The Particulars

The Review

This review for the Arturo Fuente Fuente Fuente OpusX Destino al Siglo Scorpio Maduro - Toro (Box Press) (5.75 x 56) is based on the journal entry dated 2025-04-04

Appearance & Construction (0-3):  Good (3)

A soft box press on this one, just squaring off the edges. But this wrapper is dark, oily, well mottled, and has a ton of light brown tooth on it with a lot of color variation on the leaf itself. There are a number of noticeable veins, but they’re pushed into the cigar. It has a rough texture and feels firmly packed. The dual bands are ridiculously over the top, but they’re high quality. Aesthetically, the OpusX line is for the guy with the oversized watch and designer labels where everything is a flex. 😅

Draw (0-3) & Burn (0-4):  Good (3) / Great (4)

The draw is great, and the burn starts a little uneven. It takes slightly more effort to get the foot evenly toasted. So the burn starts very wavy and creates a medium gray ash. There are oil crystals in the ash, but you can only see them under close inspection. The ash is holding on well, but curving and feathering as the burn progresses. It ends up holding on until the final third. Another great burn, as the burn line had fully evened out by then as well. 🔥

Flavor Profile (0-5):  Great (4)

The first puffs are straight earth, barnyard, and chocolate. The chocolate flavors quickly develop a dark chocolate bitterness to them and are met by dark fruit, raisin-y sweetness. There’s a little baking spice but no pepper in the first inch. Toasty bread flavors round out the beginning of the smoke.

Getting to the end of the first third, a mild pepper appears and the baking spice increases. This is still a very musty, earth and barnyard-heavy blend at this point. At roughly the halfway point, the spice levels have crept up to broaden the flavor, but this is still pretty medium-bodied thus far. As the smoke wraps, the spice has faded and it’s back to mostly being earth and barnyard with dark chocolate. Not a lot of transition or extra flavors, but a treat if you like heavy barnyard as it’s a smooth and creamy smoke.

Overall Experience (0-5):  Great (4)

If you like barnyard, this is a great cigar for you. If you don’t, well, you won’t find it outside of the CRA sampler so you won’t have missed anything. 😅 But I’m good with barnyard and found it enjoyable. For what I paid to get it in the 2024 CRA Freedom Sampler, it was a good value. But when I see what this and so many of the less common OpusX cigars sell for, I certainly wouldn’t pay street price for this. I don’t need to flex that badly. 😅

Review Base Rating (0-5):

4.50

Would I Buy It Again?

Reply hazy, try again (just ok, the juice isn't worth the squeeze)

Review Final Score (0-10):

8.00

Overall Score and Individual Journal Entries

While the review is based off one instance of journaling this cigar; there’s a number of reasons you can have different experiences smoking the same cigar multiple times. A blend can evolve with age (for better or worse), palates evolves, preferences change, and sometimes you just get a bad example!  This section captures the ratings from each journal entry and the related journal photo.  Below you’ll find an aggregate score based on every time the cigar has been journaled. Unless it was a gift or on-off smoke, this section will be updated every time I journal this cigar!

The Flavor Wheel

With every cigar I journal, I capture simple ratings of the basic flavor categories that I experience.  These are more generalized than what you would see in a review, but a distinct profile can still be built out.  When multiple instances of the same cigar have been journaled, the scores are averaged out in an attempt to build a reliable flavor profile based on my palate.

The values entered for the strength of each flavor range from 0 to 3.

• 0:   No flavor detected
• 1:   Mild flavor
• 2:   Medium flavor
• 3:   Strong flavor

Note: desktop / large screens will see a flavor wheel while mobile / small screens will see a bar chart.

With every cigar I journal, I capture simple ratings of the basic flavor categories that I experience.  These are more generalized than what you would see in a review, but a distinct profile can still be built out.  When multiple instances of the same cigar have been journaled, the scores are averaged out in an attempt to build a reliable flavor profile based on my palate.

The values entered for the strength of each flavor range from 0 to 3.

• 0:   No flavor detected
• 1:   Mild flavor
• 2:   Medium flavor
• 3:   Strong flavor

Note: desktop / large screens will see a flavor wheel while mobile / small screens will see a bar chart.