It’s a rainy day today, grey and bleak  and I am a little bit under the weather too. Luckily I have some notes lying around I can work with. Otherwise not actually a nice day to go out and have a smoke. But a nice day to put some Art Blakey on. I have A Night in Tunesia & Moanin’ to warm me up and write something about Le Hoyo du Maire.

Compared to the picture below, my Hoyo du Maire is much older. Just have a look below at the ancient box code. Mine is without band. Bands on the Hoyo du Maire were placed somewhere around 2005. Another difference that is very obvious is that my Hoyo du Maire is a lot darker than this one and looks less rustic. It looks a lot smoother. Another thing you don’t get from the picture below is how small it really is. For me it’s almost cigarette-size, and you will never believe how small the wooden box with 25 cigars is. It’s unbelievably cute! Today it comes in Sliding Lid Boxes (SLB’s) with 25 or 50 cigars or in cardboard pack’s with 5 cigars.

Hoyo de Monterrey Le Hoyo du Maire (30 x 100mm, Entreacto, Small Panatela, Box code FR NNSR)

Color & Looks: Maduro and looks very elegant and well-built. Oily.

A cru: Mocha, dry and chocolaty. Hints of paper and altogether mild.

Taste: Oily wrapper and salty on the lips. Just lit and it tastes immediately great. Very woody, but a great overall taste. The wood becomes a little bit sour but the cigar still has good balance. The draw and the smoke are good. It’s a sour-woody and spicy cigar. Ash is light grey with some whites. As often, ash has tiny white spots. It’s very thin so it is stronger than your usual Hoyo. A cigar to ‘sip’, otherwise it will burn too hot. Sometimes you do get small whiffs of…fireworks. The development is linear, still it does have a lot of character for such a small cigar. The draw diminished in the second half, but rolling it between my fingers solved this minor problem.

I don’t know how newer versions hold up to this, since this is really well aged. I can’t tell you what ageing did for this cigar untill I can taste a new one. I don’t think such a small cigar will have to age for a long time, to get to a decent level. In the end it seems somewhat stronger than Hoyo’s usually are, but this is never overpowering. Ideal very short smoke.

Points: 77