Review of Vallejuelo Cigars
A Blast From the Past

Vallejuelo was the top bargain-priced cigar of 2010. The Robusto Gordo size was reviewed by Dr. Mitch Fadem for about.com back in 2011, and is still available in 2019 for $5 or less per stick. I recently met Mitch in Las Vegas for a few smokes, and he gave me a Vallejuelo to try out. I found it to be a medium bodied cigar that was very enjoyable and worthy of a 4 point rating on a 5-point scale, and most definitely a great value. For more, read Mitch's original review, below:

Review of Vallejuelo Robusto Gordo Cigar
A Nice Surprise for Under Five
4 Star Rating
By: Dr. Mitch Fadem

Vallejuelo? No, I never heard of it either until the proprietor at ‘Stag Tobacconist’ in Albuquerque handed me one the other day. They were considering carrying this cigar and wanted an opinion. Often, tobacconists will get new cigars from manufacturer representatives to hand out to their customers. This is an effort to garner opinions and to introduce new cigars on the market from lesser known blenders, or to bring a cigar into a market region where it is not currently selling. The cigar comes to us from a small factory in the Dominican Republic called Intercigar.

Who is Intercigar?

Intercigar is located in Santiago, Dominican Republic. The company was started by Maurice Antonio Koks, who learned the cigar business from his grandfather and father in the Holland. There is a fine tradition of cigar manufacturing in the Netherlands that goes back more than 150 years. Maurice moved to the Dominican Republic and linked up with Jose Ramon Rojas and Don Jose Moreno Gomez to start their factory in 2001. Don Jose learned his cigar rolling and blending expertise in Cuba and worked for Partagas and H.Upmann. Jose Ramon started rolling cigars at the age of 14 and learned his craft from Don Jose. These three men are now producing some of the best private label cigars on the market. The Vallejuelo is one of their best.

Draw and Construction

The Vallejuelo is a 5” x 54 ring gauge. It has a reddish colored wrapper from Ecuador. The binder is Dominican and the filler is Nicaraguan and Dominican. Being a firm cigar, I expected the draw to be somewhat restrictive, but it wasn’t. It cut easily, drew well, and burned even. I did notice while inspecting the cap that it was triple wrapped, very impressive. The ash was not at all fragile and came off after about 2 inches. The cigar smoked in a little over an hour. It did not generate a lot of smoke. One thing I did notice was that I had a short 5 minute phone call while smoking the cigar and set it down. I thought I would have to relight the cigar afterward, but to my surprise, all I had to do was to puff a couple of times and the cigar came back to life.

Aroma and Flavor

The initial aromas from toasting the foot of the cigar were of a roasted coffee, very typical of Ecuador tobacco. The flavor matched up well, also giving you taste of a full-bodied coffee. There was just a small amount of sweetness in the wrapper, maybe some sort of fruit, but it was not very pronounced. The cigar's aroma and flavors toned down from there, and just left you with a mild to medium smoke without anything very remarkable after that. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good smoking cigar. I smoked while drinking a Belgian-style wheat beer from Colorado. It was a great match.

Value

Vallejuelo cigars are being sold in boxes of 20 for $80. That is only $4 a stick. I asked the owner at ‘Stag Tobacconist’ what they plan on selling single sticks for, and they said that they would like to keep the price down, so they were thinking of an average price of $4.50 a cigar. This is a great value for a solid smoking cigar.