Montecristo Supremos

Description

I am recalling the night at the Hotel Nacional in Havana, sitting on the balcony overlooking a hot, swampy evening where lumps of wet air press down like warm quilts you can’t entirely kick free. I was with Mateo, a fellow I hadn’t seen since my 2015 Habanos Festival. We’d exchanged emails about tobacco yields and wrapper shades for years, but to see him in the flesh, in front of the Malecón, as the sun dimmed from orange to fadeout toward our left, everything looked and felt different. I was intrigued, partially because Mateo always seemed to have something squirreled away in his travel humidor that hadn’t yet hit the shelves. He leaned back, the wicker chair creaking under his bulk, and tossed me a twig that seemed wider than any I’d ever seen wandered around with a brown squirrely top cap and white matrix beneath. It was that flowery yellow and black Edición Limitada band gleaming under the balcony lights.

“You ever see a Monte this thick?” he grinned, raising an eyebrow with a chuckle. I accepted it from him, feeling the weight. It wasn’t just a cigar; it was almost an utterance. We spent three hours sitting there — hardly talking about what once was, mostly just staring at the blue smoke curling into the Cuban night. That smoke? The Montecristo Supremos. It changed my mind about the direction the brand was going.

The Specs

Construction: A Hefty Handful

 I owe: The first thing about the Supremos is the girth. A 55 ring gauge on a Montecristo seems nontraditional. Get used to the svelte No. 4 or the old-style No. 2 torpedo, and this thing feels like a club in your hand. It’s the Montesco vitola, the same dimensions they use for the Romeo y Julieta Wide Churchill, and it is a lot of tobacco to handle. The wrapper on the one I smoked was dark and chocolatey, indicative of Edición Limitada releases as they employ leaves from the highest part of the plant, which are more exposed to sun, and therefore have been aged longer.

Rolling it between my fingers I found not one soft spot. It had a dense feel, and the pack was tight with a little giving that made me think the draw wasn’t going to be a challenge. The cold draw served up a combination of cold honey and some citrus, which was quite surprising based on how dark the leaf was. I gave a straight cut, and immediately the resistance was exactly where I like it; not pulling through a straw but enough that you have to work for it just a bit. It felt solid. This is not a cigar you smoke while occupied with something else. It requires you to pay attention to the weight.

The First Third: The Cream and the Crop

When I finally set flame to the foot, those first few puffs were a bonfire cloud of thick white smoke. I’m talking about the smoke that hangs in the air and makes you feel like you’re in an old noir film. The opening flavours however were classic Montecristo but pushed up from zero to eleven. Right from the start I received a big hit of creaminess, which was followed by an incredibly specific leather note. It wasn’t aggressive, though. For such a medium-to-full Limited Edition that opener was unexpectedly accessible.

An inch in and a spicy scent began to rise. It was not a biting spice, but more the aroma of a kitchen where someone had cracked open a container of peppercorns and cinnamon. There was a coffee note as well — not a bitter espresso, but more like a milky latte with some cocoa powder sprinkled on top. I saw it was sticking, adhering as if glued by powder to the ground, a pale gray pocked with fine ripples. The rollers at the Montesco factory clearly knew what they were doing with this batch. And the “Cuban twang”—that sourdough, metallic zing—was there on the retrohale but smoothed out by two years of aging that tobacco underwent before it even got to the rolling table.

The Second Third: Tunneling the Earth

Sitting on the balcón with Mateo, the cigar began to segue, coming down more to earth. The cream of the initial experience was sidelined, and earthiness steered up front. I mean rich, damp soil flavors — the kind of this-tobacco-comes-from-such-and-such-a-place flavor. The Vuelta Abajo shouldn’t be famous for no reason, and you can really taste the mineral quality of that red Cuban dirt in the second third of these Supremos.

The cedar also came through a lot more here. I felt like I was in a wood-paneled library. Occasionally, a note of sweetness — almost like honey or dried orange peel — would hit that acted as an intermission from the denser leather and earth tones. The strength was definitely building. It was warm and slow in my chest, a simmering heat telling me this wasn’t the morning smoke. It’s somewhere between a “sit down and stay a while” type of cigar. The burn line was impressively straight, something that, to be honest, tends to be a toss up with some Cuban releases. This particular one, though, was playing itself perfectly.

Last Third: The Pepper Kick

Once I got down to the last couple of inches, the Supremos decided it was time to show its teeth. The pepper, which had been a wallflower up to this point, Spang it on down toward the front. There was a black pepper spice on the tongue, but it was nicely balanced out by some of that dark cocoa I’d sampled before. The smoke became even more cloudlike, though that hardly seems possible, and the body entered solidly full-bodied territory.

I did not get it to turn bitter on me, which is my gripe with thicker ring gauges approaching the end. Instead, they only grew stronger at the time. The leather became a charred, smokier flavor and the cedar was closer to toasted oak. I smoked it all the way to where my fingers were scalding and I couldn’t stand letting it go. It had a lingering coffee-meets-spice aftertaste that hung around long after I’d knocked out the final nub into the ashtray. It’s a winding ride, and by the time you get to the end you feel like you’ve smoked something significant.

Pairing: What to Drink?

If you are going to smoke a Supremos, do not choose something light. A gin and tonic will be trampled all over by this cigar. I was drinking a Havana Club 7-Year rum, and the molasses sweetness of the rum was just what I wanted to counterbalance the earthy, spicy notes of the Montecristo. Even if you’re not a rum person, I’d bet a heavy peated Scotch would do the trick but honestly? I think the dark sweetened coffee is where it’s at. The interplay of the cocoa notes in the cigar with a good Cuban coffee is something you need experience. It softens the corners of the pepper and extracts that latent creaminess in its first third.

The Verdict

Now, I know some purists out there probably think a 55 ring gauge is “too much” for a brand like Montecristo, which made its name on more traditional-sized vitolas. “But I’ll tell you, the Supremos works. It is a heavy hitter, and it manages to maintain its balance. It’s rich the way you’d expect from an Edición Limitada and you can tell that aging really made for a harmonious transition between thirds.

Is it a daily smoke? Not likely, unless you have hours to kill and a very healthy cigar allowance. But for those times when you’re reminiscing “with an old friend on a balcony” or just want to end the week with something that feels special in your hand, this is a pretty good option. It has that classic Cuban taste but in a modern, bold presentation. It’s a rich, spicy, cocoa-forward experience that reminds me why I fell in love with Cuban tobacco to begin with. If you find a box, grab ’em. They’re not making any more of the 2019s, and they’re only going to get better with a couple more years in the humidor.

Final thought: It’s a beast, but it’s so well mannered. Just be sure you’ve eaten a decent meal before you start smoking or it might just blow you out of your wicker chair.