Video review HERE.
(Description taken from Halfwheel.com website)
Nearly a year after the cigar was announced, HVC’s first U.S.-made cigar is finally shipping to stores.
The HVC La Rosa 520 Rare of Rare is made at El Titan de Bronze in Miami, the first time HVC Cigars has worked with the factory. It’s also the first time the company has worked with Dominican tobacco and medio tiempo tobacco. It’s offered in a single 6 x 52 belicoso size that uses an Ecuadorian Sumatran wrapper over an Ecuadorian habano binder and the fillers include Dominican criollo 98 and medio tiempo grown in Estelí, Nicaragua.
It has an MSRP of $20 per cigar and is limited to 500 boxes of 10 cigars.
HVC announced the cigar during the 2022 TPE trade show in late January. It was originally scheduled to ship in March.
Medio tiempo is a priming of tobacco—the way a plant is divided into sections vertically—that is found above the ligero priming, typically the highest priming. It’s only found on certain plans and only some growers go through the effort of classifying it separately from ligero. Given its position on the plant, if a plant has medio tiempo tobacco growing on it, that tobacco should be the strongest tobacco from that plant. In recent years, a variety of manufacturers have marketed their cigars as explicitly containing medio tiempo tobacco. Previously, that tobacco was typically classified as ligero.
The cigar is nicely made and has a very good feel in the hand.
The test draw after cutting the cap was good. The initial flavors at light up were citrus, citrus peel brown sugar, and leather. There was black pepper rated at 7 1/2 to 8. Good start.
At the first third (33 minutes) the ash is tight and still intact. The flavor notes are about the same with the addition of cinnamon and a lightly buttery nutmeg. There's quite a bit of leather in the cigar but significant sweetness also. The finish is leather with very good lingering black pepper. The cigar is full bodied. The cigar's flavor is powerful. I rated the first third 95.
As I moved through the second third (1 hour 16 minutes) the cigar is burning evenly and slow. Ligero is a slow burning tobacco. Now I had citrus, light citrus peel, brown sugar, earthiness, and leather. I didn't notice the buttery nutmeg or cinnamon any more. The cigar is still full bodied. The finish is unchanged. The earthiness and slighly elevated leather with the loss of the buttery notes caused me to lower the score to 94.
The cigar lasted 1 hour 39 minutes. Not much changed. The earthiness decreased allowing the leather to become more prominent. The sweet notes remained unchanged. The cigar is still full bodied and the finish is unchanged. I rated the final third 94. A good offering from HVC.
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