Tasting Note

It had been nearly a decade since Ashton Distributors Inc. released a new brand under the official Ashton label, but in 2014, the company decided the market was ready for Ashton Symmetry. The project was four years in the making and was blended by Carlos "Carlito" Fuente Jr. Like all Ashton-branded products, it's made in the Dominican Republic at Tabacalera A. Fuente y Cia.Each cigar is wrapped in a stunningly pristine, reddish brown leaf of Ecuadoran Habano, but the cigar owes its character to a series of specific farms—Chateau de la Fuente, Villa Gonzalez (both in the Dominican Republic) and a Fuente family farm in Nicaragua called Un Buen Vecino. This release marks the first time that an Ashton-branded cigar has ever incorporated Nicaraguan tobacco. The cigar was actually intended for an earlier release, but fires in Fuente's warehouses destroyed a lot of precious tobacco, some of which was set aside for the Symmetry project.The idea behind Symmetry is balance. Specifically balance between blending Nicaraguan and Dominican tobaccos, which could easily clash if not done skillfully, though blending can be as much, if not more, of an art as it is a science. Both creativity and textbook precision integrate quite elegantly here, as notes of nougat, toast, chicory and nuts blossom on the palate and stay interesting down to the robusto's last puff.