Bohekio Robusto

Happy new year! I hope everyone had a great holiday, great new year, and are starting 2022 off on the right foot. This week I take a look at the all new Haitian cigar, the Bohekio paired with a bottle of Dogfish Head’s Utopias Barrel Aged World Wide Stout.

The Good Stuff:

• Size: 5 x 50
• Wrapper: Dominican Sun Grown Habano
• Binder: Haitian
• Filler: Haitian
• Body: Medium
• Strength: Medium
• Price: $9
• Pairing: Dogfish Head Utopias Aged World Wide Stout (17.3% ABV)

Prelight:

the Bohekio features a very rustic looking wrapper that is mainly a reddish-brown in color with scattered splotches of darker areas throughout the entire cigar. The wrapper’s texture is slightly toothy with a ton of oil coating it. The wrapper feels dense and hard while the cigar as a whole is nicely packed with the only soft spot found around the foot of the cigar. The wrapper carries a good amount of milder veining as the cigars leads up to it’s double-wrapped cap. The cigar is then polished off with a black and gold band with a mask symbol embossed in the front along with the word “Haiti” as well as the “Supreme Tobacco” crest printed around the back of the band. There is also an additional secondary band which simply carries the cigar’s “Bohekio” title across the front.

The wrapper on the Bohekio gives off very little aroma outside of some light tobacco while the foot of the cigar carries a ton of earthy, wet hay aromas and barnyard. Sounds off-putting but I found that cigars so pungent tend to lead to great experiences. The cap cut clean and easily using my Xikar XO double bladed cutter. The cold draw produces some dark chocolate, earthiness, and a bit of salt on my lips.

First Third:

The Bohekio starts out with a bold black pepper punch that fades rather quickly allowing the cigar to release bold notes of dark chocolate and coffee over lighter notes of cedar, earthiness, and light vanilla. While the vanilla is pretty light it lingers on the aftertaste for quite some time. The draw started slightly tight but opened up nicely after just a few centimeters allowing the cigar to release a good amount of thinner smoke with each puff while the cigar releases only a slight amount of stationary smoke while it rests in my ashtray. The burnline is a bit wide, but very even leaving behind a trail of tightly compacted white gray ash which held on for almost an inch before falling into my ashtray.

Second third:

Into the second third of the Bohekio and the flavors are mostly the same. The chocolate and coffee still lead the charge over notes of cedar and maple as well as lighter notes of earthiness and vanilla. The retorhale really brings the vanilla to the front of the taste so I find myself doing it quite often. The cigar is still burning flawlessly and I close out the second third with nothing in terms of a nicotine hit.

Finish:

The Bohekio if anything, is a very consistent experience as the flavor profile is still lead by coffee and chocolate backed be cedar and make as well as earthiness and vanilla. I am actually impressed with how consistent this flavor profile has been from start to finish. The cigar burned rather slow resulting in a total burn time of almost and hour and forty five minutes. I experienced no harshness, no sap, nor any extended heat as I close out the experience with very little in the nicotine department.

Overview:

I was very excited going into the Bohekio. It’s not every day that a cigar company challenges the norm by producing a cigar created with tobacco we don’t normally see used and the outcome was a success. The Bohekio is a solid cigar. It’s not overly complex, nor does it need to be. The flavor profile is tasty and the cigar burned perfectly from start to finish which is just about all that you can ask for a cigar. I am very curious to see more cigars featuring tobacco from Haiti.

Pairing:

World Wide Stout has been a staple in the Dogfish Head arsenal for quite some time and holds the crown as their highest sought after imperial stout. Through the years the company has done quite a few barrel/adjunct variations of the beer, but none as exciting as this year’s Utopias Barrel Aged version. Coming in at 17.3% ABV this beer leads with loads of vanilla, maple, cinnamon, caramel, malt and chocolate with a very sticky and heavy mouthfeel before finishing with more cinnamon, maple, and caramel. This was a daring pairing as this beer can easily overpower most cigars if you’re not careful. Luckily, the maple, chocolate, and vanilla married so well with the Bohekio it created an exceptional experience while adding an element of sweetness that upped the complexity for the cigar.