Cigar Reveal #115

Is it possible...? For ten years, Crowned Heads relied on two factories to produce their cigars. These factories - Pepin's My Father and Ernesto Perez Carillo's Tabacalera Alianza - are two of the most respected in the world (including multiple #1 Cigar of the Year awards) and helped to put Crowned Heads among the best cigar brands in the US. But in the last couple years Crowned Heads has chosen to work with a new, little-known cigar factory: Tabacalera Pichardo. Is it possible that the two best cigars in the Crowned Heads lineup now come from this small factory? Well, with the Mil Dias, and now Crowned Heads latest edition that debuted last month, the CHC Serie E, we believe it is very possible. Of course Standard & Twain subscribers are not among those who are not familiar with Pichardo, as we have featured several cigars from their factory, including Atsiniki, Pichardo Classico, and the aforementioned Mil Dias. But what's different than those cigars is that this is probably the most full-flavored, full-bodied cigars to come out of that factory, and also to come from Crowned Heads. And what does 'Serie E' refer to? Why, Eddie Van Halen’s guitar solo from the song Eruption, of course. “I listened to that solo and saw it as a sonic metaphor for smoking this cigar,” said Crowned Heads co-founder, Jon Huber. “From the drum and bass intro, which I saw as the cutting-lighting-prep of the cigar, to the mixing of triads and harmonics which I compared to the complexity of the flavor profile, to the bottoming-out dive bombs that was reminiscent of the finish of the cigar, it al paralleled seamlessly. The CHC Serie E smoking experience is a medium-plus-bodied dance on the edge between technical mastery and random entropy, resolving in a balanced, melodious harmony.”