Antonio Benitez

I certainly mean no disrespect to any of the huge (household name brand) cigar companies out there but lately I have been on a kick to locate tasty cigars that are lessor known or even totally obscure. Such is the case today as I smoked a Antonio Benitez Maduro in robusto size. The first thing that will strike you about the Benitez is the deep, dark, chocolatey brown, wrapper. Adorned with a gold, black, and red, label this cigar looks flat-out tasty! The aroma of the Benitez is a warm cocoa and the pre-light draw reveals a medium amount of resistance.

When I toasted and fired up the Benitez the first wave of flavor was a striking pepper ZING! The pepper zing quickly fades away and transitions into a dark chocolate flavor, similar to unsweetened chocolate chips. The Benitez produces a nice amount of flavorful smoke and offers a really great retrohale. The warmness of the chocolate flavor is accompanied by a subtle leather note and a toasted nut finish which lasts a very long time. I love a cigar that leaves me with lasting flavor such as the Benitez.

The ash on the Benitez isn’t especially firm as it fell off in small chunks at unexpected times. However, those types of things don’t bother me as long as they are not affecting the performance of the stick. The Benitez performed admirably never having to touch it up. This cigar started as a medium bodied smoke but it ramped up as I neared the midway point.

After the initial pepper zing faded and the chocolate and nut moved in there were no more flavor transitions that I could detect but that was fine with me as I was enjoying the flavors a great deal. One nice thing about this cigar is the smell of the smoke it emits. As I was smoking near some friends all of them agreed the Benitez created a wonderful aroma.

Would I smoke this cigar again? Yes! Coming it at about 6 bucks and being so enjoyable to smoke I would certainly consider buying more of these. They might not be super easy to find but I believe Smoke Inn Wellington, Charmed Leaf, and a few other well-known outlets carry them.

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