The Particulars

The Review

This review for the Montecristo M - Toro (6 x 52) is based on the journal entry dated 2025-04-18

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

The wrapper feels soft like fine velvet, belying the sheer firmness of the roll that jumps out at you immediately upon picking it up. It’s a nice cardboard tan, completely lacking the sickly yellowish hue I see in a lot of lower-tier Ecuadorian Connecticuts. There are some spots—maybe from the age—because they definitely don’t look like standard mottling. I guess cigars can get liver spots, too. 😅

There aren’t any heavy oils or mottling here; just a very light sheen that gives it a satin glow under the right lighting. The veins are few and thin as well. Accordingly, the seams are excellent and the triple cap is clean and even. And it had damn better be at this price! 😅 The dual bands are noticeably nicer quality than your run-of-the-mill Monte.

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

The draw is spot-on, offering just the right touch of resistance. The burn starts crooked but quickly settles in and evens out nicely. What’s disappointing is that there’s some slight tunneling of the ash, and it’s already starting to split in the first inch. It’s a medium-dark gray ash that generates a good amount of thick smoke. I’m getting the feeling the ash is going to be incredibly fragile because it quickly starts to curve and develop cracks before getting through the first third, but surprisingly, it’s holding on. And naturally, right as I go to take a photo, it gracefully rolled right off into my lap… 😅 The burn line is dead-nuts straight, but it predictably needed a relight after dropping the ash.

Flavor Profile (0-5):  Average (2)

Immediate, strong pepper on the very first draw. When the hype is entirely built around a 20-year-old wrapper leaf, I definitely didn’t expect an immediate roundhouse of pepper. Cedar woodiness, peanut shells, white bread, and baking spice are also immediately present. There’s some citrusy zest to the sweetness and a salty mineral flavor in the mix as well. You generally don’t expect a Connecticut to give you this much mouth tingle. 😳

And just like that, the pepper bomb was gone. What was left was a mix of malty, espresso, and peanut shell chalkiness. Really? 🤔 It’s the plot twist you didn’t expect. But as things progress, instead of realizing that Bruce Willis has been dead the whole time, you find out it’s all been a hallucination and Donnie Wahlberg is grinding him in his tighty-whities. Awkward and wildly disappointing. It is Bland City in the middle of this cigar, leaving a chalky aftertaste. It is creamy and smooth, and I’m not getting any bitter or harsh notes, but it’s still very heavy on the white bread and accented entirely by those mineral notes. While the creaminess is strong, it’s not rich and buttery; it’s chalky and a little salty.

The final third improves, bringing back more of the woodiness, baking spice, and sweetness. The chalky aftertaste finally died off and some of the citrus sweetness returned. I’m also genuinely surprised to be getting a strong nicotine hit as I’m wrapping the cigar up. Holy shit, I need to go lay down. 😅

Overall Experience (0-5):  Average (2)

It started off with a very strong Nicaraguan vibe, but by the midpoint, it felt entirely generic and bland. That would be forgivable if it was more budget-oriented, but absolutely fuck no at this price point. I want complexity, flavor, and nuance, and I just wasn’t getting that here. Even at its absolute highest points, it wasn’t a profile that justified a $35 price tag; it would’ve been a solid $15 to $20 cigar if it had been consistent. Still, even at that lower price point, the bland midsection would’ve been highly disappointing.

Usually, the AJF cigars made for Altadis are very good, but this one completely missed the mark. I wonder if Altadis dictated the exact blend or artificially limited the costs of the rest of the leaf because they spent so much on the wrapper. Whatever the reason, this one just didn’t come together as you would hope.  I guess M does stand for “Miss” on this one. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Postscript

2026-May-21:  It had been over a year since I smoked my first M. That cigar was really disappointing given the price, and I kept putting off coming back to the second one. The second didn’t have that immediate pepper blast; it was very woody and creamy to start, but then the black pepper came back swinging, hitting the back of my soft palate. The overall profile was incredibly similar, with strong flavors of peanut shells, white bread, and cedar, accented by strong spice and medium citrus flavors, but it still feels completely unbalanced. Yeah, it’s very creamy, but it still gets aggressively chalky at times. This one was more consistent with the profile throughout the burn, but this is a surprisingly black-pepper-heavy cigar at times.

I feel the need to reiterate: this isn’t a bad cigar, but you can buy cigars at half the cost that provide similar, but far better-balanced flavor profiles. I’m not against expensive cigars, just ones that don’t offer a premium experience to match the price.

So if you want an elevated experience with an Ecuadorian Connecticut wrapper, buy the Avowed New Dawn or the Principle Martinique. Hell, you can buy both for the cost of one Montecristo M and still have money left over. Don’t waste your money here.

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.