I love discovering or stumbling upon new cigar brands. Founders Cigars is new to me. They’re actually a fairly new company having been established in 2020. I discovered them purely by accident. A couple of nights ago, I dropped off my son and his friends at a concert at Stanford University. And since I was in the area, decided to take a detour to downtown Palo Alto to go to Mac’s Smoke Shop. I was hoping to score some Big Sky cigars.
When I got there, I asked if they had any Big Sky cigars in stock, but they were out. But I asked him if I could check out his back room anyway, and when I got there, I saw a few boxes of Founders cigars. I picked out a Habano and Maduro to see what they were all about.
Douglas Habano
This is an interesting blend. It has an Habano wrapper and binder with Nicaraguan, Piloto Cubano, and Pennsylvania Broadleaf guts. Right off the bat you know you’re smoking an Habano as red pepper spiciness makes itself known. It has a unique flavor profile; that is, nothing new as far identified flavors, but the combination of them is different. There’re the usual suspects of malt, cream, coffee, cacao, citrus, an indistinct sweetness, cedar, leather, and oak. And these came at me in different combinations; not all of them pleasing to me. Perhaps it was the presence of Dominican tobacco in the blend. I’m not sure.
Update: I waited a couple of weeks and smoked the second. I really wanted to give it a badge of approval, but this stick was not for me. I could deal with the spice (I like a bit of spice), but the blend just seemed a bit off to me. I’m sure it’ll appeal to others, but it’s not for my palate.
Roosevelt Maduro
I was excited to try this one out because of the dark, toothy-looking wrapper. But like the Habano, it left me scratching my head. This was definitely much more approachable to me and I enjoyed it for the most part. It started out with a bang with a nice blast of pepper and coffee, then it went bland. And that lasted for nearly half of the cigar. It picked up again in the second half, but I started losing interest. And this happend with BOTH cigars I purchased. But I did smoke it to the end and the second half was quite nice. I have a feeling that this could use several months of humi time.
I didn’t want to write off this one as I did with the Douglas Habano because when its flavor profile was on, it was really on. In fact, I likened the second half to smoking an AJ. And that’s the problem I ultimately had with this stick. It had a been-there-done-that quality about it, so it didn’t compel me to get more.
To be fair, I will buy a couple more of these and lay them down for a long time. My hope is that they will improve with some extended aging.
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