Cigar Review: Dunhill 1907 Robusto

These days, smokers are more likely to associate the Dunhill name with top-quality pipes (“The White Spot”), long-lamented pipe tobaccos (“Early Morning Pipe”), and high-priced cigarettes (Hunter Thompson’s go-to brand). Among cigars, the trademark name, sliced and diced nowadays to different corporations, is something of a second-place luxury finisher to Davidoff in the U.S. Think Omega vs. Rolex.

Still, a cigar brand with a storied history of more than 100 years and ties to Winston Churchill is one not to be ignored. This new line celebrates that history, named as it is for the year in which Alfred Dunhill opened his first tobacco shop in London.

A limited edition cigar was released seven years ago to mark the centenary. This line, Dunhill’s first since introducing Signed Range in 2001, is “a tribute to the legacy and greatness of this brand rather than the mark of a specific anniversary in time,” General Cigar’s Victoria McKee told me.

She also supplied the three Robustos (5 x 52) I smoked for this review. The cigar costs $8.50. There are three others in the line: Rothschild, Toro, and Churchill, with all four packaged in 18-count boxes.

The 1907 is a varied mix of tobaccos. It sports an oily Honduran Olancho wrapper (a higher priming of the same leaf used on the CAO OSA Sol), a Dominican Olor binder, and what General calls “a proprietary blend of Dominican Ligeros and Brazillian Mata Fina.”

The 1907 starts with a lovely pre-light aroma from the wrapper and the filler. When lit, the first impression comes from a nice blast of pepper that backs down after about a half-inch. At that point, it settles into a rich tobacco taste for a bit. Also fairly prominent in the first half is wood and leather, which I often associate with Honduran tobacco. I’d put the overall strength at about medium.

I encountered a little harshness near the halfway point, but that smoothed out fairly quickly, and some spices moved in and out.

Construction was excellent. The draw was just right on each sample and they burned straight from start to finish.

If you haven’t tried a Dunhill in a while, you might want to give the 1907 a try. I rate it three and a half stogies out of five.

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

–George E

photo credit: Stogie Guys