Cigar Aficionado’s review: From Cigar Aficionado’s February 2001 review of Arturo Fuente Flor Fina 8-5-8 (rated a Best ): An oily wrapper. It’s solid, with a good burn and draw. It’s light, floral and almost minty, with notes of ginger, cinnamon and coffee.
My review:
I first smoked an Arturo Fuente 8-5-8 cigar during my first Navy ship tour, in 2001. Being on an aircraft carrier, I was the ship’s officer, which meant that I was in charge of three stores, serving over 5,000 people during our six-month deployment. My right-hand man, who was in charge of ordering all of our supplies, had ordered a LOT of cigars, especially Arturo Fuente cigars. My storeroom had cases of different brands of cigars (each case has up to 50 boxes). It is not an exaggeration to say that I had over 10,000 cigars in my inventory. After a while, it became apparent that we would have too many cigars upon the end of our deployment, so we had a .
My supply clerk told me, “We need to mark these cigars down dramatically so that we can move them quickly.” I told him, “Don’t worry about it. I can mark down every cigar brand.” I marked all of the cigar brands to a third of the price, and we moved a lot of those cigars very quickly. In fact, quite a few of the Arturo Fuente cigars made it into my stateroom (at the same price that everyone else paid—no specials for me).
One of these cigar brands was the Flor Fina 8-5-8. I had bought 3 boxes, since I had marked them down to ridiculous prices (about for a box, which normally went for , and can go for almost 0 today). My roommates and I decided to have a cigar a few nights afterward, and they tasted really good. I can’t describe what Fuente 8-5-8 tasted like for the first time, but I do know two things. First, I had never smoked a Fuente cigar, but became a diehard Fuente fan that night. Second, almost 10 years later, I still have a box of Arturo Fuente 8-5-8’s in my humidor (a different box, though).
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Written by fbaum818
Family man
