Full Strength Cigars: For The Connoisseur

Everybody loves a mild-to-medium cigar. For most cigar aficionados, these are the cigars that introduced the habit, ushering us in to the world of premium cigars, inaugurating what may become a life-long love affair.

But just as lovers of Mexican food eventually grow adventurous, and start reaching for those exotic hot salsas they don't sell at your local big-box discount store ... and just as serious movie fans eventually develop a taste for films you can't find at your local mall-multiplex ... and just as marathoners eventually ask themselves, "Why not a triathlon?" ... and just as fans of Beethoven's sweeping symphonies, with their whistle-able melodies and box-office appeal, eventually grow curious about his dense, difficult, endlessly enigmatic late quartets ...

Cigar lovers eventually graduate from milder-tasting premium cigars to the more complex taste of full-strength cigars.

That doesn't mean those milder cigars get left to gather dust. There are your every-day cigars, which get used to mark the end of a long day's work; your every-week cigars, which announce the onset of the weekend; and your special-occasion cigars. After all, the greatest, richest dinner you ever ate would make a terrible breakfast, and nobody drinks fine liqueur during a coffee break. And full-tasting cigars demand time, concentration and attention that might not be muster-able every single day. But they do offer cigar aficionados a way to mark special occasions--and they're a special occasion in themselves.

The Camacho Corojo line uses first-generation tobacco seeds to achieve its complex, distinctive taste. Available in six sizes, it can be had for as little as five dollars and twenty-five cents--though the magnificent and imposing 11/18 line retails for just under ten dollars. Camacho offers several other full-strength cigar lines as well, including the tight-rolled El Legend (available in three styles), the Special Limited Reserve Maduro (also using Corojo tobacco plus Connecticut Broadleaf wrappers, with an arboreal-meets-coffeelike flavor profile), and the especially hardy-flavored Triple Maduro, a cigar line not for the faint of heart.

Unsurprisingly, CAO offers a number of well-regarded full-strength cigar lines, including the CAO Italia, the CAO Sopranos (an official tie-in with the late, much-missed HBO crime drama), and the unique, "pinstriped" CAO America, in which Connecticut Broadleaf and Connecticut Shade tobaccos are wrapped together to give the cigar a stripy wrapper, while tobaccos from four countries make up the filler.

Saint Luis Rey is known for specializing in the stronger-tasting cigar. Offering three separate lines (the Saint Luis Rey, Taint Luis Rey Maduro, and Saint Luis Rey Serie G Maduro), this company challenges the boundaries of cigar flavor. Their Serie G Maduro offers Connecticut Broadleaf maduro binders inside Connecticut Broadleaf maduro wrappers--double the maduro strength!

A lot of full-strength cigars are like premium micro-brews: not a lot of them are made, they take a long time to make, and they're not intended to be sold to just anybody. The Gurkha Regent is a cigar long in the making, from its aged filler to its Havana 2000 wrapper, and the complexity of its taste makes it a challenge even for seasoned cigar lovers. And there's nothing an aficionado relishes like a challenge! Another challenging cigar comes from Jose Seijas, who runs the Tabacalera de Garcia (largest individual cigar factory in the world), and has chosen only some retailers to stock his eponymous Signature Blend.

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