H. Upmann Corona Major

This is one of the cigars that I bought on Singapore airport as a starting aficionado, and even though I had a terrible lack of knowledge I instantly loved this 129mm long ring 42 cigar. I went straight to my local reseller but unfortunately this cigar wasn’t sold in The Netherlands so after a while I ordered a box at Zigarren Discount and just a few months after I received my cigars word got out that the H.Upmann corona major would be available for the Dutch market.

The box H.Upmann I have is from November 06, so the cigars are still a bit young, but I could not control myself anymore and decided to light one tonight. The cigar has a nice silky wrapper with just a few veins, it looks and feels good and it smells nice, a bit like dried hay. The predraw and the draw were a bit hard though.

Right after lighting the cigar my mouth was filled with a warm sweet flavor and after about one centimeter that sweet taste got companied by creamy leather. Especially the sweet taste is unique, I never tasted that in any other cigar I tried. After about a third of the cigar some light pepper was noticeable. About halfway the leather and the sweetness disappeared and the cigar got a beautiful pallet of herbs. At the end I could briefly taste some cacao, but that was gone in two puffs.

The burn was close to perfect, only right at the end the cigar lost the straight burn but it was very close to the cigar band, so I let the burn die. The smoke started a bit light but it got thicker and stronger as the cigar progressed. The ash was firm and beautifully silver gray.

Will I buy this cigar again? Yes I will

Appearance: 8 / 10
Construction: 7 / 10
Draw: 7 / 10
Burn: 8 / 10
Smoke & ash: 7 / 10
Aroma first part: 7 / 10
Aroma second part: 7 / 10
Aroma third part: 8 / 10