The Chateau Real line of cigars is being touted as Drew Estates answer to Macanundo. As most of you know, Macanundo is known for making good mild cigars. The Drew Estate website calls this cigar “ultra smooth, naturally sweet, and deliciously creamy. Refined and elegant, it is the epitome of a relaxing cigar.”
After smoking the Chateau Real Maduro Gran Templar (52 ring gauge by 6 inches, corona gorda), I have to agree with most of their descriptions. The cigar is quite handsome right out of the cellophane. It has a rich chocolate, oily, grainy color that just looks tasty. The aroma is also pretty nice with notes of rich earth on the wrapper and sweet red wine at the foot. The maduro wrapper is from San Andres. I had difficulty getting accurate names for all the tobacco. Some sites call the wrapper San Andres Negro Oscuro, which may just be variations of the color shade. The filler consists of Nicaraguan Criollo and Dominican Piloto long fillers.
This cigar feels like it has some heft to it. The rolling construction of the wrapper looks nice and I saw no obvious flaws along its length. However, I did feel a few soft spots which caused me some concern. But overall, this cigar looked well constructed for a maduro costing less than $6 a stick.
The cigar took a couple of wooden matches to get lit evenly. The draw was free with very slight resistance. The amount of smoke I was getting with each draw at first was disappointing. I attribute this to the soft spots I felt earlier in different places along the cigar, especially the foot. This is a good example of how underfilling a cigar can affect the draw negatively. Overall though, this was a minor negative which went away as the cigar burned down a bit.
Luckily the flavors were nice and smooth. The cigar started off with a nice sweet mocha taste along with some “twangy” wood flavors. There was a slight scratch of pepper to the back of the throat, more like Coke than Pepsi. The finish was clean with some slight pencil lead residue left in the mouth. Eventually I also tasted roasted peanuts, some cedar and highlights of black cherry. The finish was “whiskey”-like but a little harsh. As the cigar progresses, the mouth residue goes from pencil lead to more wine-like.
The body of the cigar is medium throughout and the strength level is mild to medium in my opinion. I also noticed when I ashed the cigar that there was no cone of ligero. Usually, ligero is more resinous than the other tobaccos in the blend and burns at a slower rate. Ligero is also responsible for the strength of the cigar. The ash was a nice white color, and held together well.
With the price point being fair and the taste being enjoyable, I would recommend this cigar to others. If you are looking for a great tasting cigar and you typically like mild to medium smokes, you should definitely give Chateau Real Cigars a try.