Smoked: AJ Fernandez Dias de Gloria Brazil

Smoked at: West Chester, Ohio

AJ Fernandez Dias de Gloria Brazil is box-pressed using Nicaraguan filler and binder and a smooth light sandpaper toothy dark chocolate brown Brazlian Mata Fina wrapper with barely visible veins and seams. A green, brown and eggshell off-white primary band, a green and off-white secondary band announcing “AJ Fernandez” and a cedar sleeve long footer decorate the cigar.

The cigar opens with pepper, dark roast coffee, cream, charred oak, mossy earth and some interesting fruit and spices. I taste cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger and orchard fruit/raisins. There’s an ever-changing array of mixed nuts – almonds, walnuts and peanuts. Now it may well be the name of the cigar triggering my brain to taste Brazil nuts, but they may be part of the mixed nuts array. Imagined or real, I taste Brazil nuts. Occasional notes of toasted buttered bread or crackers and mild chocolate occur during the second third. Somewhere during the final third, AJ threw in a Werther’s. It was brief, but it was there.

The pepper overtakes the sweet spices during the last third. You get some leather notes with the earth and wood on the final third as well. The retrohale is loaded with pepper, oak and earthiness. It’s medium-full bodied and strength. Man! There’s a lot going on with this cigar!

Superlatives are the adjectives to describe the construction. This box-pressed beauty is top notch. Absolutely perfect draw, white ash that held steady stacking like dimes to over an inch yet tapped off effortlessly on command, generous smoke production, and a dead even burn line. Impressive!

AJ Fernandez Dias De Gloria Brazil is balanced, complex and quite interesting with its unusual flavor notes intertwined with typical AJ blending. This is a very good cigar – one of AJ’s more intriguing blends. Add the body and construction and the total score crosses the finish line at a 5.