This particular stick was given to me by a friend that I used to work with. We still keep in touch and share a beer or a cigar now and then. He was introduced to this brand by one of the local cigar shops since it is one of the few fair priced Cubans you can buy that is also hand made. If you remember a little while back I reviewed the popular Guantanamera Cristales which is another budget Cuban brand, but it’s completely machine made. Feel free to take a read over that review before reading this one. You’ll notice a few key differences between the machine and hand made cigars.

Now a bit about the brand. Jose L. Piedra cigars grows their tobacco in the Vuelta Arriba region. The Piedra family originally comes from Spain and settled in Cuba back in the 1880’s. It wasn’t until the second generation that they began working in the tobacco business led by Jose Lamadrid Piedra. All of their cigars are made completely by hand and use short filler to help keep the prices reasonable.

Now there is some other interesting information on the brand as well. In 1990 the factory was temporarily shut down and did not start producing cigars again until 1996. After that time, most of the cigars were being machine made until about 2002 when the handmade process started again. So beware of someone trying to sell you really old versions of these cigars for expensive prices, they might be machine made stuff. Also, the white band you see here is on all post-2007 made cigars, before that it was a brown band. Now that’s enough chatter, let’s dive in!

Cigar: Jose L. Piedra
Drink: Cookies & Cream Coffee
Vitola: Brevas (5.2 x 42)
Wrapper: Cuban
Binder: Cuban
Filler: Cuban
Price: About $2.20
Burn Time: ~1 Hour

Construction:
• The Jose L. Piedra has a crazy rustic appearance to it with lots of veins and bumps as well as some discolorations here and there
• From cap to foot the whole cigar has a nice springy feel to it
• There does appear to be some small cracks in the wrapper, not sure if this is from when it was made or happened sometime in transit but the few that I’ve had did look similar here
• The triple cap has a pretty clean finish and is pretty much flat on top
• Even the foot looks to be well packed and cleanly cut
• The cut was extremely easy, the cap almost just fell off

Burn:
• The foot lit up pretty easily and with no effort, leaving be with a pretty even amber
• The wrapper on this cigar is barely burning for some reason, it keeps burning under the wrapper and requiring me to touch it up, already twice in less than an inch
• The wrapper continues to cause me some burn issues here but luckily my re-lights have not been affecting the flavor
• Re-lights plagued this cigar right through to the very end

Smoke & Ash:
• Not a ton of smoke on this cigar, requiring me to take in an extra couple of draws each time
• Tapped off the first ash at less than half an inch, it looked pretty weak and flaky and didn’t want it to end up on my laptop
• The color of the ash is mostly dark grey and some black, nothing to pretty here
• Smoke volume picked up a bit somewhere past the halfway mark, I think one of the cracks on the wrapper was letting the air escape on the draws
• The ash stayed dark and flaky, I had to keep tapping it off around a half inch

Tasting Notes:
• The smell on the wrapper is awesome, a very sweet coffee/cocoa mix
• From the foot, I’m getting the same awesome coffee and cocoa mix and now there’s a touch of cedar thrown in there
• The pre-light draw was full of sweet cedar
• Initial flavors here are mostly coffee and some cedar, I’m not getting any of the sweetness or cocoa I picked up on the wrapper
• The whole profile has been pretty mild so far with no spices at all
• Even on the retrohale I’m getting no bite, just a smooth coffee flavored finish
• The coffee flavors picked up a bit more around the halfway mark, making for a more interesting profile
• In the last half the coffee, cedar and sweetness remained as the main flavors and the body picked up a touch to near the medium mark
• The intensity of the coffee really started to shine through a bit more at this point
• There was no harshness or bitterness right down to the end

Final Thoughts:
I hadn’t had a Jose L. Piedra in a while but I always remembered them being pretty mild and that has not changed. Even with a bunch of relights from the wrapper burn issues, the flavor didn’t really get very charred. Although that’s a bit of a plus, I also am not a big fan of a cigar that requires so much extra attention. The flavors were pretty low key, being mostly just coffee and cedar with a bit of sweetness thrown in here and there. I have to mentioned that the Jose L. Piedra is probably one of the cheapest handmade Cubans you can find so they do make a good introduction into that world. This is probably a good option to share with someone who’s not an experienced smoker as they will definitely be able to pick up on the mild flavors, it’s even good as a morning cigar with your coffee.

Pairings:
Cookies and Cream Coffee, how could I pass that up when I saw it in the store? Cookies and Cream anything is usually awesome! Unfortunately I don’t have the name with me, we put the grinds into a resealable container and threw out the package, but I do know it was a white bag with a picture of an Oreo cookie on the front. The coffee itself is pretty mild so I always double up the scoops and it pours out a very nice smelling coffee. Darn tasty and it paired very well with this mild Jose L. Piedra. I think it’s probably the best pairing for this cigar.

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The name Guantanamera should be pretty easy for most people to recognize. It came from the title of a famous song by the Cuban composer, Joseito Fernandez in 1928. This was a hugely popular song around the world and very much became a representation of Cuba, especially during it’s push in the 1960’s. As for age of the brand, this is a fairly young cigar label as it was only introduced to the world in 2002. They were apparently available in Cuba for awhile before that, but no where else.

Location wise, the Guantanmera cigars get their tobacco from Vuelta Arriba, the second most important tobacco-growing region in Cuba. Every vitola in the line-up is referred to as “mecanizado” which simply means that they are machine made. This is where interest dies off to most aficionados. The fact that these are not hand-made makes them a sort of voodoo. But this also helps the Cuban market by offering a very low priced cigar that is still considered to be “Cuban” and it has actually been a pretty big success.

The obvious market here is people who just want to have a Cuban cigar but don’t want to spend a ton of money to try one. Also, they are touted as being very mild which also makes them appealing to newer cigar smokers. Now I do have a concern with the particular ones that I received. They were given to me as a gift and I’m not 100% sure of their authenticity. The band and packaging is definitely different from the ones I’ve seen in stores. But after some web searching, it seems a lot of European stores have the same pictures. It is possible the band is different or it’s changed recently but trying to find news about these seems pretty rare. Either way, lets see how it goes. And if anyone has had/seen this particular band/tube, I’d love to know if it was real or not.

Cigar: Guantanamera Cristales
Drink: Coffee
Vitola: Cristales (5.9 x 41)
Wrapper: Cuban?
Binder: Cuban?
Filler: Cuban?
Price: About $2 in Cuba
Burn Time: Just over an hour

Construction:
• This is a pretty rough looking cigar, lots of medium veins along with plenty of bumps and folds in the wrapper
• There is a perfect amount of spring to the cigar when you squeeze it
• The cap is actually pre-cut but it looks like it had a single layer cap on it
• The foot seems to have some gaps in the filler, not too tightly packed in there
• You would think they would draw test a pre-cut cigar but I guess not, I’m getting a pretty tight draw on this one and may need to cut if it doesn’t open up
• The draw seemed to open up on it’s own so I didn’t need to cut the cigar at all

Burn:
• Toasting the cigar was very quick and easy, no problems here at all
• Right off the bat you could see some really wacky burning going on, it was spiking up the wrapper like icicles
• Despite the sort of icicle spiking, the burn has actually been coming along fairly nicely, it keeps correcting itself without my help
• Through the first half I’ve had some good luck with no burn issues at all
• The rest of the cigar burned with no major problems at all

Smoke & Ash:
• The smoke coming off the Guantanamera Cristales is very very light and I’m needing to take a few draws to get a decent quantity here
• There is a light resting smoke from the cigar when I lay it in the ashtray, very woodsy aroma to it
• So far the ash is fairly clean, a bit messy but no flaking
• For the most part, the color of the ash has been a consistent dark grey
• I tapped off the ash just short of an inch, it’s a bit windy out here so I didn’t want it to end up on my laptop
• The smoke volume picked up a bit after the halfway mark
• Ash continued to be just short of an inch with a little bit flaking here and there

Tasting Notes:
• The wrapper has a touch of a woodsy aroma but I’m getting mostly a barnyard type of small
• The foot brings more of the barnyard aroma out, very much like hay
• On pre-light draw, I’m getting a mix of wood and some tarty sort of flavors
• The first few draws are giving me mostly woodsy flavors and a bit of a charred note, hoping that goes away
• You can immediately tell this is a mild cigar, it’s got very little punch to it
• Even on the retrohale I’m picking up no bite, but the smooth woodsy finish is nice
• Thankfully the charred flavor subsided but I haven’t really gotten much more than a light woodsy flavor through the whole first half
• Getting a bit more body as I pass the first half but we’re still only knocking at the door of the medium range
• I’m picking up a tad bit of white pepper and spices now, not too strong but enough to at least change the flavor a bit
• The spice kept on through the last bit but the woodsy flavors are still primary and getting pretty boring at this point
• The ending finished off pretty bland, the some woodsy flavors. Not bad, just got boring to me

Final Thoughts:
Now I’ll be honest, I came into this cigar with very low expectations. I know this isn’t a fancy or highly regarded cigar but I had to give it a try. To my surprise, it wasn’t terrible as I would have expected. Having said that, it wasn’t great either. What I did get from this is a mild and very one-dimensional cigar. For anyone that has had a few good cigars in their day they will find this terribly boring, But I can completely see the appeal of these cigars for the very occasional smoker. It’s very mild and has a soft profile that won’t scare away new smokers. It’s like the entry level/amateur cuban. And considering it is machine made, it actually burned quite well. So although I may not buy these myself, they are a pretty good gift or purchase for a new cigar enthusiast.

Pairings:
It’s coffee, nothing fancy here. It tasted like decent coffee. My wife made it and it was still hot, not even sure what beans she used but it tastes good. I prefer a really dark/strong coffee but this one was more of a medium roast for sure. Did it pair well? I’d say you can’t get much better. The very light/mild flavors of the Guantanamera Cristales went perfect with this lighter coffee, anything stronger and it would have drowned out the flavors even more. Might even suggest going for water or sparkling water as a good pairing if you really want to taste the few flavors this cigar has.

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