For JRE Tobacco (named after the initials of its founder, Cuban-born master tobacco grower and cigar blender Julio R. Eiroa), the Aladino brand the company released in 2015 was a chance to showcase the world-class, “Authentic Corojo”-seed tobacco Eiroa had spent the last six decades perfecting, becoming a tobacco industry legend in the process.
Aladino is a rare family of cigars because it utilizes JRE’s famed corojo-seed tobacco for all three components of each stick — the wrapper, the binder, and the fillers — making these smokes true puros of Honduran origin in more ways than one. Indeed, Julio Eiroa has been cultivating and refining corojo-seed tobacco in Honduras since the early 1960s. Unlike other corojo varieties, JRE’s seeds are not a product of hybridization, meaning that they’re much closer in biology to the original Cuban seeds they’re descendants of.
In 2018, at the age of 80, Eiroa introduced a new series of Aladino cigars called the Corojo Reserva, which was designed to be heartier, more concentrated, and bolder than the original Aladino line he had released two years earlier.
Rolled by torcedores at JRE’s factory in Honduras’ Jamastran Valley, this vitola of the Corojo Reserva series — the Figurado — is both torpedo-shaped and box-pressed, making it unique among the series for both traits. Boasting an excellent draw, an even burn, and superb construction, the Corojo Reserva Figurado possesses mild-to-medium strength and a smoking time of nearly two hours. The panoply of flavors on offer includes nuts and creamy cedar, as well as traces of leather, earth, black pepper, espresso beans, cocoa nibs, floral notes, vanilla, and cinnamon.
Available in boxes of 10, the Corojo Reserva Figurado is an excellent way to sample the legendary corojo mastery of Julio R. Eiroa and JRE’s Aladino family of cigars. Pick up a box today, and see how close to Cuba you can get in a Honduran puro.