Cohiba Macassar

By Tony Casas | February 27, 2017

Another windy weekend here in the borderlands. Let’s hope this clears up soon cause I am not sure how much more my allergies can take. This week I find myself out back with a Cohiba Macassar in one hand and a bottle of Modern Times Haunted Stars in the other.

The Good Stuff:

The Cohiba Macassar follows in the footsteps of a collaborative effort between Cohiba and rapper Jay Z in that it features tobacco aged in rum barrels. The Macassar features a Connecticut Habano wrapper, Connecticut Broadleaf binder, and filler tobacco from the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua that were aged for at least 4 years, including a final year of aging in rum barrels. The Cohiba Macassar comes in 3 sizes, the Double Corona (7 1/4 x 54), the Gigante (6 x 60) and the Toro Grande (6 x 52). Each come packaged in boxes of 10 and will run a whopping $21.99 – $24.99 a stick and are a regular production cigar being produced at General Cigar Dominicana. Big thanks goes out to General Cigar for sending samples our way to review.

Size: 6 x 52
Wrapper: Connecticut Habano
Binder: Connecticut Broadleaf
Filler: Aged Nicaraguan and Dominican
Body: Medium/Full
Strength: Medium
Pairing: Modern Times Haunted Stars (Imperial Rye Porter 8% ABV)
Price: $21.99

Prelight:

The Cohiba Macassar carries a very dark, consistent brown wrapper. There is a small bit of noticeable higher areas scattered throughout the natural webbing on the cigar’s wrapper. The wrapper’s texture is slightly toothy and extremely oily. It feels very thick and very rigid as the cigar is packed pretty tightly resulting in one heavy object. I noticed only a few very minor veins running the course of the cigar’s body as the wrapper is laid perfecttly, and seamlessly over itself leading up to a snubby, round, double cap. The most noticeable characteristic of this cigar though, is just how dull the band is. Being that it’s a $20+ cigar I would have expected a little more than just your standard Cohiba red dot logon on some simple, silver band. But thats neither here nor there, its whats inside the band that counts.

The wrapper on the Cohiba Macassar gives off some slight leather, spice, and espresso while the foot of the cigar is more natural with some grainy/earthy aromas, spice, and tobacco. The cap cut clean and easily using my Xikar double bladed cutter. The cold draw produces some subtle sweetness, molasses, tobacco, and musk flavors.

First Third:

Into the first third of the Cohiba Macassar and the body starts out a bit bolder than I expected. Leading with some brown sugar, honey, musk and coffee with some slight cocoa and clove at the end. Its a great mixture of flavors. The draw on the cigar is flawless. Each little puff kicks out a desirable amount of thick white smoke that even hangs around despite the windy weather I’m experiencing out here. The burn line has a few slight waves, but is pretty sharp for the most part leaving behind a tightly compacted trail of medium gray ash which fell into my ashtray after about 3/4 of an inch.

Second Third:

Into the second third of the Cohiba Macassar and the flavors haven’t changed up too much, they did however cream out and become more balanced. The main flavor is the coffee and musk at this point with clove and honey backing them up and some slight sweetness on the aftertaste. While I didn’t pick up too much pepper during the standard smoking experience, it’s very evident in the retrohale and not something I find myself coding too often on this cigar. The burn line is still slightly wavy but I haven’t had to reach for my torch yet. I cloud out the second this with only a very slight nicotine kick.

Finish:

Settling into the final third of the Cohiba Macassar and the flavors still remain much of the same. I enjoy the flavors quite a bit, but it would be nice to see some more changeups here. The profile now leads with musk and coffee backed by the clove, honey, sweetness, and a real nice earthiness. I took this cigar down to the very nub and I experienced absolutely no harshness, nor extra heat. After almost 2 hours I put it down and walked away with only a very minor nicotine kick. I never once had to reach for my torch to either touch up or relight this cigar.

Overview:

All in all I thought that the Cohiba Macassar would a fantastic cigar. The flavors were great, complex enough, and the burn experience was fantastic. That being said, it’s a hard reach for just about any cigar to be worth over $20 in my opinion nowadays. But I did enjoy it, and at the end that’s all that really matters right?

Pairing:

I decided to pair this cigar with Modern Times Haunted Stars. Haunted Stars is a 8% Imperial Rye Porter brewed at the Modern Times Brewery in San Diego, California. The Modern Times Haunted Stars starts out with some great chocolate, roasted malt, grain, and slight hopiness with a very light mouthfeel refinishing finished with more chocolate, roasted malt, coconut, and hop. It’s a pretty straight forward beer and I found that it paired up with the flavors in the Cohiba Macassar wonderfully. Especially the chocolate and malt. I’d also see myself pairing this cigar with a nice Belgian Bruin, Ruby Port, of even some creamed coffee.