Flor de Baloney Robusto
Size: 5 x 52
Tobacco: Ecuador (Sumatra wrapper), fillers from Nicaragua, Honduras, DR
Price: $5.00

According to Lew Rothman, this was one of the worst experiments in JR Cigars history. I guess it was about 5 years ago, JR purchased a bunch of quality cigars from the Villazon factory in Honduras (supposedly these were firsts of Hoyo de Monterrey) and decided to sell them under the house name Flor de Baloney with the years 1890 and 1892 printed on the band. It was intended to be a not-so-subtle jab at the Rocky Patel Vintage 1990 and 1992 brands, since Lew claimed any cigar purporting to use tobacco that old was full of "baloney".

The cigars did not sell because of the ridiculous name. For years, I kept seeing them advertised in the quarterly catalogs; each issue the price dropped another 20%. I finally bought a bundle in Feb 2011 for $1.55/stick. Normally, I would have aged these cigars at least a year, but they turned out to be a great size for smoking during my evening mile walk with Kedron (although Michelle keeps saying it's not really exercise if I'm smoking a cigar. I don't know -- I'm not losing any weight, but it does seem to be helping my cardio; I don't get out of breath as fast as I used to).

Back to the cigars... they taste like HdM to me. Same flavor profile, good construction, I've noticed some variation in taste from stick to stick. Some are definitely full-bodied, while others are more medium. But I notice this same phenomenon in Punch cigars from the same factory.

This brand is discontinued. Too bad at this price...