Casa Cuevas is a cigar brand that I haven’t really had a chance to explore yet, but they have been highly spoken of by some of my cigar media counterparts. I was excited when Casa Cuevas sent me a three pack of the La Mandarria to sample and review for the site. La Mandarris means, “The Sledgehammer”, in Spanish and was created to mark a very unfortunate event that took place at Casa Cuevas’ warehouse in Miami. On February 10, 2019, robbers broke into the Casa Cuevas headquarters by using sledgehammers to break down walls to steal 25,000 cigars. To celebrate overcoming this immense hurdle, Casa Cuevas created this limited edition cigar to honor overcoming this event and showing their resiliency.
- Wrapper: Ecuadorian Habano
- Binder: Dominican Olor
- Filler: Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic
- Vitola: Toro
- Size: 6 x 52
- MSRP: $12.00
- Factory: Las Lavas, Santiago, Dominican Republic
- Sold in boxes of 20 with a limited run of 500 boxes
Pre-Light
The La Mandarria has a rich, thick looking wrapper that is a deep brown color that resembles fine leather. The pig tail is always a nice touch, but Casa Cuevas went a little further with this cigar and left about an inch of a shaggy foot at the bottom. The draw is a little tight, but not overly so. I get notes of cedar, spice, and hay on the cold draw.
First Half
On the first half of the La Mandarria, I got notes of cedar, baker’s spice, leather, almond, demerara sugar, with a hint of black pepper. The cigar does also have a faint toasted bread flavor as well, but it was subtlety in the background. The draw was still a little tight, but I’m still able to get plenty of smoke from the cigar. On the retrohale, I got a lot of the baker’s spice and leather. The burn is quite good despite the slightly tight draw with a nice medium body.
Second Half
The second half of the La Mandarria was a lot like the first half, but with added notes of black cherry and a hint of coffee. The La Mandarria has also developed a slight bitter earthiness to it with the almond notes being more subdued. The burn and construction were still very good, even with the slightly tight draw which was still present. The cigar remained medium-bodied throughout.
Conclusion
The Casa Cuevas La Mandarria is a very tasty and well balanced cigar that I could see myself reaching for daily. It’s terrible that an event like a major robbery took place to Casa Cuevas, but the result of that was this exceptional cigar. The notes were very well balanced that gave the cigar a rich, smooth flavor profile that I throughly enjoyed. I’m late to the party with these cigar as most places are sold out of them, but I will be looking out for these as I believe they are box worthy and would be a good candidate to age to become even better over time.
