it up. Yup, it was classic AJ profile with nuts, cedar, chocolate, and a touch of coffee. Once the cherry started forming, the smoke got creamy with a touch of black pepper on the finish. Again, classic AJ.

About the pepper, lots of folks have reported that they got black pepper spiciness throughout the smoke. It didn’t get spicy for me until the 2nd half, and it was mild. It kind of makes me wonder if I’ve lost that ability to detect it because I eat a lot of spicy food… I don’t think so because I pick it up in lots of other sticks. But another factor is that this stick had been lying at the bottom of my tupperdore for a couple of months because they got buried by other sticks. So happy accident that those sticks have had time to mellow.

As I’ve mentioned twice now, this is classic AJ. And that’s the problem with this cigar. It’s good. It has all the notes I’d expect out of an AJ-made cigar. I’m now in the second half and the cigar finally has started to bloom. The creamy smoke is filled with the flavors I mentioned above: Coffee, chocolate, a little malt, black pepper, cedar, and now a little burnt oak. But with AJs other creations, he takes that base and adds a little magic by blending in transitions; little touches here and there that give his sticks distinctiveness.

This cigar, on the other hand, seems to communicate that it is an AJ-made cigar. It’s a statement of what to expect from an AJ blend. Then it stays there, leaving me to ask, “Is there more to you?”

To be clear, it’s not a bad cigar. I enjoyed it as it’s an AJ, so the profile is familiar to me. But I guess I was expecting something different.