Ever since the Cuban cigar embargo was implemented in the 1960s, there was only one way to get as close as possible to making a true Cuban cigar — the seeds. The prized corojo seeds of Cuba endowed its sticks with many of their seemingly inimitable and much-praised qualities celebrated all over the world.
But what if someone was able to get the corojo seeds out of Cuba? In the early 1960s, that’s just what Cuban agricultural official Jacinto ‘Tino’ Argudin did when he smuggled some of these precious kernels via mail to Honduras, making them available to be planted in Central America for the very first time.
Enter young tobacco cultivator Julio R. Eiroa, who — despite growing up in a tobacco-planting family in Cuba — wasn’t acquainted with the peculiarities of Honduras’ Jamastran Valley and whose early efforts at cultivating corojo seeds he considered to be a failure. But the man he was working for, legendary tobacco industry figure Angel Oliva, told him that, to the contrary, his efforts were “as good or better” than anything Cuba was turning out at the time.
Encouraged by this appraisal, Eiroa persisted with his efforts, and, over the last six decades, he’s arguably perfected what he now calls “Authentic Corojo”-seed tobacco. Unlike most corojo-seeded plants, Eiroa’s crops are not a product of hybridization, which makes the resulting tobacco more able to resist disease but, in the process, dilutes the purity of its genetics.
On the contrary, Eiroa’s corojo-seed tobacco is as pure as you can get — so pure that he started a line of cigars called Aladino to make use of this tobacco in its wrappers, binders, and fillers, creating a Honduran puro cigar that harkens back to the golden age of Cuban sticks before the embargo — between the years 1947 and 1961.
In 2018, Eiroa introduced a new Aladino series called Corojo Reserva that was formulated to be heartier, bolder, and more concentrated than the original Aladino offerings. This vitola of the series, the Aladino Corojo Reserva Robusto, is a heavyweight cigar that’s well-constructed, with medium-to-full strength, an excellent draw, and copious smoke production. Flavors detectable among its essences include creamy cedar and fresh coffee beans, as well as notes of hay, leather, pepper, spices, cocoa, earth, fruit, and almonds.
Available in boxes of 20, the Corojo Reserva Robusto was the first and is still considered by many observers to be the best member of the series to be introduced so far. Pick up a box today, and see if you don’t immediately agree.