This is the 93-point flagship smoke that put the company on the map – the Warped La Colmena cigar!
La Colmena means “beehive” in Spanish, and if you’ve ever seen activity on a tobacco farm or at a cigar factory, you’d probably see the similarities between that and a busy hive in summer. Many hands are all working away, skillfully creating a large stock of either mature tobacco leaves or tightly-rolled cigars – each worker going about their day with efficiency and care to produce a final product that’s an incredibly impressive collaborative achievement.
Much like a fresh cut of honey-dripping comb, the Warped La Colmena is one of the world’s most delicious natural products.
This is one of Warped’s traditional Cuban-style smokes, especially when it comes to construction. Inspired by Cuban custom cigars, the rollers used entubado bunching, a triple cap, and a covered foot. It comes as no surprise given that La Colmena is made at the El Titan de Bronze factory in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami. Category 9 master rollers from Cuba are limited to making about 100 a day and that’s it. Demand any more and people might rush. By keeping production low, Warped can ensure quality.
(Also, if you don’t know what Category 9 means, you’re not alone. Suffice to say that the hands that put these cigars together have done it tens of thousands of times and have got the process down to automatic excellence at this point).
The La Colmena cigar first features an Ecuadorian Deflorada wrapper taken from the tobacco stalk after the flower has been pinched off; also known as “deflowered.” Inside that is an Ecuadorian binder, and then Dominican and Nicaraguan long-fillers. Unlike so many other smokes in the Warped blend portfolio, this one reaches into Ecuador and the Dominican Republic for tobacco, instead of sticking solely to Nicaraguan leaf.
The result is a medium-bodied smoke that’s “dense and chewy” (according to Cigar Aficionado’s reviewer) with the flavor of cashews, cedar, and German chocolate cake. These are wonderful flavors and a wonderful style that’s Cubanesque to the core.
