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Learn · WrappersCorojo Wrapper
Corojo is a Cuban-born wrapper seed with a spice-first reputation... chased out of Cuba by disease, and thriving today in Honduras and Nicaragua.
Where it comes from
Corojo was bred at the El Corojo farm in the Vuelta Abajo, Cuba's most famous tobacco region, and through the middle of the 1900s it wrapped Cuban cigars. It had one fatal flaw: almost no resistance to disease. Blue mold in particular kept wrecking crops, and by the 1990s Cuba had retired the original in favor of tougher lab-bred hybrids... names like Corojo 99 and Habano 2000 that keep some of the character with more of the immune system.
The seed itself didn't die, it moved. Cuban expatriate growers replanted corojo in the Jamastran Valley of Honduras, where the Eiroa family became its best-known champions, and it's grown in Nicaragua as well. That Honduran valley is now the address most associated with the leaf.
What it's like
Spice is the calling card. People describe black pepper, leather, cedar, and earth, usually medium-full and up, with a honeyed sweetness that shows more in Honduran-grown leaf. On the wrapper scale it tends to live in the reddish-brown colorado band rather than the extremes. Compared with its cousin habano, corojo is the more focused, pepper-forward smoke; criollo plays rounder and softer than either.
The hybrid asterisk
"Corojo" on a band can mean the original seed line or a modern hybrid like Corojo 99 bred for disease resistance. Both are legitimate tobacco; they just aren't identical. Brands rarely specify, so treat the word as a flavor direction rather than a birth certificate. The full wrapper spectrum has the same problem in miniature everywhere... names describe styles more often than they describe paperwork.
You'll see it on
The Asylum 13 Corojo Robusto is corojo with the pedigree: a Honduran puro wearing wrapper grown on the Eiroa family's farm in the Jamastran Valley. WSA rated it a Five-Pack (3/4).
Keep reading
Reviewed at WSA since this page was written
La Flor Dominicana Andalusian Bull Review
Verdict: Hand-Me-One (2/4). The best-constructed cigar I've ever had in my hand, wrapped around a flavor profile that had me watching the clock for the last hour... and at $25 a stick, construction alone can't carry that.
Foundation The Wise Man Corojo Toro Review
Verdict: Hand-Me-One (2/4)... a pleasant, mild tobacco-sweet smoke that never develops and made me work a lighter for it the whole way. The flavor is fine... light tobacco sweetness, some baking spice, a nutty stretch late... but it barely changes over the whole cigar, there's a