Top Cigars: A 19th Century Echo

(CigarCyclopedia) One dictionary’s definition of the word “throwback” reads: “reversion to an ancestral or earlier type or character.” That’s a good way to describe Top Cigars, a boutique cigar maker on Southwest 8th Street in Miam, celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2010. There is nothing especially flashy about Top Cigars. In fact, their presentation is right out of the 19th Century. No bands. No cellophane. No elegant logos or lacquered boxes. No samplers. And the company doesn’t even sell its cigars on its own Web site. Their cigars, in five styles and all in larger sizes, only come in simple, wooden chests of 100. All of the tobacco is, reportedly, grown in the Dominican Republic and rolled by Cuban expatriates. Too good to be true? Maybe. But the only way to tell is to try them, so we did. We checked out four of its blends – Connecticut, Criollo, Criollo Maduro and Havana 2000 – to see if the plain packaging was “hiding” some gems: Continued