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(Description taken from Halfwheel.com website)
On Monday, July 29, Altadis U.S.A. released two cigars that celebrate the 180th anniversary of the founding of one of the most influential cigar brands in history: H. Upmann.
The H. Upmann 180th Anniversary is offered in two sizes, though most will only see a 7 x 50 Churchill. It is made by AJ Fernandez in Nicaragua and uses only Nicaraguan tobacco, including a medio tiempo wrapper. 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. Oftentimes that tobacco was typically classified as ligero.
It has an MSRP of $22.50 per cigar and is limited to 5,000 boxes of 10 cigars.
There’s a more limited—and expensive—H. Upmann 180th Anniversary Toro (6 x 50) that is only sold in humidors. Each humidor will come with 50 toros and carries a price tag of $1,500. There were just 180 numbered humidors made.
At 23, Herman Upmann left his native Germany to work at an import/export company in the New World, eventually landing in Cuba. In 1844, he purchased a cigar factory in Havana, which not only grew to be one of the largest in the world but also was credited with being the first factory to affix labels to individual cigars, or what we now call cigar bands.
Habanos S.A., which sells the Cuban H. Upmann in non-American markets, has not announced an explicitly 180th anniversary cigar for H. Upmann, though the 2024 Edición Limitada class includes the new Magnum Finite. AJ Fernandez also produced the H. Upmann 175th Anniversary, which also used medio tiempo tobacco for the wrapper. According to Altadis U.S.A, the two blends are different.
The cigar is very well made and has a nice feel in the hand.
The test draw after cutting the cap was good. The initial notes at light up were lime, orange citrus, brown sugar, earthiness, and leather. There was black pepper rated at 7 1/2 to 8. Nice start.
At the first third (37 minutes) the notes are the same. The lime and brown sugar are working very well together with light orange citrus. There is also leather with light earthiness. The finish is a little lime with leather and very good lingering black pepper. The cigar is full bodied. The ligero is sneaky. The cigar does not taste full bodied but you can feel the ligero. The notes are working well together. I rated the first third 96.
Moving through the second third (1 hour 5 minutes) I had the same notes, just more earthiness. The cigar is full bodied and the finish is unchanged. The earthiness cut into the sweet notes just a tad. I rated the second third 95.
The cigar lasted 1 hour 38 minutes. I had the same notes in the same percentages in the final third. The cigar is very full bodied. I would suggest you have something on your stomach before smoking this cigar. The finish is unchanged. AJ did a great job with this cigar, as did he on the 175th Anniversary version. I held the score of 95 for the final third. While pricey, this is a cigar well worth trying.
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