🔥 Buy 5-Pack 🔥

Unlit Impressions

Rectangularly pressed, and looking rather dashing, the robusto version of this premium cigar blend is visually striking on all sides. Carhartt khaki-colored and lightly oiled, the wrapper on the outside is soft to the touch and shows little tooth and medium amounts of mottling. Honey, apricots, and graham crackers are the main aromatic mixture, and are mouthwatering at the very least. 

Whiffs off the foot are more of a baking spice and baked nut mixture, and are light, clean, and not a bit spicy or pepper-powered. This allows aromatics of crushed cardamom and cinnamon to show themselves, along with a light ginger and honey white tea mixture for those in search of a touch of tannin. 

Like most Sumatran cigar blends, chai tea touches the tongue first once the finely fitted cap is cut, and in this case it is more of a diluted light afternoon cup and not very spicy at first. Deeper cold pulls provide punches of vanilla, almond, light leather, and more graham cracker, and as the mixed tannin tea assortment slowly fades a spicy undertone hidden beneath the surface slides forth. All told, a very impressive series of lighter unlit impressions that is only improved by the aesthetic appeal of Artista Cigars' rebranded packaging design. 

Initial Smoke

Traditional tastes of honey and milk fortified chai tea setting the pace, a sweet and dry mixture of sticky resins and light leather lift the mood. Retrohales are a good tick darker and lend themselves to thoughts of last year's garden bed, freshly turned after a winter's slumber. The finish is salty and slightly spicy, with more of that mixed tea tannin touch lingering until a medium stopping point is reached. 

1st Half   

Significantly more leather-like and leaning toward a hardwood tannin taste that isn't easily identifiable in regard which genus of tree is present, the lighter side of this Sumatran cigar scores high marks for its first third. Part of the reason for this is the mixture of dried pineapple and mango fruits, which along with the little bit of apricot still hanging about deliver a delicious diversion from the leather and wood when needed.

Medium on all measurable scales, things get a bit grassy, earthen, and funky for a moment closer to the start of the second third, with that perfect draw returning the perfect amount of smoke each pull. But this taste of South American and Caribbean farm life is soon overshadowed by streams of Sumatran mixed spices, and a much stronger cardamom and cinnamon top note. This is both a transition and a reprisal, and it works really well at keeping you interested and your palate appeased. 

2nd Half 

While the woodiness and tannins choose to stick about for a bit longer, they take on a new role on retrohales, as a faint potpourri and dried cedar wood mixture moves in. This scent can also be detected by third parties who happen to be nearby, as the aromatics of the cigar send this recognizable medley of aromas into the air.

Flavor-wise, almost everything found in the first half of the cigar seems to want to stick around. Outside of the addition of some roasted almonds, and things growing darker and spicier in the final third  there isn't much being added to the flavor wheel. Removed are the tastes of dried fruits, leaving a grassy, earthy, and chalky retrohale and finish in place of a slightly sweet tropical taste. This gradually becomes a bit astringent the further down you go, and I found myself frequently reaching for my beverage to counter these sensations and flavors. 

Parting Puffs

Peppery and brash, parting puffs do away with all spiced tea subtleties and refreshing flavors for a finishing section that is spicy, dry, unsweetened, and tasting of ripped cardboard. Sadly, this potent concoction prevented me from proceeding further each time I smoked this blend, thus cutting my smoking time short by at least ten minutes or so. 

Ash / Burn / Smoke / Draw

One of the most impressive points of this cigar is its draw and the level of smoke it provides. It's a pity that this is overshadowed by excessive touch-ups and all of the dropped ash, which I encountered two of each on my review stick. The blend also burned fairly quickly, even though it did not feel underfilled. All of these issues I noted on the other cigars I smoked prior to my review, regardless of environment or humidity level.  

Final Thoughts 

It seems that more and more often a perfectly good cigar review gets thrown under the bus by a bad burn. Focusing on assessing cigar flavor profiles and aromatics should be the primary focus, and not fretting over a sudden construction snafu or combustion catastrophe. Yet here we are once again talking about the same unfortunate series of events that we have seen becoming increasingly common in the premium cigar arena.

At its very best, the Artista Harvest holds high marks for its lighthearted dried fruit, mixed spiced tea, and tannin-touched first half, which in my opinion was its crowning moment. But things devolve the further down you go, and while the flavors found in much of the second half weren't unpleasant, they were not all that special either. 

This is all tarnished by the charred tastes and ill-tempered astringent impressions in the tail end of the final third and the entirety of parting puffs. Where surely all of those touch-ups and uneven combustion issues have reduced a very nice little boutique cigar blend into a smoldering stub of a hot mess. 

Hopefully you do not encounter these issues that I have come across each time, and are able to get a far more complete smoking session from start to finish. As for me, I will continue to recommend this blend for its strikingly good aesthetics, unlit impressions, near-perfect first half, and dialed-in draw. But only with a word of caution added afterward.

Stogie Specs