CW Blind Review 2008 #2 Reyes Premier Perfecto

[TommyBB]

Reyes Premier Perfecto

NICE cigar.

The story of this atypical review necessarily begins in late 2007, when Frank Santos (Marketing Director for Reyes Family Cigars) sent me a cigar for a personal review. Frank told me only that this was a prototype blend for a new cigar line that Reyes Family Cigars (“RFC”) was in the process of developing. After resting the cigar for a few weeks, I took it with me on a business trip to Los Angeles, where I smoked it with fellow CW Moderator Mike Almazan (SLR). My impressions of the cigar were quite favorable, as were Mike’s (based on a few draws he took from it).

In January 2008, Frank sent me a box for a formal CW blind review. I removed the bands and sent two examples to each of our six reviewers. When I began getting feedback from these reviewers, I knew something was wrong. The reviews were almost totally negative, which, was NOT something I expected based on my impressions of the prototype. (One emailed comment accompanying the formal review was especially revealing: “Whatever those were, the army should decommission them. I smoked them on the gazebo and the bat in the rafters died.”) I then smoked one of the remaining samples, and was shocked to find that it was nothing like the prototype I’d smoked a couple of months earlier. It was, in fact, awful. So I called Frank and asked if they’d changed the blend or something.