Cigar Reviews
RoMa Craft Tobac Marquette La Maestranza
I hope everyone had a happy new year and wonderful holiday! As I am working on my list of of my favorite cigars of 2024, I decided to take care of what looks to be the last stretch of good weather we will have for a while and bring you a review of the RoMa Craft Tobac Marquette La Maestranza.
The Good Stuff:
La Maestranza is the newest release from RoMa Craft Tobac. Created at the company’s Nica Sueno factory in Nicaragua the blend features a Mexican San Andres wrapper that the company’s founder, Skip Martin describes as “Spanish Market Selection” over a Brazilian binder and filler tobaccos from Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. The new blend is featured in three regular productions formats: The Ciutadella Catalonia (4 x 50), the Maestranza Castillito Murcia (5 x 60) and the Caballería Valencia (6 x 52). There is also a limited edition vitola which falls into the company’s CRAFT portfolio which we are focusing on today, the Marquette (4 1/4 x 52). The regular production lines all come packaged in boxes of 40 while the limited edition Marquette is sold in bundles of 10. They will range between $9 and $12 per cigar. I purchased mine over from our friends at Small Batch Cigar.
- Size: 4 1/4 x 56
- Wrapper: Mexican San Andres
- Binder: Brazillian
- Filler: Nicaraguan and Dominican Republic
- Body: Medium/Full
- Strength: Medium/Full
- Price: $12
Prelight:
The RoMa Craft Tobac Marquette La Maestranza starts out with a very dark, very consistent brown wrapper. There are only a few lighter areas around the middle of the cigar. The wrapper’s texture is slightly toothy with a whole ton of oils coating it. As I handle the cigar some light oils actually rub onto my fingertips. The wrapper feels very thick and dense while the cigar as a while is very tightly packed and has a good amount of weight to it considering its smaller stature. The wrapper is laid seamlessly over itself as it leads up to the cigar’s round, double-wrapped cap. I also really love the soft box-press format as it’s incredibly comfortable. The cigar is polished off with a red and gold foot ribbon.
The wrapper on the RoMa Craft Tobac Marquette La Maestranza gives off some really bold molasses and spice aromas while the foot is very earthy with some light spice as well. The cap cut clean as easily. The cold draw produces quite a bit more flavor than most cigars with notes of natural tobacco, a nice sweetness, and some great herbal and spice flavors that remind me of Christmas.
First Half:
The RoMa Craft Tobac Marquette La Maestranza starts out with a quick little cayenne pepper blast which left my lips tingling a bit. Once the pepper faded the cigar releases a whole mess of the same spices that reminds me of Christmas, flavors like cinnamon, brown sugar, and ginger. This over some great pecan and coffee notes with a great musky/woodsy finish. The draw is perfect as every tiny puff I take kicks out a massive amount of thick, white smoke which really sticks around for a while before dissipating. The burn line is a bit wavy, but not concerning while the ash left behind is a trail of very tightly compacted white, and dark gray which held on for almost an inch before falling into my ashtray. I close out the first half with nothing in terms of nicotine.
Second Half:
I am absolutely loving the flavor profile in this RoMa Craft Tobac Marquette La Maestranza. At this point the musky and woodsy flavors have really ramped up and are just as potent as the spice and sweetness. In fact, the sweetness has began to drop out a bit and the dryness is complimenting the flavors really well. The retrohale brings out a ton of the wood flavor as well as black coffee which makes for an excellent full-body experience. This cigar burned very slow, it took me almost 2 hours to smoke this little beast down to the nub. They experienced no harshness, no extended heat, and no sap. In fact, there were no burn issues at all as the cigar burned flawlessly from start to finish.
Overview:
I’ve had some really good cigars this year, and I’d be hard pressed to find one that stood out more than the RoMa Craft Tobac Marquette La Maestranza. I haven’t compiled my list of best cigars for the year yet, but I’d be shocked if I didn’t make its way onto the list. The flavor profile is incredible and really matches up well with exactly what I look for in terms of my personal palate. Take the subjectiveness out of the picture and the cigar burned perfectly from start to finish, it’s pretty affordable, and burned slow enough to get a ton of bang for your buck. I smoke a lot of RoMa Craft cigars and this is one that will likely be in my rotation for a very long time to come.
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