Arturo Fuente Hemingway Classic

Upon finding out I had passed the Bar Exam I marched over to my local cigar shoppe to pick out something special to smoke for the day. There's something special about going into a cigar shoppe and walking into the humidor. You catch that great scent of tobacco, and unlike the experience of opening your humidor, the perfume lingers because you're surrounded by cigars of every shape and size.

The hard part, especially for a newbie like myself, is picking which of these sticks you want to take home for the evening. I was targeting a Padron, but alas all he had was the 2000 and 3000 series, and I was looking for something a little more special. I glanced at the Opus X that he had in the special glass cabinet, but couldn't yet justify forking over $18 for one stick. However, right next to the Opus X were two boxes of Arturo Fuente Hemingways.

I grabbed the Classic (priced at less than half the Opus X at $8 a stick) and smoked it later that night playing poker and drinking whiskey with some friends.

Four years in the making, the premium leaves used in the Hemingway line are carefully fermented and aged tobaccos, specially selected from only the best crop years. The cigar is handmade the most experienced and skilled cigar makers in the Fuente factory, each of whom are limited to only 75 cigars per day. They are aged for six months to fully enhance the flavor and aroma in cedar lined aging rooms.

The Classic version of the Hemingway line is a 7" Churchill with a 48 ring guage. The wrapper is Cameroon, and the filler and binder is Dominican. The wrapper had good flavor and was a perfect medium strength cigar. The burn was even and excellent, the smoke was full, and the flavor was pleasant. I've heard the AFH's can be potent, but this Churchill was smooth to smoke (more research revealed that the shorter sticks pack more punch).

All is all this was a great smoke to celebrate one of my prodest achievements. I give this a strong 4 out of 5. I look forward to trying another.

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