Azan Delivers Value in Short Campana

Roberto Pelayo Duran has enjoyed a long career in the cigar industry, partly in production and partly with the distribution organization of Cubatabaco, the Cuban state tobacco company.  This distribution organization, Habanos S.A. formed in 1994, controls the promotion, distribution, and export of Cuban cigars and other tobacco products worldwide for Cubatabaco.  In 2000, the French/Spanish company Altadis purchased a 50% interest in Habanos for just $500 million, perhaps introducing a more capitalistic approach to marketing premium Cuban cigars. Then in 2008 giant Imperial Tobacco from Britain paid about $17 billion for all of Altadis, who at the time was the largest cigar seller globally with 3.165 billion sticks sold.  It seems Imperial/Altadis is well positioned for the possible removal of the US 1962 embargo on Cuban products – i.e. cigars.

Roberto formed a company called Roberto Duran LLC and developed a new cigar line called Azan which debuted at the 2013 IPCPR.  Azan has a White line (premium cigars) and a Burgundy line (every day cigars).  The Burgundy line has 6 types – 4 3/8 X 50 short robusto, 4 3/8 X 46 short campana, 4 7/8 X 50 robusto , 5 1/8 X 42 petit corona, 4 7/8 X 50 robusto A/T and 5 1/8 X 42 petit corona .  I was given the burgundy short campana at the IPCPR for review.

The Azan cigars are produced at the Esteli, Nicaragua factory of a partner where they are hand rolled and aged in a climate controlled cedar room. The Burgundy line’s filler is a selection of tobaccos from Jalapa and Esteli in Nicaragua, the binder is Jalapa and the wrapper is Cuban seed Corojo from Ecuador.

The short campana has a simple band around an attractive cigar. The wrapper was darker than I expected and the cap was torpedo shaped. As with the White Premium I tested, the campana was quite firm at the cap but loose at the foot.

The stick lit well enough but the draw was a little rough and got slightly worse as the stick was smoked.  There was good flavor – mostly nutmeg and coffee with a lot of sweetness, and all of the flavors intensified as the stick got smaller. The strength was medium bodied and it took 30 minutes to smoke with an even burn and attractive ash.  There is a lot of flavor for a retail price of $3.70, so I consider this a very good value, resulting in an overall rating of 4.0 out of 5.