*Note: This is not a blind review, this is just to give a quick take on a cigar that was provided to us by the manufacturer.
Reviewer: Aaron
Cigar Info
Saga is a brand from Corporación Cigar Export, which is run by the Reyes family. The naming of this line is very simple as the end result was from the 7th blend that they tried, so they applied the name to the cigar. The cigar has a Brazilian Cubra wrapper, Dominican binder and Central American and Dominican filler.
The Perfecto measures in at 6 ¼”x54 and has an MSRP of $7.49.
Initial Impressions
The cigar has a medium brown wrapper with some prominent veins. The seams are visible, but fairly tight. The aroma is light barnyard from the wrapper. Since the foot is almost completely closed, I wasn’t able to get any distinctive difference in aroma from it.
The Smoke
On the pre-light draw, I get a mix of tea and sweet tobacco. Upon lighting, I am getting a very mild coffee. The draw is a bit restricted due to the narrow foot. At about a half inch in, but still not past the initial taper, the coffee has transitioned into an oak flavor with a nice creaminess to the retrohale. As the cigar reaches the end of the taper, the draw opens up and the smoke production increases. The coffee begins to come back and mix in with the oak. Nearing the end of the third, the coffe had faded back out while the oak remained along with a slight char to it. The burn line started to skew right at one of the seams. I was hoping it would catch up, but the cigar actually went out at this point and required a relight which I also used as an opportunity to straighten out the burn line. I would put the body at medium and the strength at mild to medium.
The second third continues with the oak flavor and the creamy retrohale. The flavors are staying very consistent through this third. At about the halfway point, and underlying sweetness is now coming through on the retrohale. The burn began to really skew again and I chose to touch it up rather than see if it would self-correct. The sweetness goes away and the charred oak now picks up in the retrohale. At about a half inch left in the third, the charred oak mellows a bit on the retrohale. I would put both the body and strength at medium.
In the final third, the charred oak remains in the mouth flavor and the retrohale primarily consists of the oak without the char. As the third progresses, the char really fades back and leaves the oak flavor along with some creaminess on the retrohale. As the cigar gets close to the end, a bit of mintiness is starting to appear on the aftertaste. I would put the body at medium-full with the strength at medium.
Overall Impressions
The draw, as expected, was a little tight at the beginning due to the very small ring gauge at the start of this perfecto. Once the cigar reached the end of the initial taper, the draw became very good with just the right amount of resistance. The burn left a lot to be desired. On multiple occasions the burn skewed quite a bit and my attempt at letting it try to self-correct in the first third caused the cigar to go out. After that, I corrected it multiple times which prevented any further outages. The cigar was firm the entire length. With the burn issues experienced, the construction appeared to have a large part in this.
The cigar had some good flavors with only slight transitions. That is ok as the flavors kept things interesting. I was very surprised at the length of the smoking experience based on the size. The cigar just burned very slowly. I would be very interested in trying this cigar in the other vitolas to see if the burn issues and length changed. Based on this, I would say it’s worthwhile in giving it a try and if another go produced different smoking results, I could see upgrading the rating.
The cigar lasted 3 hours and 30 minutes for me.
I would give the Saga Blend No. 7 Perfecto a personal score of 85.
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