Romeo y Julieta is a Cuban cigar brand that I’ve never really taken too.  The only one I’ve ever really enjoyed was the Churchill.  Even the Edicion Limitadas didn’t really appeal to me.  Romeo y Julieta also has never had a robusto in their regular line up until the Short Churchill was introduced in 2006.  The only one before that was a Edicion Limitada in 2001.  Since the robusto is probably the most popular vitola, the introduction of the Short Churchill was no surprise.  The only other vitolas that are close are the Exhibicion and Hermoso lines, but neither of them are true robustos.

• Vitola:  Robusto/Short churchill
• Size:  4.8″ x 50
• Wrapper:  Cuban
• Binder:  Cuban
• Filler:  Cuban
• Date Code:  ORG SEP 16
• MSRP:  $7.16 per single/Box of 25 $179/ Set of 15 Tubos $149 (current prices at iHavanas)

Appearance

The Short Churchill’s wrapper has a smooth, but slightly rustic appearance.  The cap looks ok, but I’ve seen better.  It looks like it has hastily applied.  After clipping the cap, the draw is very good.  It has notes of cedar, hay and mushrooms.

First Half

The cigar starts of with notes of cedar, leather, honey, dry cocoa and hay with a slight saltiness.  The slight saltiness makes all the other flavors really pop.   The cedar, honey and dry cocoa notes make up the framework of the cigar with the leather and hay notes coming in as an accent.  The body is mild-medium with generous smoke production.

Last Half

On the last half, the cigar didn’t change much in the types of flavors, but in which ones were more dominate.  The cedar note is a main note with the honey, but the dry cocoa note is now more bitter like dark chocolate.  A coffee note has developed near the end.  The cigar moved more into a medium body.

Conclusions

This cigar is pretty young being made in 2016.  i prefer to age my Cuban cigars for at least 5 years, but I know most people don’t like to wait that long hence this review.  The cigar has good flavor, even young, but I can see aging this cigar would make it a lot better.  The cigar started out with a nice bouquet of flavors, but was a little rougher near the end.  Even with that, I think these are really good cigars young.  Like most Cuban cigars, I prefer to smoking much drier than cigars from the DR, Nicaragua or Honduras.  I don’t have anything scientific to back me up on this, but when I smoke them at a higher relative humidity than 62 percent they gets spongy and have a slight sour note.  The first one of these I smoked right out of my humidor, which is set to 67%, smoked wet outside in our Florida high humidity.  These are quality cigars, one which I will put in my permanent rotation, and will age.  Check these out if you ever get a chance.