A “Square” Habano by Kings Cigars

Kings Cigars is a recent entrant for boutique cigar making and they name each of their blend series after a title of royalty. This reflects their goal of providing a “taste of royalty” in each blend. Kings has a factory in Estelí, Nicaragua and Santiago, Dominican Republic where they perfect their cigars. I met with Pete Tyndale, King’s master blender, at the 2014 IPCPR where he discussed the benefits of being situated in two well-known tobacco countries.

I previously reviewed 2 other cigars from Kings and this one is the King of Kings Habano which comes in only 1 size – the cuadrado. According to my Wikipedia translator, cuadrado is square or of stocky build. This King of Kings is both of those as it is soft box pressed for the square shape and at 6 X 64 is certainly of stocky build. That’s fine as I appreciate the larger cigars. This Habano has an Ecuadorian Habano wrapper around a Nicaraguan binder. The filler is a proprietary blend.

The accompanying picture does not do the size of this cigar justice – 64 is a big ring size (a full inch). Being box pressed, the square shape allows the King of Kings cuadrado to be almost easily held between the first and second fingers. The wrapper is slightly dark and the cigar was nicely firm, not squishy as some box pressed cigars are. The cuadrado started with some sweetness that remained for just the first half. The strength quickly developed into a medium bodied cigar with flavors of cedar and pepper. The aftertaste was vanilla that grew stronger towards the end, along with hints of coffee. The smoke volume was above average as was the draw and ash. It lasted for 1 hour and 15 minutes and has an SRP of $9 to $10. I think this price is just a little bit above what the cigar delivers so I rate it a 4 out of 5.