I bought these while putting an order together on Cigars International, having been enticed by the “See how you can get free shipping on this order!” button. I was surprised to see that for $15 you could get a box of 20 cigars and free shipping, so I did the math, and, lo and behold, it appeared to be a terrific deal! The deal was actually free standard shipping or cut-rate 2-day shipping, which would have cost $20 for my order anyway, and was reduced to just below $5, so it seemed like I was getting these cigars basically for free. Little did I know what it would cost me to actually smoke them…
This little puppy looks fine on the outside, if you can overlook the veins on the wrapper, the ugly band, and the silly name. The wrapper leaf wasn’t awful, but it isn’t actually a high point either.
Unfortunately, this cigar appears to be entirely short filler. I can’t tell exactly what leaves are in it, but I suspect this is like the Oscar Meyer hot dog of cigars: just a little bit of everything left over stuffed in a tube and sold off.
I’ll skip most of the toasting and aroma details and just cut to the chase: this thing tastes like fertilizer. If you’ve ever been to a horse ranch, you know exactly what smell I’m talking about. Now put that in your mouth. This overwhelming barnyard taste makes everything else irrelevant, but if you care to, you might find undertones of rotten plums, and a slightly acidic/metallic aftertaste.
Being short-filler, the Chinchalero burned like a cigarette – perfect throughout. Throughout, that is, until 2/3 of the way through I hit a huge air pocket and thanked God for presenting me with an excuse to stop.
All-in-all, I cannot recommend this cigar to anyone. I have had them for about 6 months now, and I’ve started keeping them with my aromatic pipe tobaccos to hopefully give them better flavors. I have seen a small improvement so far. I can imagine these would be useful to smoke when you are completely plastered, or to give to people you don’t like or who only smoke cigars when they belong to someone else (you folks know who you are). CI isn’t pushing them like they were before, but you can still find the Chinchalero on their website here. They also show up on cigar bid from time to time, but I cannot advocate spending any amount of money on this unless you get something pretty valuable in return. As a last resort, they might be palatable after ten years of humidor aging…
Dear Sir
Chinchalero is a product of my company Horizon Cigar,
as is not at this time distributed in the USA… From
your comments you may say “Good”. The truth of the matter is that the cigars sold by Cigars International in the USA, were a batch of rejects that should not have been sold as a regular brand offering under the
Chinchalero name. Chinchalero is a value line long filler product with a good reputation in this category in the European Market…. It pains me to discover that a reject batch of our product with Chinchalero branding has found its way into the U.S. Internet sales market.. This is without our approval.
We would be happy to send you a Box of the regular Chinchalero – Reserva De Oro product so you will be able to understand that the product batch sold by Cigars International were not of the regular brand specification…
Sincerely,
J.Atherton
Director, Horizon Cigar Co.
That is very decent of you Mr. Atherton; a generous offer indeed. Unfortunately, a month has passed since, with no response to your kind offer from the original reviewer.
I have personally found this brand of cigar to be a fine and enjoyable smoke, and would be happy for you to send them to me instead, if feel so inclined.
Kind Regards,
G.
I did end up contacting both Horizon Cigars and the poster of this comment at their listed email address. However, nothing has led me to believe that the poster of the comment is actually affiliated with Horizon Cigars (the first clue was the use of a free Gmail email address, the second was an IP address in the netherlands). If this had not been the case, I would have been very excited to take Mr. Atherton up on his offer.
Best,
Thomas
“I would have been very excited to take Mr. Atherton up on his offer.”
Lol, I am sure.
It is a shame that the offer never materialized for you.
Damn, I guess he won’t be up for sending me a free batch of Private Stock #7′s either then.
hey, at least you’re in the UK where you get their real cigars :p