Digging into history for a new cigar line is nothing new in the cigar industry, and this year, Mo Maali did some digging into his own cigar history for the newest line for his company, Patina Cigars.
As Maali tells the story, a cigar called Oro de Nicaragua was one of the first cigars that really got him into the world of boutique cigars. It was made by My Father Cigars as an exclusive for Casa de Montecristo in Chicago, with a blend that featured a Nicaraguan wrapper over an undisclosed binder and filler. While it was a store exclusive, Oro de Nicaragua wore the same primary band as the My Father core line, with a secondary band bearing the cigar’s name. That original line debuted at the end of 2014, and Maali said he hasn’t seen it on shelves since about 2016.
When Maali decided to create a new line for Patina’s portfolio, he wanted to see if he could go back to that cigar, not necessarily to recreate it, but to bring the name back and put his own spin on it. To do that, he needed to acquire the brand, so he reached out to Mike and Sam Khalil, owners of Casa de Montecristo in Chicago and the Oro de Nicaraguan brand. They agreed, and Maali purchased the brand from them.
For the Patina Oro de Nicaragua, Maali selected an Ecuadorian habano oscuro wrapper and an Ecuadorian Sumatra binder, while the filler includes tobacco from Nicaragua along with Connecticut broadleaf. It is produced at Nicaragua American Cigars S.A. (NACSA) in Estelí and offered in four sizes:
- Patina Oro de Nicaragua Robusto (5 x 54) — $13 (Box of 20, $260)
- Patina Oro de Nicaragua Toro (6 x 52) — $15 (Box of 20, $300)
- Patina Oro de Nicaragua Toro Extra (6 1/4 x 54) — $16 (Box of 20, $320)
- Patina Oro de Nicaragua Lancero (7 x 40) — $14 (Box of 20, $280)
“The Oro de Nicaragua is a wonderfully complex and well-balanced cigar that will be the fullest Patina offering to date, and I’m excited to add it to our growing portfolio,” Maali said about the blend. He told Woggi that this is a completely different blend from the original, as he was more attached to the name and its importance in his early cigar smoking days, as well as that was a cigar made for his local cigar shop. He also noted that he considers his blend to be stronger than that of the original.
The Oro de Nicaragua marks a couple of firsts for Patina, as this is the first time that the company has released a lancero and the first time that the company has released its cigars in 20-count boxes. Maali said that the first batch of the lancero vitola is already sold out, but more will be produced in subsequent production runs.
The cigars shipped to stores in early March.
- Cigar Reviewed: Patina Oro de Nicaragua Lancero
- Country of Origin: Nicaragua
- Factory: Nicaragua American Cigars S.A.
- Wrapper: Ecuador (Habano Oscuro)
- Binder: Ecuador (Sumatra)
- Filler: Nicaragua & U.S.A. (Connecticut Broadleaf)
- Length: 7 Inches
- Ring Gauge: 40
- Vitola: Lancero
- MSRP: $14 (Box of 20, $280)
- Release Date: March 2024
- Number of Cigars Released: Regular Production
- Number of Cigars Smoked For Review: 3
The Patina Oro de Nicaragua Lancero is a beautiful cigar, with an evenly colored, meaty brown wrapper that has a hint of deep red to it. The wrappers have just a touch of oiliness to them, enough that my fingers glide over the veins of the leaf without picking up a lot of texture. The three cigars all appear to be well-rolled, and are consistently firm with just the slightest amount of give. The feet have fairly mild aromas that vary a bit in terms of specific scents, as the first has lightly dampened cedar, wet leaves and some pepper, while the second is a bit drier and has a doughier texture and a bit of maple syrup. The third’s aroma is the hardest to place and also the spiciest of the three, leading me to some sort of glaze or dipping sauce, but then the finish quickly turns to a light, dry wood and a nose-tingling pepper. The cold draws are great in terms of airflow, smooth with just a touch of firmness. I don’t get much in the way of distinctive flavors other than some damp tobacco across all three cigars, though the third cigar has a bit of the damp cedar that it didn’t have in the aroma.
The Patina Oro de Nicaragua Lancero gets going with a very smooth start, with no particular flavor jumping out and grabbing the lead and just a subtle amount of light pepper tingling my taste buds and one cigar having a dry wood base. It’s fairly creamy with a light hint of vanilla, with white pepper making more of an appearance with each puff. Retrohales are fantastic, with a very clean and enjoyable pepper that is middle of the road in terms of intensity and an outstanding accent to the flavor. The flavor beefs up a bit after an inch or so by way of some dry earth and minerality, while retrohales shift to a crisper black pepper, a combination that works quite well together. Because of how the blend hits the palate, it’s a profile that makes me think the cigar has some age; it’s not mellow, but at times subdued, yet it doesn’t feel thin or skeletal. I get a touch of chalk on the tip of my tongue, which is neither great nor overpowering. As the first third wraps up, I find myself impressed by when it shows its smoothness, which the first cigar does at a level clearly above the other two. Flavor is medium, body is medium-minus and strength is mild. Construction is very good with a smooth draw, even burn line and decent smoke production.
Pepper becomes more of a contributor to the flavor in the second third of the Patina Oro de Nicaragua Lancero, but the smoke still hits the taste buds with impressive smoothness. While there’s not a ton of difference in terms of the flavors offered here, each cigar has its own rhythm and progression, playing with ever-so-slightly different mixtures of pepper, earth, wood, and creaminess. One cigar gets appreciably drier and toastier as this section comes to a close, eliciting a longer finish, while another really latches on to the woodiness, which has a dry, aged flavor to it. Flavor is medium-plus, body is medium and strength is mild. Two of the cigars perform very well, but beginning around the midway point, the third refuses to burn, a problem that I have been running into with a number of cigars over recent months. It’s incredibly frustrating because the flavor has me wanting this cigar to perform, yet it simply can’t deliver.
The final third begins by pushing the woodiness into the lead role, with black pepper in the second position, giving the cigar its most ordered sequencing of flavors thus far. That wood can get a bit sharp if not charred at times but never completely out of hand. I find that the creaminess has largely left the profile, though it does make an occasional reappearance. The very final puffs of the cigar deliver the first touch of harshness as the heat and some funky chalk tell me it’s time to put the cigar down, bringing a generally fantastic smoking experience to a close in one cigar, a very good experience in another, and, due to combustion issues, an experience that I wasn’t able to enjoy fully.
Final Notes
- I really like how the primary bands incorporate the four red stars from Chicago’s flag. Not only does it look very good, but it’s a nod to Mo Maali’s hometown.
- Given how well the first cigar smoked, I really thought I might avoid combustion issues, but like so many cigars these days, the second one had trouble burning in its second half.
- Since I don’t get to write editorials on this site, I will say it here: every factory owner and cigar company owner should take a long, hard look at their processes to figure out what is going on with these combustion issues and how they can be fixed. Speaking both as a cigar reviewer and a cigar consumer, the frustration with combustion issues on new cigars has reached a tipping point for me, so much so that if it were not for having to do these reviews, I’m not sure how many new cigars I’d be buying.
- I know the above statement is painting with a very broad brush and that there are likely a good number of cigar companies who already do this and have the tobacco reserves and quality of staff to ride out whatever effects of the pandemic—and the pandemic-induced buying frenzy—remain, but there has to be a way to curtail this problem.
- Assuming nothing has been done to this point and that this is an issue with tobacco either not being available or not being of the quality to produce a cigar that burns properly, the other unfortunate part about this is that it would be months if not years before the changes are felt.
- The issue has gotten to a point where we are now attempting to keep track of the number of relights a cigar needs. Too often in recent memory, including in the second cigar here, it gets to a point where I’m too frustrated to even care and thus lose track, which usually means at least five full relights.
- In the case of the Patina Oro de Nicaragua Lancero, the first cigar didn’t need any relights, I lost count in the second cigar, and the third needed five.
- Charlie Minato tells me that these came in cellophane, but the cigars were very snug inside that cellophane. On one of the cigars, a band moved a bit when removing the cigar. As such, he didn’t attempt to put them back in the cellophane after weighing and measuring them.
- The company lists these as a 7 x 40 lancero. The numbers above are the measurements we found for the three cigars used for this review.
- I’ve always been conflicted about a 40-ring gauge cigar being called a lancero, as I’ve attributed the vitola to a 38-ring gauge, based on the Cuban Laguito No.1 vitola. While the length of this cigar differs from the Cuban lancero—7 inches here, 7 9/16 inches in Cuba—for some reason that doesn’t bother me as much as the ring gauge does.
- Cigar makers are free to do what they’d like when it comes to vitolas and what they call them, but to me this would be a lonsdale.
- In terms of nicotine strength, I didn’t find the Patina Oro de Nicaragua Lancero to offer much of it.
- The cigars for this review were purchased by Woggi.
- Final smoking time was two hours and 40 minutes on average, though the relights in two of the three cigars inflated that number.
88
Overall Score
Ask me about the first Patina Oro de Nicaragua Lancero that I smoked, and I’d have said it was a Top 25 contender. Ask me about the Patina Oro de Nicaragua Lancero after the second cigar and I’d have been so frustrated by the combustion issues that I couldn’t see straight. The third cigar salvaged the experience a bit but it had number of combustion issues that left it better than the second cigar but far short of the first cigar. I’m impressed by the blend of the Patina Oro de Nicaragua Lancero enough that I don’t have any hesitation in recommending it, yet I can’t simply overlook the combustion issues. Therefore, I must issue a warning that this cigar seems to be dealing with the same issues plaguing many cigars these days. It’s a solid cigar that, unfortunately, might get marred by the larger issues affecting the cigar industry.