EP Carrillo Edicion Inaugural 2009

I recently received a package from a good friend Mike (@KnightRid) over at Stogie Review. Inside that package was a couple of sticks that Mike had known I have been wanting to try for quite sometime now. Alas, the time has come to fire up EP Carrillo’s Edicion Inaugural 2009.

The Good Stuff: Early last year Ernesto Perez-Carrillo decided it was time to seperate from his long time partnership with General cigar to set out and create his own family boutique brand. The first blend hitting the shelves of that brand is the EP Carrillo Edicion Inaugural 2009 which was announced at laster year’s IPCPR in New Orleans.

The EP Carrillo Edicion Inaugural takes a spin on standard cigar manufacturing by using two different binders in this blend. One Dominican, and one Nicaraguan which is then surround by a Ecuadorian Habano wrapper. The wrapper itself will not be able to be produced for a few years to come, even at that point who knows if this is a cigar that will be added to Carrillo’s standard portfolio. With only 150,000 sticks being made, it is safe to say that this is one exclusive cigar that you don’t want to miss getting your hands on.

Size: 5.5 x 52  –  Wrapper: Ecuadorian  –  Binder/Filler: Dominican/Nicaraguan  –  Body: Mild/Medium

Prelight: The EP Carrillo Edicion Inaugural 2009 sports a very consistent light, almost sandy brown wrapper. Many very small veins can be found throughout the wrapper which is polished off by a very smooth, rounded cap that blend seamlessly into the body of the cigar. The Edicion Inaugural is extremely firm to the touch with little bounce-back, and absolutely no soft spots. Construction on these cigars a subpurb. The Edicion Inaugural is fixed with a dual band system, one smaller red one with the title of the blend embossed in cold ink, and a much larger band with the EP Carrillo emblem resting upon a earthy yellow, gold and black wrap with small tobacco leaves embed upon it. The wrapper gives off a very sweet, graham cracker aroma as the foot of the cigar only enhances the graham smell with a bit of earth toned tobacco. The head clipped right off with my double bladed Palio cutter.  The cold draw produced a spicy, graham cracker, and bread type flavor mixture.

First Smoke: This Ep Carrillo lit up with extreme ease under my triple flame butane torch. The first few draws of the Ep Carrillo Edicion Inaugural produced a very smooth, yet complex mixture of graham cracker, cinnamon, natural tobacco, and almost a citrus zest. The draw is effortless and produces a great amount of thick, grey smoke.  The Edicion Inaugural produced a whole mess of  woodsy, tobacco scented stationary smoke.  The burnline started out a bit rigid and sharp, but quickly corrected itself leaving behind a beautiful tight, white ash. The ash lasted  about an inch and a half before falling to it’s fate in my ash tray.

EP Carrillo Edicion Inaugural 2009

Halfway There: Halfway through this EP Carrillo Edicion Inaugural I noticed s light change up in taste. The dominant flavor is now that of pine wood with a heck of a little spice kick and citrus taking the back seat. Even the stationary smoke aroma became more woodsy than it already was. The retro hale at this point is very tasteful and smooth. Unlike most of Carrillo’s blends the Edicion Inaugural is very smooth and mild. I am not feeling even the slightest bit of nicotine as I truck through this bad boy.  The burnline is still perfectly even, and razor sharp.

Finish: The larger of the two bands had a massive amount of unnecessary glue applied and took a rather large chunk of the cigar’s wrapper along with it. Thank god the Edicion Inaugural has more binder than normal or this could have caused quite a few problems. Lucky for me, the missing portion of the wrapper didn’t cause any problems in the draw, but it did lead to quite a bit of cracking. It just goes to show how frail this Ecuadorian wrapper can be. I didn’t get any harshness at all from this EP Carrillo. In fact, I am pretty surprised the entire experience was as smooth as it was. The finishing flavors were a bit more bold in the pine-wood department, with strong tobacco flavors and subtle spice and graham cracker. The burn was perfect all the way through with no needs to touch up, or relight. Again, no nicotine kick whatsoever, no harsh build up towards the end, smooth pine, and tobacco flavored finish.

Overview: If it wasn’t for the fragile wrapper and excess in glue on the band I would have walked away with absolutely nothing bad to say about this cigar. Even with that, I think it was a very pleasurable experience and would highly recommend this smoke to the novice, and the enthusiast. Again, it will be a matter of years before the wrapper on this cigar can be produced again, and even then it is unclear if we will ever see this cigar hit production again. So if you are luckily enough to stumble across these cigars I strongly urge you not to pass them up. You will regret it.

Pairing: I decided to pair this EP Carrillo Edicion Inaugural with some Erdinger Dark Heffeweissen (Dunkelweissen). Erdinger dark is a heavy, unfiltered wheat based beer with light citrus notes and dominant cinnamon and brown sugar flavors. The match was near perfect as it complimented the sweet notes of the EP Carrillo while really bringing the zest out of the cigar.