Felipe Gregorio El Pelo De Oro Duque (Single)

• Length: 140mm
• Ring Gauge: 54
• Flavour: Medium-Full
• Wrapper: Pelo de Oro - Costa Rica
• Binder: Vuelta Abajo 1941 - Costa Rica
• Filler: Pelo de Oro - Peru
• Seed: Ancestral Cuban Pelo de Oro
• Origin: Dominican Republic

Felipe Gregorio El Pelo de Oro Duque There are easier ways to make a cigar than tracking down an old Cuban tobacco seed and persuading it to grow happily somewhere else. Philip G. Wynne has apparently never been terribly interested in easier ways.

The Felipe Gregorio El Pelo de Oro Duque is built around Pelo de Oro, literally hair of gold. It's an ancestral Cuban tobacco variety that Wynne has made something of a speciality, cultivating the seed in selected Central and South American growing regions. Felipe Gregorio's Costa Rican Pelo de Oro is grown at around 3,000 feet, where climate and soil play an important part in developing the leaf.

The Duque is a substantial 5½ inches by 54 ring gauge, giving the blend a little more room to work than the Robusto. And it's an interesting blend indeed. The wrapper is Costa Rican Pelo de Oro, covering a Vuelta Abajo 1941 binder grown in Costa Rica, while the filler is another Pelo de Oro, this time from Peru. The resulting cigar sits in the medium-to-full strength range.

Felipe Gregorio gives the tasting profile as almond, sea salt and butterscotch — an unusual combination, but one that rather neatly describes the sweet-and-savoury character they're aiming for with this tobacco.

It's a handsome cigar in a decidedly understated fashion. The photograph shows a pale golden-brown wrapper with visible veins and seams, finished by that wonderfully simple metallic-gold Felipe Gregorio Pelo de Oro band. No great coat of arms, rampant lions or embossed declaration that the owner's great-great-grandfather once shook hands with somebody important. Just the name of the tobacco.

Mind you, when you've gone to all the trouble of resurrecting Pelo de Oro, you've probably earned the right to put it in large letters.