San Lotano Oval

Initial Thoughts

I still have not been able to find the San Lotano Oval on my local B&M’s shelves. I think this cigar is rather difficult to come by judging by all the internet chatter out there. Luckily this was sent to me in trade from my pals over at r/cigars! When I got this cigar in my trade I didn’t know to think about it. Honestly, I had never heard of it. So I left it in my humidor for a couple weeks waiting to give it a try. I gave this cigar a once over and wasn’t blow away by the packaging or the band. I was however intrigued by the shape.   A true oval shape kind of had built up some mystery in my mind as to what this cigar would unveil.

Looks

As I said from an initial look at the San Lotano Oval  I wasn’t blown away. I don’t know if I’m just getting too jaded with cigar packaging or if I wasn’t a big fan of the color combination. The band has a dominate black background that is trimmed in gold. The bottom margin of the band has a reddish/orange ribbon overlayed with a yellow ribbon that serves as the backdrop to A.J. Fernandez’s brand. Above this the lettering depicts the name of the cigar San Lotano Oval. Even as I’m writing this I still can’t figure out what about the band I don’t particularly like.

The Habano wrapper looks beautiful though. A nice dark brown in color, and velvety all the way down to the foot. The oils just shine off of this thing and I can tell that a lot of attention was paid to the tobacco. When I look at the foot the wrapper looks very thick on this cigar. Also when I look at the foot I can really tell why it’s called the San Lotano Oval. It’s similar to a box pressed cigar, but obviously more rounded. I tried snapping a couple of pics of the foot, but they didn’t turn out so you’ll just have to take my word that it’s an oval shape.

Function

I’m always a little leery when it comes to new shapes and rolling techniques with cigars. I know box pressed cigars have been around for awhile, but I’ve yet to see an oval before. So when I began examining the San Lotano Oval I made sure to give it a thorough rolling between my index finger and thumb to test how well it was constructed. I was delighted to find that the filler didn’t contain any soft spots in fact it was rather firm. Not much give at all. That of course initially worried me that there might be an issue with the draw.

I took a look at the head of the cigar and it looks as if the San Lotano Oval has a triple cap on it. I could see two distinct lines and in certain areas of the head there was a faint line, so I’m just going to say it’s a triple cap. I tried a new cutting style with my double guillotine. I laid the cutter down on a flat surface and tried to pinch the blades together to give myself a nice even cut. Talk about total and complete #CigarCutterFail. I picked this little trick up from Ben over at Nice Tight Ash, so I’m just going to blame him for it. I was however able to prove to myself that the wrapper was fairly thick. When I went to cut it again, my cutter had some trouble getting through it, and usually it slices through cigars like … butter? Anyway, the dry draw on the San Lotano Oval was wonderful. It was a little snug, but I prefer it that way so I don’t choke myself up when I’m lighting it! Speaking of lighting it, lets get to that so I can begin enjoying this cigar.

Smoking

I got some fantastic new matches the other day at an Oliva event here in Nashville. They are NUB matches and they seriously have the best striking surface that I have even seen with a set of matches. So of course I used my zippo lighter to torch this thing up. I kid I kid, I got this San Lotano Oval lit with just one match! Imagine what I could do with 20 matches, I could probably light 20 cigars! Right away this cigar starting burning like champ. The burn line was straight as an arrow who’s flight path was laser guided , yeah pretty freaking straight!

I ran into a little bit of trouble half way through the first third on this stick. It started to canoe on me just a bit, but I refrained from touching it up and it evened itself out. I was so glad there wasn’t any wind tonight it allowed me to really bask in the smoke that this cigar was putting out. It was a fairly thick white smoke and when I exhaled the and it just bellowed out nice and slow. It was quite enjoyable and it made me feel quite dignified. I burned the San Lotano Oval fairly far down the stick. I laid it to rest with almost an inch left. It was getting dark, I was getting hungry and I had been smoking this thing for an hour and a half already. I guess I’m a really slow smoker when I do these reviews. Which is a good thing for you all. Nothing too crazy happened while smoking this, it was a very balanced cigar that smoked incredibly well.