Top Cigars for 2024 from CA

Some people get excited this time of year because of the Emmy Awards—well since I have never seen any of those shows and don’t know very many of the people, I get excited about something else—the announcement of the Top 25 Cigars of the Year by Cigar Aficionado magazine, the Bible of the Cigar Industry!

I am please to say that of the new list of top 25, I have actually smoked 6 of them over the past couple of years and have also smoked some cousins [same manufacturer, different stick] on 12 more of the winers.

So over the next few days, I will offer my comments on them in the hope that you will find some of them in your favorite cigar longue and know what you are picking up.

Number 1 was the Fuente Fuente OpusX Reserva d’Chateau. While I have not found one of those in my search, I have smoked the A Fuente Opus X Oro Oscuro and it was a very impressive smoke. I bought it on October of 2023 when I had my fellow SOTL Founder Arnold Poynor go over to the Good Karma Cigar Longue in Fort Worth and pick me up a three pack of this special, limited edition, hard-to-find cigar. Good Karma works hard on procuring this type of rare gym and I hope you will check them out if you have one in your neck of the woods. They are in Fort Worth but also up in a couple of Texas Panhandle cities.

So to the Opus X Oro Oscuro I enjoyed. I smoked a Robusto that was 5.25 inches long and had a ring gauge of 50. It had a Dominican Republic Wrapper that was first grown on the Fuente Estate in the Dominican in 1992. Both the binder and the filler were also Dominican, the filler being from the Rosado Region.

Arturo Fuente set out to prove many years ago that the overarching belief that a good wrapper tobacco could not be produced in the Dominican Republic and he has certainly done that by putting the right sees with the right soil to produce this outstanding cigar.

When I nosed the stick, all I could come up with was “deep leather” and noted that it was hard to describe. The flavor was mild yet very flavorful.

I have also enjoyed 4 other Arturo

Fuente cigars and have rated the all as very favorable smokes.

I can’t wait to find the Reserva d’Chateau!

Happy hunting!

Go out and enjoy a good stick