Winston Churchill The Late Hour Series From Davidoff Gets A Belicoso
If you named Sir Winston Churchill as history’s greatest and most passionate cigar enthusiast, few could argue with the logic. The famed British Prime Minister guided his country through the horrors of World War II, staring down the menace of Nazi Germany and smoking cigars all day long while doing so. Davidoff of Geneva has two lines named after him, and the more powerful of the duo will soon be getting a new size.
Come late January, Winston Churchill «The Late Hour Series» will have a new, short size called the Belicoso. It’s not only small, it’s fairly inexpensive. That’s because it’s not a long-filler cigar but a mixed-fill cigar, meaning it’s made with a combination of short-filler and long-filler tobaccos. When you make a long-filler cigar, there are cuts and scraps, smaller pieces that are left over from handmade production. Short filler burns hotter and faster than long filler and is considerably less expensive.
The blend is an Ecuadoran wrapper, Mexican binder and a mix of Dominican and Nicaraguan filler tobaccos. Some of the Nicaraguan filler is aged in casks that once held Scotch whisky.
The Belicoso (the first figuardo in «The Late Hour Series») will retail for $12.40 a cigar, and measures 4 1/2 inches long by 46 ring gauge. They come in metal tins of four cigars and are rolled in the Dominican Republic.
By comparison, it’s less than half the price of the larger, long-filler versions in the line: Robusto (5 by 52, about $27), Toro (6 by 54, about $30) and Churchill (7 by 49, about $31). There is also a Petit Corona, which measures 4 1/2 inches long by 41 ring, which is made with mixed filler. That cigar retails for about $16.
The Belicoso is meant for quicker smoking, given its short and relatively thin size, and the mixed filler inside. In a statement, Davidoff estimated that it was a 20-to-30-minute smoke.
Winston Churchill The Late Hour cigars have historically scored in the mid to upper 80s in Cigar Aficionado’s blind taste tests.
Look for the cigars starting on January 22.
