Casa Turrent 1880 Series Double Claro: Another great claro wrapper?

Continuing my voyage into claro wrappers, the Casa Turrent 1880 Series Double Claro has been on my list of cigars to review since May 2021 when it was Cigar Club LDN’s cigar of the month. This also happened to be only the second time that I had spent time with other cigar smokers when I ventured to a club meet-up in London – but that is a whole other story. Most other people chose to smoke the cigar right then and there that afternoon, but I decided to keep mine for when I could properly focus on it, and I’m very glad I did.

The Casa Turrent 1880 Series Double Claro looked like it had been wrapped in a milky coffee coloured insect’s wing. There were small veins tracing a delicate web around it making it a very attractive looking cigar. The foot gave off aromas of light marshmallow and milky tea and once cut, the draw was very easy.

My first experience of the hot draw was filled with breakfast tea and black cardamom. Right from the get-go, the smoke was rich, lingering and aromatic. Having smoked my way through the first third I was greeted by a flavour that I hadn’t encountered in a cigar before: alongside the over-brewed tea and dry tannins, there was a dry green flavour that reminded me of under ripe bananas or plantain. I also noted a distinct cedar smell form the smoke that was not present in the taste.

For my drink pairing, I decided that the slightly sticky smoke needed a drink with a good amount of citrus to cut through it, but also a hint of sweetness to balance out the dryness of the tannins in the cigar. The cocktail that sprang to mind was a Limoncello Martini. This lovely combination of Limoncello liqueur and gin was further enhanced by my choice of Whittakers Camomile Lawn Gin. As expected, the paring worked really well. I doubt that the 1880 Series Double Claro would have paired quite as well with a standard bar drink .

By the time I had reached the middle third of the Casa Turrent cigar, I had been going a very pleasurable half hour. The flavour didn’t really change during the first half of the cigar, but the cedar aromas were joined by the distinct smell of a damp woodlands in late autumn after all the leaves have dropped and are gradually mulching down. Towards the final third, the black cardamom started to reassert it’s presence signalling that the cigar was going to change character in the final third.

I wasn’t wrong about a complete change of character in the final third. All previous flavours disappeared to be replaced with a real bitterness. A couple of blow throughs did clean up the flavour, but I was still left with a strong iodine and saline flavour reminiscent of an Islay single malt. Now I happen to like the occasional glass of Islay with certain cigars, but I didn’t find this taste at all appetising within the Casa Turrent 1880 Series Double Claro. It wasn’t long into the final third that I decided that I’d had enough of the cigar and laid it to rest in my ashtray without reaching for my daggers.

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Casa Turrent 1880 Series Double Claro Cigar Details