Quorum Shade Grown Tres Petit Corona: Can you get quality for under £5?

At the beginning of 2021, I set myself the challenge of finding the best budget cigars available in the UK. I split my list into three sections: Under £8, Up to £10 and Up to £12. Once published, fellow cigar smokers in the UK started mentioning other cigars that were eligible for one of the lists. The Quorum Shade Grown Tres Petit Corona was one of them. Having made a list of other budget cigars I restocked my humidor with the intention of seeing if any of them should have made my lists.

The Connecticut wrapper on the Quorum Tres Petit Corona was unblemished and a lovely even Colorado Claro colour. It felt evenly packed from head to foot and gave of subtle aromas of baking spices and light fruit cake. The cold draw was easy and creamy so I was optimistic about the experience I had ahead of me.

My first draws on this budget cigar were full of smoke. The flavour wasn’t very forthright, but I was able to pick up notes of lightly toasted hazelnuts, fresh grass, and hints of jalapeno peppers. Being a hand rolled, short filler cigar, I wasn’t expecting to be able to build up an impressive ash, but I was surprised at just how crumbly and messy the cigar was.

Smoking through the first third, I wasn’t exactly impressed by the cigar. There was a real bitter pepper flavour on the retrohale and the smoke, whilst voluminous, didn’t have the most pleasant feel in my mouth. A taste of burnt wholemeal toast was the most pervasive flavour most of the way through the middle portion of the cigar.

With the slight harshness to the overall flavour, I chose to pair this cigar with a Latte Martini. As the name might suggest, this was a creamy cocktail and both that, and the Amarula Cream I used in the cocktail, went a long way to counterbalancing the growing bitterness in the cigar.

I have something of a reputation as a slow smoker. When I smoked the Por Larranaga Petit Corona I managed to make it last two hours. By contrast, it only took me twenty minutes to get past the halfway point of the Quorum. It was in the final third that the cigar started to show its budget price. Despite giving it a blow-through, the overriding taste was that of bitter, burnt spices and singed meat.

Being honest, this wasn’t a cigar that I really wanted to spend quality time with. The smoke didn’t feel comfortable in my mouth and even after thoroughly cleaning my teeth afterwards, I was left with a bitter aftertaste. Throughout the smoke, I found flecks of tobacco on my lips, teeth and tongue. When I finally laid it to rest my smoking time was a measly forty minutes overall. I think that is a personal record for me! I can’t say that it is a cigar that I will ever want to smoke again, but I am glad I can say that I have.

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Quorum Shade Grown Tres Petit Corona Cigar Details