Sometimes, when a company makes a larger version of a successful cigar, the blend doesn’t scale up properly and it loses some of the elements that made it great in the first place. Not here. The Montecristo 1935 Anniversary Nicaragua Espeso is a bigger, thicker representation of the brand, not only capturing all the coffee bean, earth and spicy notes of the original sizes, but actually enhancing them. The blend was conceived by Rafael Nodal of Altadis U.S.A. and Nicaraguan cigarmaker A.J. Fernandez as a tribute to the 80th anniversary of the iconic brand. Together, they struck gold with a rich, powerful cigar worthy of the Montecristo name. Accolades piled up quickly, including high scores in our blind tastings and the No. 2 spot in 2021’s Top 25 (for the No. 2 size). A few years after the brand’s release, Altadis added its first addition to the line—the Espeso. The word translates to “thick” in Spanish, because that’s exactly what this cigar is. It’s big, it’s box-pressed, it’s chunky and it’s delightful. It’s also proof that you can indeed enlarge a cigar without diluting its properties. In this case, you might even be making it a little better.—Gregory Mottola

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