El Rey del Mundo Petit Corona EAT CCUA

Measures: 125 mm x 16,5 mm

Age: The boxcode dates the cigar to April, 1999.

Setting: During a recent visit to Stockholm, I had the opportunity to visit one of the nice cigar shops that the city is blessed with. I had come by the ferry boat from Helsinki, and the shop was just a 10 minutes walk away, and along a path I was taking.

It's not a large shop, but the atmosphere is nice, the shopkeeper knows his business, and usually they have something that makes the visit worth making. This time an open box of El Rey del Mundo Petit Coronas caught my eye. The box code dated the cigars to 1999. More than that, they looked nicely aged and felt good in my hand with just the right amount of suppleness. So I bought three of them.

Later the same day, already on board of the ferry en voyage back to Helsinki, I felt lucky and decided to smoke one of the cigars. While cigars straight from a shop often are too humid for best enjoyment, these cigars had felt just right. So why not?

I cut the cigar and tried the draw: it turned out to be just right. Even more encouraging was the cold aroma I sensed: nice sweetness over aged tobacco.

I lit the cigar and started to smoke away. I was rapidly immersed in the aroma of the cigar: surprisingly intensive honey-like sweetness over aged tobacco. But what really caught my attention was the sense of quality and style that the cigar emitted: while this was not a strong cigar by any means, it conquered my attention quite completely. I found it useless to try to read the book that I had taken along, and decided to focus on the cigar and its story instead. So I and the cigar immersed in a conversation for a full hour.

I have smoked several aged ERdM's before. Still this may have been the first time that I realised just how fine these cigars indeed can be if caught at the right moment. I should have bought the whole box. Fortunately, another Stockholm visit is just around the corner.