Old Henry Staff Review
Gather ‘round friends and throw another log on the fire. It’s time to come clean and bare my soul for your amusement. I’ve been smoking cigars since it was fashionable, circa the Cigar Boom of the 1990s. I’m sure you remember the soul-crushing defeat of having to wait on hold with our mail-order call center for hours on ‘Fuente Friday‘ during this era. E-commerce sites were still in their infancy and mobile phones were big enough to jump start a car. Fast-forward 20-years, and my how things have changed. ‘Fuente Friday ‘ is now seven days a week and you can get just about any cigar from our burgeoning list of over 550 cigar brands shipped to your humble abode, man-cave or bivouac in as little as 24-hours.
A day that will live in infamy for me was when I was fortunate enough to partake in the original prototype sampling of my all-time favorite, revered and beloved Old Henry Robusto, way back in 2006. It was love at first sight with its alluring brick-red Ecuador Habano wrapper. I’d never had a cigar until that point in my long-tenured, grizzled career that I actually didn’t want to reduce to a pile of ashes, posthaste, because it was so perfect. I got over the mental roadblock, rather quickly, when an alluring peppery spice tantalized my olfactory nerves in a unique way that no other cigar was able to do until that point in time. That my friends, is what we refer to as the trademark, ‘Pepin spice.’ I’ve come to know it well and look forward to its mouthwatering mélange of cocoa, cedar, freshly cracked black pepper and baking spices emitted via voluminous, fragrant plumes of smoke. For me, it’s eerily reminiscent of my late mother’s homemade apple spice cake. If your salivary glands haven’t kicked into overdrive just yet, you may need to swing by the local Urgent Care facility for a complimentary pulse reading.
Old Henry is a full-bodied cigar with plenty of power, yet it exhibits a degree of finesse in the blend that allows lighter notes of caramel and toasted nuts to harmonize perfectly with its inherently bold, peppery notes. If you haven’t already guessed, I’m an unapologetically devout disciple of the divine creations that are skillfully blended and rolled to perfection by master cigar-maker Jose ‘Pepin’ Garcia. Old Henry typifies everything I enjoy in a cigar: superb construction, phenomenal blending and a bold, refined flavor. In my book, and in my personal, and sometimes professional, opinion, I awarded the Old Henry Robusto a near-perfect 94-rating. If it wasn’t for the post-traumatic stress of attending catholic school for so many years (where the halls were patrolled by a portly nun who bore a striking resemblance to the beloved pooch emblazoned on the Old Henry band and who carried a sawed-off pool cue as a walking stick) I probably would have awarded Old Henry a perfect 100-point score. Let me know your opinion in the comments below.
Until next time, long ashes to you!
