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Cigar Review: Toraño Vault Liga A-008 Torpedo

20 Dec 2011

Toraño brought out two new cigars at last August’s IPCPR Trade Show. Loyal, a value-priced cigar featuring an Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper, Nicaraguan binder, and Dominican and Nicaraguan filler, came out immediately after the show.

The more highly-anticipated Toraño Vault only shipped a couple of months ago. The Vault concept originates from a book of cigar blends, which according to Toraño documents every blend ever created by the company since the 80’s, including many that never made it to market. Toraño executives Charlie Toraño and Bruce Lewis have now begun using the documented blends as inspiration for new blends.

Liga A-800 is the first such Vault-inspired blend. In the Vault book (now kept in a bank vault, according to Toraño’s marketing materials) the A-800 “recipe” uses a shade-grown Nicaraguan Colorado wrapper, Honduran Jamastran binder, and Nicaraguan filler from both Estelí and Condega.

After tasting their reconstructed A-800 blend, Toraño decided to add one ingredient that wasn’t available to Toraño when it was originally made in 2000: a second binder using Nicaraguan Ometepe tobacco (from the volcanic island in Nicaragua that was previously exclusive to General Cigars). This new recipe comes in three sizes: Robusto (5 x 52), Toro (6 x 50), and Torpedo (6.1 x 52), plus a limited release Corona Gorda (5.6 x 46).

I reviewed the Torpedo, which sells for just under $8 each. The cigar is firm with no soft spots on the dry, reddish-brown wrapper. It has a complex combination of cinnamon, black coffee, leather, and wood. It’s a medium- to full-bodied cigar with a dry, clove-like spice that I associate with Ometepe tobacco.

There’s not a lot of variation from start to finish, though dry chocolate and leather emerge slightly in the blend that is dominated by wood and spice. Construction is superb, which I’ve come to expect from Toraño.

This is a good smoke, but I’m not sure it ranks with Toraño’s best. (My favorite is the 50 Years Exodus.) Still, it’s well-made and complex, and makes me look forward to the next Vault blend. That all earns the Toraño Vault Liga A-008 Torpedo a rating of three and a half stogies out of five.

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

Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys

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