Balmoral Anejo XO Oscuro Corona

04/13/2019
I fell in love with the Balmoral Anejo XO Oscuro by Royal Agio Cigars ever since I first discovered them at a Cut-N-Light cigar tasting event at Sellwood Cigar last October 16, 2018 presented by Zev Kaminetsky aka @Zevffrey recent from his stint at Drew Estate.

I have been faithful to the Balmoral Oscuro Rothchild Masivo (5” x 55) sized cigar until today’s 5.875” x 42 Corona, and I’m loving this cigar… Exquisite!

Since I’m paying attention to my cigar smoking now, I also learned and discovered that the wrapper used on this very delicious cigar is a Sun Grown, “Stalk Cut” Mexican San Andrés wrapper. It’s no secret that I’m partial to anything with a Mexican San Andres wrapper. I also learned that the “Stalk Cut” probably explained all those rich, deep earthy tobacco flavors that I Love in this cigar.

Stalk Cut is a process for curing cigar tobacco that adds depth of flavor to the finished leaf not found in “normally” primed tobaccos. The whole plant stalk is cut instead of the normal process of priming the leaves off the stalk. The leaves then live off the cut stalk. As the tobacco leaves evolve and wilt they continue to absorb nutrients from the stalk. The results deliver more of the earthy qualities that I seek in a cigar these days.

Brazilian Mata Norte in the Cigar Filler

Bringing in a whole new level of flavors for me are some of the Brazilian tobaccos as I’m finding out. Each type of Brazilian tobacco is named for the location where it’s grown. Most being from Bahia’s Reconcavo Basin, an area broadly called Mata Fina the main varietal of the most popular Brazilian cigar tobaccos. Mata Fina comes in a few different varieties of which “Mata Norte” is one of them. The Mata Norte is grown in the much more arid north of the Reconcavo, Mata Norte tobacco is very full and very strong. It’s cured in the open air (as opposed to a barn), and when used as a filler, that adds hearty coffee and nut flavors to the blend and smoking experience. I think I’ll cover this in a later article specific to this topic.

Other Brazilian tobaccos that have caught my attention are Arapiraca, and Brazilian-Sumatra tobaccos that I appreciated in some recent cigars I’ve had, so stay tuned and I seek out more of these types of cigar tobaccos (from www.Famous-Smoke.com)

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