If you were to add up all the years the tobacco has been aged in a cigar, some cigars may only have a combined age of 15 years. Earlier this year, Dalay Zigarren—a German brand and retailer—released a limited edition that had a combined tobacco age of 50.
The Dalay Limitada 2023 is a 6 1/8 x 57 gran belicoso made entirely of Dominican tobacco. This includes a corojo wrapper, a piloto binder and five different fillers: 20/20, criollo 98, criollo 98 de Sur, habano 92, and Flor de Carbonell. The company didn’t specify the individual ages of all the components but said the oldest one is from the 2008 harvest.
While the Dalay brand is sold in the U.S.—distributed by Luciano Cigars—if you are wondering why you haven’t seen this on shelves at your local retailer, it’s quite simple: the cigar was only offered to German retailers. Furthermore, it was an incredibly small release of 7,000 cigars divided into 350 boxes.
- Cigar Reviewed: Dalay Limitada 2023
- Country of Origin: Dominican Republic
- Factory: Tabacalera Altagrácia
- Wrapper: Dominican Republic (Corojo)
- Binder: Dominican Republic (Piloto)
- Filler: Dominican Republic (20/20, Criollo 98, Criollo 98 de Sur, Habano 92 and Flor de Carbonell)
- Length: 6 1/8 Inches
- Ring Gauge: 57
- Vitola: Gran Belicoso
- MSRP: €24 ($25.94) (Box of 25, €600/$648.50)
- Release Date: Feb. 23, 2024
- Number of Cigars Released: 350 Boxes of 20 Cigars (7,000 Total Cigars)
- Number of Cigars Smoked For Review: 3
These are not petit belicosos. While not the largest belicoso I’ve smoked, they are imposing. The dark brown wrappers do a decent job of hiding most of the imperfections, I can see some mottling and veins. All three cigars feel quite firm in the hand, thanks to what I suspect is a fairly dense bunching. These cigars did not come in cellophane and there’s not much aroma coming from the wrapper: some acidity over faint hints of pita bread and, on one cigar, some hand soap-like smell. All three cigars have a distinct fruity woodiness that makes me think of what a barrel that held red wine probably smells like. On two cigars, that’s the leading note, though on one cigar, a semisweet cocoa is the strongest flavor. Overall, I’d put that aroma around medium-full compared to a mild-medium aroma from the wrapper. Cold draws are sweet, though the flavors aren’t consistent. One Dalay Limitada 2023 has a berry note over some plain cereal and leather. The second cigar has fruitiness and a sugary bubble gum flavor over some earthiness and lemon. The final cigar has sweet chocolate leading fruit punch, acidity and earthiness. Intensity-wise, they range from medium-plus to medium-full.
With each first puff, I struggle to get the smoke volume I’d like. Flavors include damp earthiness, cedar, leather and some creaminess. Due to the lack of smoke, it’s more of a medium start, but that quickly changes. Once I get the draw and combustion where I’d like them, there’s a pretty thick profile that varies between a pedestrian earthiness and a potato starchiness that is more like the inside of some steak fries than it is a potato chip. Secondary notes include medium roast coffee beans, nuttiness, potato chips, black pepper and leather. There’s oftentimes a lingering metallic accent, something that intensifies during the finish. After the smoke leaves my mouth, the nuttiness picks up and is as strong as the potato, with black pepper and herbs as secondary notes. Retrohales offer a refreshing brightness with pistachios, pink salt, generic nuttiness and some meatiness. Sometimes, it’s just a mineral-laden earthiness, but oftentimes it’s a relatively exotic taste for a cigar. The finish continues the trend with a purple grape flavor before being overtaken by some saw dust-like woodiness. At various points between the three cigars, meatiness, black pepper, red pepper, horseradish and creaminess appear as secondary notes. Flavor is generally full, body is medium-full and strength is medium-plus. Pretty early on in the first cigar, I make a second cut. I always err on the side of taking off less and making a second cut and, during the first cigar, I learned pretty quickly that I was going to need to be more aggressive with the cut. I cannot control the smoke volume as I’d like to, but the smoke production at both ends of the cigars is great. On each cigar, the burn is fantastic and the ash is quite firm.
Midway through the first Dalay Limitada 2023 I smoke, there’s a five-minute stretch when most of the puffs have a secondary flavor that reminds me of the taste of hardboiled egg yolks. It’s a mild accenting flavor but a distinct one nonetheless. Beyond that, the profile tends to be slightly sweeter—perhaps more due to a drop in the metallic accent—and more woody. Like before, some puffs can be a relatively mundane mixture of earthiness and wood, though other puffs can deliver distinct flavors like peanut shells and meatiness. Unfortunately, as I keep smoking the ratio shifts to more of the latter than the former. Similarly, as the cigars continue to burn, the woody aspect of the finish drops the unique sawdust texture that it had to turn into something more normal. Retrohales can provide nuttiness and a cured meat-like aspect to the meatiness, but the retrohales are increasingly more normal flavors of leather, wood, earthiness and white pepper. That said, the third cigar is a bit of an outlier, with the grape flavor continuing to be present, though it’s completely overwhelmed by a horseradish-like tingling sensation that sits on my tongue for most of the second cigar—retrohaling or not—before some earthiness kicks in. Flavor and body remain full, strength seems to have stalled out and is more medium than medium-plus. One cigar continues to burn just fine, the second cigar has a small part of the wrapper that didn’t ignite that is remedied via a quick use of the lighter, and the third cigar needs some minor touch-ups to help bring the smoke production back up to where it was in the first third. All and all, I’d describe the burn corrections as more vanity than structural corrections.
The first two cigars—which also have abnormally firm ashes—head in one direction, while the third cigar heads down a different path. For the first two, that means a softer version of the profile from before. There’s still woodiness and earthiness, but the creaminess is picking up to help make for a milder profile and remove some of the sharper aspects of the lingering black pepper. As for the third cigar, it’s getting toastier with a distinct burnt black pepper flavor joining the sharp horseradish flavor from before. Retrohales of the first two cigars have earthiness with some apple, lemon and white pepper. Surprisingly, the third cigar tastes like an egg bagel—one that reminds me of Shug’s, a local bagel shop—along with white pepper and some lemon. That lemon aspect is present on all three cigars, especially during the finish when tartness picks up. For the first two cigars, woodiness continues to be present for minutes after I take a retrohale. Flavor is full, body drops to medium-full—though full for the third cigar—and strength remains medium. The first two cigars avoid any touch-ups during the final third, though I need to make one during the third cigar to help with combustion.
Final Notes
- In addition to the Dalay Zigarren cigar brand, Salih Dalay operates a La Casa del Habano store in Saarbrücken, Germany, which uses the same name.
- I like how the bands list Saarbrücken—the hometown of Daley—and Villa González—where the cigars are made. It’s a nice touch that I wish others would do more often, though I suppose it would be a bit boring to see Miami on so many bands.
- None of these cigars had perfect construction, but given how many issues I—and the rest of Woggi— have been having with new cigars of late, it was nice to get through a review without any major construction woes.
- I found that I preferred cutting more off this cigar than I normally would. I ended up removing enough that there was right around an inch from the top of the band to the end of the cigar.
- The ashes of the first two Dalay Limitada 2023s I smoked were some of the firmest I’ve ever seen. At times, I became a bit annoyed because I wanted to ash the cigar voluntarily, but even a firm tap wouldn’t get the job done. If you wanted to smoke a cigar for a long ash contest, this would be a great candidate. The third cigar had firm ash but was much closer to normal.
- For those wondering why you don’t see pictures of long ash build-up here at Woggi, none of our reviewers seem all that motivated to get those shots, at least not anymore. I’ve never done side-by-side testing, but I’ve come to believe that having inches worth of ash isn’t going to make the cigar taste better and is just a mess waiting to happen.
- While I enjoyed a slightly easier smoking experience from the final cigar’s draw, I preferred the flavor of the first two cigars.
- These cigars are listed by Dalay at 6 1/8 x 57.
- Cigars for this review were purchased by Woggi.
- Final smoking time takes a little more than two hours, though it’s not done at an even pace. The first two inches of the cigar—the thickest—took more than an hour to burn through. We divide up the thirds by the physical length, not by time.
89
Overall Score
There are many reasons why a cigar might be more challenging than normal to smoke, in the case of the Dalay Limitada 2023, it’s the draw. Throughout the more than six hours that it took to smoke these three cigars, I rarely felt like I was in control of the draw. That said—outside of the third cigar—I rarely ever found myself wanting more combustion-wise. Like many good cigars, the flavor profile of the Dalay Limitada 2023 can be somewhat generic at times, but at other times, it delivers a unique flavor or a unique mixture of flavors. I don’t know if egg bagel and grapes were amongst the flavor notes the blenders were hoping for me to find, but I was happy with the end result, though I do wonder if a different vitola would have produced a more enjoyable experience.