New Aging Room T59 Chosen By The People
A blend has been finalized for Boutique Blends' upcoming Aging Room line, and unlike most new cigar brands, it was determined by the public. After releasing a sampler box of five different blends this summer, Boutique Blends asked smokers to try all five and decide which one they liked best. The votes are in, and next year, Boutique Blends will be releasing the Aging Room Quattro T59, a box-pressed Dominican puro.
"We had five different blends in the Wild Pack sampler," said brand owner Rafael Nodal. "The one that everyone liked the most was cigar No. 4. It's very much like the current Aging Room Quattro F55 line, but it uses an eight-year-old Dominican Criollo wrapper instead of Sumatra."
As an experiment, Nodal decided to try box-pressing the cigar, even though the cigars in the sampler pack were round. According to Nodal, the box-pressing improved the blend. Production of T59 is scheduled to start in January.
"This is a small-batch production of approximately 400,000 cigars and is limited in part due to the availability of the aged wrapper," said Nodal. "The blend T59 takes its name from the day it was created: February 28, 2013, which was Thursday, on the 59th day of the year."
The Aging Room Quattro T59 will be available in the same five sizes as the original F55, all of which are named after musical terms: Stretto, 4 1/2 inches by 46 ring gauge; Espressivo, 5 by 50; Maestro, 6 by 52; Vibrato, 6 by 54; and Concerto, 7 by 50.
Retailing from $8.50 to $9.90, the T59 uses tobacco from the farms of Dominican grower Jochi Blanco and will be made at Tabacalera La Palma in the Dominican Republic, where the other Aging Room cigars are produced.
Aging Room is currently offered in three different varieties: Maduro, F55 and the original M356, whose Presto size was Cigar Aficionado's number 16 cigar of 2011. For a vertical tasting of the Aging Room T59, see an upcoming issue of Cigar Insider.
