Rocky Patel Sungrown

This review has been a long time coming, but I just hadn’t gotten around to smoking the Rocky Patel Sun Grown Torpedo sitting in my humidor for the past four months. Fortunately, the side effect of procrastination is one an appropriately aged cigar. As a self-described fan of Rocky Patel cigars, I was definitely looking forward to giving this one a try.

This cigar features a 5-year old Ecuadorian sun grown Sumatra leaf with a Nicaraguan binder and a blend of Dominican & Nicaraguan filler. According to Rocky, the Sun Grown is a medium to full-bodied cigar and by just looking at the rich, oily wrapper I suspect I’ll agree with his assessment. The torpedo is 6.25″ long and sports a substantial 52 ring guage. The cigar features the traditional double band setup Rocky uses on nearly all of his cigars, but this one features wrappers that are bold with a vibrant red and gold color scheme.

This cigar is nicely wrapped with a good solid feel in your hands. The best word that came to mind while holding, cutting and lighting the cigar was “tight”, but the draw was anything but. The resistance through the cigar was well measured. The light went well and the burn started off a little on the uneven side at first, but settled in to a good clean burn. The smoke was cool and quite thick and creamy. The ash seemed thick and dense and seemed to hold on to the stick for dear life. Immediately upon lighting, this cigar has some punch. The flavor is a little on the strong side, but not so much as to turn me off. It starts off with quite the pepper kick, but settled down a third of the way in and switched rather smoothly to a nice nutty taste. The finish was decidedly milder in flavor than it was in the beginning, but it did start to get a little hot near the end. The cigar lasted a lot longer than I expected and I was in a little bit of a rush at the end, so I’d probably chalk that up to me.

The Rocky Patel Sun Grown Torpedo cigar is, like Rocky says, a good medium to full-bodied cigar. I like my cigars right smack dab in the middle and the Sun Grown is on the strong side of medium and would go great after a nice steak dinner. At $5 to $6 per stick, the Sun Grown is a reasonable priced cigar and one I would recommend to anyone who likes their cigars with a little kick.

Tags:dominican, nicaraguan, rocky patel, sumatra, sun grown