Montague Corona No. 1

Where do you begin with a cigar like the Montague Corona No. 1? I think that to do this cigar justice we have to begin with its origins. This cigar comes from a country that after the Second World War finally gained it’s independence after nearly three and a half centuries of Dutch colonial rule. Traditionally this country has traded with the world in spices and tobacco.

The Capital of Indonesia is Jakarta and is a country that consists of 17508 separate islands each with their own dialect and has an estimated population of around 237 million and the country shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Malaysia.

At first they found it very hard to launch their tobacco on to the market. Although the history is there, there isn’t the worldwide reputation that countries like Cuba or the Dominican republic have.
People said that it either tasted good but didn’t look nice or it looked nice but the taste wasn’t quite right. 

After a lot of work spanning little more than a decade, of which the first two years where disastrous their cultivation had grown to 750 acres of Besuki TBN shade-grown and another 250 of Connecticut shade when they finally struck success. All of a sudden every one waned their wrapper leaves and the boom in the U.S. lead their expansion in to overdrive. At a time there wouldn’t have been enough rappers on the market without the Indonesian production.

Even when at the end of the 1980s, Consolidated Cigar had problems with their Cameroon wrapper crop even they turned to the Besuki TBN shade-grown harvest for their rappers. That combined with the collapse of a major producer of Brazilian wrappers meant that within five years the Indonesian wrapper went from rare to commonplace on the American market especially in the premium cigar sector, where it had remained absent since the Second World War unlike many European countries.

While at the time there was no such thing as an Indonesian cigar Swedish Match took the leap in 1993 and started to develop the country's first, not due to lack of trying significant premium long filler production at their factory in Pandaan near the city of Surabaya.
This cigar was to carry the name Montague.

Swedish Match at the time was the second largest cigar manufacturer in the world and therefore had the resources and commitment to bring the project to fruition. They quickly set about seizing the opportunity before them and started making full use of everything Indonesia had to offer. However none of the work force, which consisted almost entirely of woman, had ever rolled a cigar and so they hired some of the best to teach them. They flew in two of the top Cuban cigar rollers of the time who upon seeing the workforce stated that the small female hands couldn’t roll a long filler and needed some serious persuasion before they set to work. Needless to say most of the top Cuban Torcedors nowadays are female but we are talking about more than two decades ago.

After only three months the Indonesian rollers where even rolling such quality cigars that they surpassed what even a Cuban Torcedor with a years worth of training is capable of rolling. The first year after the launch on the US market Swedish Match employed 400 hundred people of which three quarters where employed as rollers who rolled cigars in the traditional Cuban method.

The result was a huge success and the cigar was welcomed by many cigar lovers. The fledgling Montague brand even got huge recognition when in the fall edition of Smoke magazine they received a 4.4 rating which at the time the third-highest in the book.

This is where my cigar for today comes from. What I have here is a very fine example of Montague’s Corona No. 1. The cigar isn’t entirely straight but this isn’t going to put me off. I don’t know if it’s my excitement for this cigar but I think it looks great. The cover has a beautiful colour and although it looks slightly dry it doesn’t feel it.

The cut is good, straight and easy. The cigar begins with a very strong hay pre-draw with a hint of nuttiness. The cigar lights easily and the first few puffs are soft and mellow.The strong hay aroma is still there and I can still taste a hint of that nuttiness from before.

Straight away though the cigar refuses to burn straight. At first this doesn’t seem like a problem as a lot of Cubans don’t burn straight either and I’m pretty sure they do this on purpose to make the ash look mire interesting. However this does turn out to be the main major flaw in the Montague’s arsenal and I sadly find m self having to correct this more than once.

Slowly but surely this cigar starts to throw some spice in the mix. Not the sharp spice you get on some cigars and definitely nothing that in any way even vaguely resembles coffee. The aroma sits gently on the tip of your tongue. Like the taste of the air in a foreign spice market. Truly a delight 
for the senses. Steadily the cigar becomes spicier but retains its soft and creamy nature. Though this smoke took me well over an hour it seemed to fly by whilst I sat engrossed in my thoughts. I have to remember to make notes because this cigar really has the complexity to take your mind off the world and just sit and enjoy.

This smoke is enjoyable till the very end and although it left me some what light headed I find my self savouring the creamy after taste for hours. I really wish I had more of this smoke. This I fear will be very hard.

Not only was this the last one that my local shop “Van Toor cigar enjoyment” had of this smoke and was it also more than ten years old. Sadly due to an approximately $270 million take over of General Cigar Holdings the Montague brand was found to be competing with some of their newly aquatinted brands, including but not least Macanudo and therefore resigned from service round the end of the last century.

Montague
Corona No. 1
184 mm / 50 standard rg