Okay. Lets get this out of the way now. Cohiba’s have a reputation as being the best. La crème de la crème. Well I’ve tried a few and sure, they were good, but there are honestly a few other cigars I like better that are less expensive and easier to get.
Now to clarify, I’m talking about the true Cohibas from Cuba. There’s also an embargo friendly version from the Dominican Republic with, as usual, a label that’s almost indistinguishable from the true Cohiba’s label but I’ve never tried one and anyway, when someone says Cohiba they mean Cuban!
Cohibas are the stuff of legends. Here in Canada we’ve always been able to get Cuban cigars but until recently I don’t know anyone that had tried a Cohiba. You’d see them in pictures of Castro, either being smoked by him or being given to foreign dignitaries, but buy one at the local cigar shop? No way!
Can’t buy ‘em; Castro smokes ‘em and gives ‘em to big shots…they must be AWESOME!
Nope. I don’t think so.
The first time I came across a Cohiba for sale was in a cigar shop in Calgary. I was looking for a Montecristo Number 4 and was picky about how it was wrapped. The clerk looked at me and said “You seem to appreciate a good cigar. Let me show you what I’ve got.” She then opened a locked drawer and produced half a box of Cohibas. Wow! It was like seeing a herd of Unicorns. Mythical. Of course I had to have one. I won’t tell you what I paid but it wasn’t cheap! I lit that puppy up that night. Well….it did have a good flavour, but honestly no better than a Montecristo. The big drawback was the draw. I really had to work to smoke that cigar. It was as if it was rolled too tight. I was really disappointed.
That was about 1996 or 1997. Not long after that I found a few other shops that offered me Cohibas. At that time they were always locked away and only offered to those that the clerk thought would appreciate a really good cigar. (I know, they could have had a pallet of them in the back and be offering them to everyone that walked in. For the sake of my ego let’s assume that wasn’t the case….Please?) Anyway I bought a few more here and there and always had the same experience: not a bad flavour but way too tough to smoke. I started turning them down; telling people I didn’t like them. People would look at me as if I was a nut! Okay, so that always happens, but I mean more so than usual!
Since then Cohibas have come out of the closet, so to speak. You can now find them displayed in the humidor of most good tobacconists. This lead me to a theory. Cohibas began to be available about the same time that the Cuban economy really began to nosedive. The roubles from the USSR had dried up a few years before and Cuba was feeling the pinch. My theory: one of the ways to bring cash into the country was to increase production of cigars. All cigars. As production spooled up, quality went down, especially with regard to cigars that in the past would have been produced very meticulously and in low volume. This would explain my disappointment in the cigars and also their new abundance.
For all I know my theory is correct, but I was recently presented with another one. The Cigar Shop.com has a very good section on how to tell a fake Cohiba from a real one. From what I’ve seen on their website it’s possible that quite a few fakes may be out there and they’d be tough to spot, but I don’t think what I smoked was fake. Why? Because I travel to the US a lot and I prefer Cuban cigars. Every time I’m down I check various tobacconists to see if they have anything that tastes like a Cuban. I’ve come across quite a few good cigars doing this but none of them taste quite like a Cuban to me, and the Cohibas I smoked tasted Cuban. There’s a reason Cuban cigars are so famous: they taste awesome! Planting Cuban seeds elsewhere just isn’t the same. If someone outside of Cuba has figured out how to make a cigar that tastes like a Cuban, they’re wasting their time making fakes!
But after all that, if you live or if you’re visiting where Cubans are legal, try a Cohiba, even if it’s just to say that you’ve had one. Just don’t expect too much.
