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Stogie Reviews: Puros Indios Rothschild

23 Feb 2011

Cigar maker Rolando Reyes, Sr. is known throughout the industry for his dedication to quality control. Prior to his retirement in 2007, at the age of 83, his work habits included toiling at his Honduran factory long after hours and inspecting individual cigars up to seven times before they shipped.

Today his grandson, Carlos E. Diez, is president of Reyes Family Cigars (formerly Cuba Aliados). He oversees production of all the brands in the company’s portfolio, including Cuba Aliados, Cienfuegos, and Puros Indios.

The latter is a seven-viotla blend that sports an Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper and binder around filler tobaccos from Ecuador, Brazil, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic. Affordably priced in the $2-4 range, the Rothschild (5 x 50) is mottled and somewhat spongy with pre-light notes of honey and spice off the foot. The exterior leaf is papery in both appearance and feel, and the well-applied cap clips easily to reveal an easy draw.

After toasting the foot and establishing an even burn, a flavor of dry wood, roast coffee, and peat emerges. At times I also detect a vegetal taste, particularly on the finish. The balance is notable for a cigar in this price range and the smoke is aromatic, cool, and slightly sweet. Nothing too spectacular or complex, but nice for the price.

This profile is a major departure from my previous experiences with this blend. In the past, I’ve found other Puros Indios vitolas to be harsh and salty with sour, disagreeable flavors. But the two Rothschilds I smoked for this review were much, much better.

Perhaps the blend is simply best suited to this format. While that may be the case, I rarely find the performance of blends varies so drastically by size. No, I’m guessing there’s another variable at work: time. Before I lit them up, my Rothschilds had been in my possession for at least two years. My previous experiences with this blend were with much younger cigars.

This is just a hypothesis, mind you. If you decide to pick up a box of Puros Indios cigars in any size, however, I would highly recommend letting them age for a year or more if you find the first specimen to be lacking. Your patience will reward you with a satisfying, albeit straightforward, value cigar with good combustion qualities—one that’s worthy of a rating of three stogies out of five.

[To read more StogieGuys.com cigar reviews, please click here.]

Patrick A

photo credit: Stogie Guys

4 Responses to “Stogie Reviews: Puros Indios Rothschild”

  1. TriMarkC Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 2:31 pm #

    I've got a fiver that I just received as a gift. So based on your review, I think I'm going to time-stamp these for "sometime out a couple of years".

    Thanks!

  2. Pat Friday, June 17, 2011 at 5:47 pm #

    The Rothschild Dynasty makes money off of both sides of every war. World War I never should have happened but the Rothschild banking cartels wanted money and power plus an excuse to build a league of nations!

  3. Zen Cigar Sunday, June 23, 2013 at 1:55 pm #

    Smoked a well-aged Presidente recently. I have never been a huge Puros Indios fan as most of Rolando Reyes cigars seem to be very vegetal and have an unmistakeable barnyard aroma to them. Maybe some aging has helped.

    The draw was very tight but it took the flame well and gave off releuctant plumes of smoke.

    The flavors were very muted and the finish was very short. I picked up toast and cedar and that was about it.

    It also did tunnel part way through and then kept going out on me, so eventually 2/3 of the way down I had to give up on it.

    Not a cigar I’ll pick up again for sure.

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