Country of Origin: Nicaragua
Size: 4″ x 44
Strength: Full
Wrapper: Mexican San Andréas Negro
Filler: Brazilian Mata Fina Oscuro, Nicaraguan
Esteli Ligero, Jalapa Seco, and Condega Viso
Binder: Connecticut Broadleaf Maduro
Presentation: Package of 25 / 5-packs / singles
Location smoked: Home
Paired with: Offley Tawny Port
Construction and Overall Appearance: Excellent. Beautifully rolled and capped. The tobaccos are densely packed inside a dark, toothy, and flawless wrapper. (A purty lil’ thing, it is.)
Draw: Perfect
Pre-light flavor: Sweet and earthy
Toasting & Light: The cigar toasted quickly due to its smaller ring, but with all those dark tobaccos, took a little longer to light. Once it got going, it put out a lot of thick, creamy smoke. The first puff was sweet and creamy.
Base flavors: Sweet, woody and earthy.
Retrohale: Nice and creamy; not too peppery; mostly earthy.
Aroma: Sharp and robust.
Burn / Ash Quality: The cigar burned razor clean and very slowly. The ash was almost solid grey in color, quite firm, and took awhile to let go. If you’re careful, I’m certain you could smoke this cigar from end-to-end with the ash entirely intact.
Balance of flavors: Perfect.
Consistency: This cigar was the second of two I had for this review. Not only was the smoke itself consistent in body, flavors and aroma; both cigars were identical in every way.
General Observations: Dark woody flavors and plenty of natural sweetness. What I really liked about this cigar was it burned extremely clean and put out a LOT of smoke and flavor. Each puff was very smooth with dead-on balance. Due to its petite dimensions, once I got to the mid-point, I didn’t want to draw on it too hard or too often. I even waited as long as 2-3 minutes between puffs. Even more impressive was that, despite its size, this cigar burned for well over an hour. This is NOT a “quick smoke,” so don’t confuse it with similar-sized cigars that usually last only about 20 minutes.
Summary: A very solid, definitively Nicaraguan smoke that’s great right out of the gate. I don’t usually smoke cigars this small, but the Baitfish was so impressive in terms of flavor, balance, and consistency, I can see having a decent number of these in my humidor on a fairly regular basis. Yeah, they’re a little on the pricy side, but I would testify in this case that you get what you pay for.
Executive Editor
Gary Korb has been writing and editing content for CigarAdvisor.com since its debut in 2008. An avid cigar smoker for over 30 years, he has worked on the marketing side of the premium cigar business as a Sr. Copywriter, blogger, and Executive Editor of Cigar Advisor. A graduate of the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, prior to his career in the cigar business, Gary worked in the music and video industry as a marketer and a publicist.
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