Frank Llaneza 1961
rzaman
Everyone, Registered Users Posts: 2,604
Frank Llaneza was a cigar icon who came from Cuba and re-created many Cuban brands. Wall Street Journal once described him as "the last grand old man of the cigar business carried over from Cuba. He was the president of Villazon & Co. cigar which was started by his father in Tampa. He was trained by Angel Oliva how to select wrapper. He along with Angel Oliva who first came down to Central America growing Cuban seeds in Honduras. He started working with General cigar when they purchased Villazon. Later with Altadis USA and retired. All of those brands are owned by Scandinavians tobacco group who also own cigar International Inc. and some other famous online stores.
Besides 1961, his another popular brand is El Rey del Mundo. He also made non-cuban Hoyo, Punch, excalibur and many other blends. He devoted his entire life for the cigar industry. He took long time to create a cigar in his name. Finally, again the Oliva family provided him this extraordinary wrapper to create Frank Llaneza 1961.
Wrapper - Ecuadorian hybreed(with Sumatra) Criollo 98
Binder - Nicaraguan
Fillers - Dominican and Nicaraguan
After fire up, it starts with very smooth, cedar, mild leathery, earthy aroma. 1/3 mark, it releases mild spice tone with peppery flavor. All the way very balanced, smooth with long finish. At 2/3 mark, release sweet chocolate aroma with mild creamy espresso under tone. The smoke is thick with velvety texture. Perfect burning with equal release. Finaly, the cigar declares it's consistency and complexity with mixture of above all the aroma and flavor. This is a very enjoyable smoke and represent Frank's extraordinary blending skills. The $9 price tag is completely justifiable.
Sadly, this cigar legend passed away last year with a huge void in the entire cigar industry.
Comments
This cigar is amazingly smooth, falvorful and tasty. In fact, the only cigar Frank Llaneza put his name on it though he blended many brands in his life. few online stores offer this cigar. If you can't find it pm me. This cigar comes with six shapes but I like the Pyramid shape the best.
The fermentation of this wrapper has been secret but the wrapper went through triple fermentation process. Cuban Cohiba and Boliver use it. triple fermentation process is a difficult task. In a nutshell, after curing the tobacco leaves have all their potential locked inside. then the tobacco leaves are placed into a groups of 20-30 leaves called MANOS. The MANOS are stacked in large piles called PILONES. Inside the PILONES the temperature reached upto 120-125 degrees. This way, the inner leaves in PILONES generates most of the heat. They move them around to distribute the heat equally. These are all hand made process and the master blender use his judgements with instinct. basically, triple fermentation means rotates certain temperature three different times. I saw the process in Nicaragua. A minor misjudgment can kill the entire process.
Absolutely, Jim.
I had the opportunity to smoke one of these glorious cigars and it was great. Rip's review is spot on with the experience I had. I'd really like to find some more but the B&M I use is pretty mainstream and doesn't stock a lot of more obscure smokes.