The next cigar I am going to smoke as part of my cigar challenge is from the The Griffins cigar brand, I will be trying the Nicaragua.
The stats:
Strength: Medium – Full
Country of origin: Dominican Republic
Background:
Bernard Grobet came up with The Griffins cigar brand in 1984, it was named after his nightclub The Griffin’s Club in Switzerland (which after a quick Google search, no longer exists). The original line of cigars were rolled in Dominican Republic and became quite popular in the US towards the end of the 1980’s.
Bernard was a very close friend of Zino Davidoff. Zino distributed the cigars under the Davidoff brand, before he purchased the brand in 2004.
The ‘Nicaragua’ series was released in November 2015.
Nowadays The Griffin‘s brand can be found on the Davidoff website at https://de.davidoffgeneva.ch/the-griffins/
My experience:
I was completely baffled by this cigar, firstly it was sold and referenced as being from the Davidoff brand. However there doesn’t appear to be any reference to Davidoff on the cigar band. Next it’s named ‘Nicaragua’ but made in the Dominican Republic?!
It makes me realise that I just don’t know enough about the relationships between the manufacturer and the cigar brand… or pay attention to the differences of blends between the wrapper, the binder and the filler. In this instance this cigar has a Nicaraguan wrapper, a Dominican binder and a mix of Dominican, Honduran and Nicaraguan fillers.
I realise I must come across quite naive when talking about cigars, that’s because I am. The more I learn about cigars, the more I realise I know very little. If you don’t ask the stupid questions you’ll never learn right?
I have no idea what size this cigar is… any guesses let me know!
As an experience, this cigar started incredibly mild, with flavour notes of cedar, but that was really it – a pretty average cigar.
To give this cigar some credit, it did seem quite well constructed and had a nice build up of ash.
I was kinda disappointed by this cigar. But if you enjoy a mild, medium cigar – this may be ok for you.
My rating: 5.5 out of 10
Next up… a H Upmann cigar!
London Cigar Smoker 