If there’s a company that I think about a lot more than we at Woggi write about, it’s Southern Draw.
I’ve been interested to see the company’s focus shift from the rat race that most of its competitors engage in. Most companies, especially ones that are of similar or smaller size, seem primarily focused on brick-and-mortar cigar retailers with the larger “catalog” business—i.e. Cigars International, JR Cigar, Famous Smoke Shop and their competitors—as a secondary one. Instead, Southern Draw seems to put as much, if not more, energy into the catalog business. Reading that will make some cringe, but I think it’s a smarter strategy than simply zagging to zig.
Our most recent article about Southern Draw was one of the more unique ones we’ve written this year. Robert and Sharon Holt, the brand’s majority owners, publicly announced that they were interested in selling most of their stake. Owners of cigar company want to sell the company is not a unique story, but publicly announcing it is quite peculiar.
Last week, I was consolidating some desktop humidors and that included a humidor I kept at home that primarily existed to store cigars I’d already reviewed for potential reduxes. Nowadays, all of the cigars I smoke for review are smoked at the office, meaning this humidor has been a time capsule of sorts. Upon doing this consolidation, I saw a Southern Draw cigar I reviewed quite some time ago and figured now would be as good of a time as any to revisit the 300 Hands Coloniales.
300 Hands is the only Southern Draw brand I have any sort of attachment to. I really like the name. I like it so much that about two years prior to Southern Draw announcing this cigar, I bought the domain name 300hands.com just to have it in case we wanted to use it for a future project.
In mid-2018, Southern Draw announced 300 Hands and 300 Manos; manos is Spanish for hands. The name references the idea that from the start of the process (tobacco fields) to the end (the retailer), 150 people will play a direct role in making any one cigar.
As for the cigars, it debuted in two different blends: 300 Manos has a habano wrapper, while 300 Hands uses a Nicaraguan wrapper. Like other Southern Draw cigars, it was made by AJ Fernandez in Nicaragua. The internal blends weren’t the same, but both blends were introduced in the same five sizes:
- 300 Hands/300 Manos Petit Edmundo (4 3/4 x 52)
- 300 Hands/300 Manos Coloniales (5 1/4 x 44)
- 300 Hands/300 Manos Corona Gorda (5 5/8 x 46)
- 300 Hands/300 Manos Piramides (6 1/8 x 52)
- 300 Hands/300 Manos Churchill (7 x 48)
Southern Draw created custom display trays for retailers to sell the cigars, which come packaged in bundles. A year later, the company added a Connecticut blend. In addition, Southern Draw said it donated 25 percent of its proceeds from the sale of these cigars to charitable causes in Nicaragua.
Here’s what I said when I reviewed a prerelease version of the cigar—remember when we did that?—in September 2018:
There are times in which a smaller ring gauge can bring out the best in a cigar, other times it has a habit of drowning out the robustness and layers of flavors; the 300 Hands Coloniales is certainly the latter. There’s a lot to like—the price, the flavor and the charitable aspect—but this is one of the more disappointing releases I’ve smoked from Southern Draw, who is one of the hottest companies in the business at the moment. I’m curious to try both the 300 Manos version, as well as larger ring gauge versions of the 300 Hands.
- Cigar Reviewed: 300 Hands Coloniales
- Country of Origin: Nicaragua
- Factory: Tabacalera AJ Fernandez Cigars de Nicaragua S.A.
- Wrapper: Nicaragua (Estelí)
- Binder: Indonesia
- Filler: Dominican Republic & Nicaragua
- Length: 5 1/4 Inches
- Ring Gauge: 44
- Vitola: Corona
- MSRP: $6.19 (Bundles of 10, $61.99)
- Release Date: 2018
- Number of Cigars Released: 1,500 Bundles of 10 Cigars (15,000 Total Cigars)
- Number of Cigars Smoked For Redux: 3
More than five years later, the cellophane doesn’t look new but there’s not any yellowing. A reminder that yellowing cellophane can mean a number of things, including that a cigar was stored improperly, not necessarily for a long amount of time. Even through the slightly opaque plastic, I can tell that this is a very dark cigar, something that’s confirmed once I take the cigar out of its wrapping. What isn’t apparent until the cigar is out in the open is the texture of the wrapper. It has an appearance that is so uniform it looks a bit like HTL, or homogenized tobacco leaf, though I can still see the veins and other imperfections, they are just very well hidden. The aroma from the wrapper is medium-full with some relatively nondescript sweet tobacco smells. While sweet, the aroma of the foot is very descriptive. It has a smell that reminds me of some Sprite-branded candy I had overseas years ago. It’s not quite the smell or taste of Sprite, but it’s very distinct. That said, most of the aroma is sweet earthiness. Given the size, I’m surprised at how open the cold draw is. Flavor-wise, it’s remarkably like a gumball with just the tiniest bit of pepper at the end.
The 300 Hands Coloniales starts with none of the sweetness of the cold draw. Instead, there’s a mixture of earthiness, leather and black pepper over some soft creaminess before finishing with toastiness and damp earth. Unfortunately, most of the first half of the cigar is dominated by charred earth with not much else. As I get closer to the midpoint, the cigar adds some nuttiness to the charred earth, accented by lots of black pepper. The finish follows a similar progression, starting with damp earth, mineral flavors and some black pepper before adding grains as I get close to the midpoint. The black pepper and toastiness never leave, meaning that the finish eventually has a bit of a “just took a shot of tequila” vibe to it. Retrohales can have some of the floral flavors but they are outgunned by the charred earthiness. Similar to the overall progression, grains and creaminess add themselves to the mix as I get close to the middle. Flavor is full, body is full, and strength is medium-full. While the draw started somewhat open, I might have misjudged it. As the cigar burns down, it ends up being more like trying to drink a milkshake through a straw. It’s a bit open, then a bit tight, but something I can easily manipulate depending on how much power I put into puffing. The burn line is fantastic, and I never think twice about needing to use my lighter.
While it seemed like the cigar was heading to a softer profile, shortly after the midway point, a barrage of black pepper enters the fray. That overly peppery profile sticks around for an inch, but eventually, the cigar does soften. It starts with a mixture of nuttiness and green pepper, though as time goes on, the nuttiness is able to separate itself and eventually gets accented by some honey sweetness and saltiness. After the black pepper does its thing, potato chip flavors come through, though there’s still a lot of charred earth. The finish tends to have more interesting flavors: tap water, tortilla chips and some floral flavors. Retrohales have bread, creaminess and some cinnamon. Right around the point when I’d need to remove the band, there’s a lot more roasted flavors—think about burning wood versus the difference of burnt wood—though they aren’t as strong as the toasty earthiness. Flavor and body both remain full, while strength takes a slight step down and finishes more like medium-plus than medium-full. From start to finish, construction is fantastic.
88
Overall Score
I don’t know if anyone really understands the aging of cigars as a science. Even after what’s likely reviews of more than 1,000 cigars, I certainly don’t. The 300 Hands Coloniales has enough power and pepper that you’d be forgiven if you thought this cigar was rolled five and a half months ago and not five and a half years ago. While there are signs of this being somewhat aged, there are a lot of bold flavors that would throw even the most experienced of cigar smokers off that way of thinking. Compared to my original review, I wasn’t able to get as many interesting flavors, though I think the flavors that were present for this cigar were more developed than when the cigar was new. Given that the majority of the reviews I’m writing these days involve at least one cigar having serious construction issues, it was real nice to be able to get through a full review start to finish without even minor construction issues.
Original Score (September 2018)
84
Redux Score (May 2024)
88