Cigar Review: L’Atelier Imports Trocadéro Cambon
23 Oct 2012
Yesterday, my colleague reviewed the J.P.G. Little Havana Overruns Corona, a budget-priced cigar by super-blender Jose Pepin Garcia made for retailer Holt’s. Today, I look at a cigar with a similar pedigree and value-oriented price: L’Atelier Trocadéro Cambon.
L’Atelier is a new company headed by Pete Johnson of Tatuaje fame. While Tatuaje (and all of Pete’s other brands up until this summer) fall under the “Pete Johnson Havana Cellars” umbrella, L’Atelier is a new company, with a new lineup of cigars at various price points ranging from the Behike-esque L’Atelier to the value-priced Trocadéro and El Suelo.
Trocadéro’s biggest selling point is it’s price, which is around $3 per cigar when bought by the 20-count bundle, and only fifty cents or so more individually. The cigar is blended by Jaime Garcia for Pete Johnson and made at Garcia’s factory in EstelÃ, Nicaragua. It features an Ecuadorian Habano rosado wrapper, a Connecticut broadleaf binder, and Nicaraguan long-filler tobaccos.
Trocadéro comes in three sizes: Honore (5.75 x 56), Montaigne (6.25 x 60), and Cambon (5.25 x 52). I smoked three of the Cambon format for this review, each from a five-pack I purchased online for $16.
The cigar is medium-bodied with simplistic damp earth and roasted nut flavors. Towards the end, there’s some coffee and cinnamon notes, but the damp flavor holds the cigar back. Construction is excellent, and shows none of the pitfalls that $3 cigars sometimes suffer from. The burn was even, the ash stable, and the draw easy.
So is this the magical cigar that costs $3 but tastes like a cigar two or three times the price? Unfortunately not. In fact, when it comes to $3-4 budget cigars made by the Garcias, I prefer Ambos Mundos, Tatuaje Serie P, or Benchmade. Ultimately the L’Atelier Trocadéro is what it says it is: a medium-bodied, value-priced, well-made cigar that’s pleasant enough, but hardly complex or distinguished. That earns the L’Atelier Trocadéro Cambon a rating of three stogies out of five.
[To read more StogieGuys.com cigar reviews, please click here.]
photo credit: Stogie Guys
Patrick Ashby
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The problem with budget priced cigars is that for a couple of extra bucks you can get a great stick through auction or sale. The only cheap cigars I find myself enjoying these days are Villiger Maduro's for those 20min smoke breaks- am I the only one?
Again, I just don't think I'll buy these value sticks. Like he said above, for a couple dollars more I can get a more quality stick that I'll actually enjoy. I'm not a fan of smoking a cigar to just smoke a cigar.
Are these usually made from leftover tobacco that doesn't make the cut for premium cigars? I'm assuming thats why they sell these at such a low price.
Tried these last week after a buddy told me to check them out. Gotta say I was pleasantly surprised. Nice flavor & a decent stick. I would put this up against many $5 and $6 cigars any day. When money is tight and payday is next week I will go to these…