Punch Reserve Collection Robusto Review

2026-07-28  Five-Pack · 3/4 My Money

Filed under: Burn Issues · Tight Draw · Honduras · Retrohale · The Draw

Verdict: Five-Pack (3/4). A mild-plus, bready-sweet Robusto with a lingering baking-spice retrohale that quietly turns to black pepper — good enough that I wish I'd bought more, held back only by a burn that fought me the whole way. I've got one left and I'm glad. A solid five in the humidor would make me happy; a box would've been too many.

The Punch Reserve Collection is a blue-banded, distributor-exclusive line — part of Phillips & King's "Reserve Collection," made by General Cigar. It debuted at TPE 2023 and shipped that spring, and it isn't in production anymore; I couldn't find these for sale when I went looking mid-smoke. It dates to that 2023 release, which lines up with what I was tasting: this stick had real age on it.

The Setup

• Cigar: Punch Reserve Collection, Robusto (5 x 50), boxes of 20. Honduran OSA oscuro wrapper over Honduran and Nicaraguan fillers. Binder isn't disclosed for this blend, so I'm leaving it out rather than guessing.
• Factory: STG Danlí, Honduras (General Cigar).
• Street price: ~$9 MSRP a single when it was still made. Discontinued now, so it's whatever you can still turn up — I couldn't find them for sale at all when I looked.
• What I paid: I don't remember the exact number, so call it retail — ~$9. No order in my email for these, so I'm pretty sure I grabbed a couple at a B&M somewhere along the way, dropped them in the bottom of the humidor, and forgot about them. My own money either way — nobody sent me these.
• Storage: out of the humidor at 69% RH. This one had roughly three years of age on it — I first read the wrapper as tight from a shorter rest, then realized the aging is what gives it that pulled-tight look.
• When/where: ~7:30pm start, back deck, in the shade with the sun setting, a little breezy. About an hour and change to smoke — just past 8:15 at the nub.
• Weather: 77°F, 78° real feel, 84% humidity right after a heavy rain came through (so probably a touch lower than the app was showing).
• Food beforehand: a bunch of seasoned chicken wings, no sauce, plus some fruit, about an hour before.
• First cigar of the day, paired with fruit-punch Pedialyte — I hadn't drunk much water all day.

Light Up and First Third

Single cap, veiny, decent tight wrapper leaf, nicely packed foot. Cold draw is good — a touch more resistance than I'd call ideal, but good — with a nice sweet tobacco flavor and the faintest tingle on the cold retro.

Light up and it's sweet and creamy, a creamy flavor riding on a creamy, almost smoked texture. Just a whisper of baking spice on the retro, a very light leather, and a lingering sweetness I couldn't quite place but liked. Without retro-ing it the draw runs a touch snug and gives up a nice bready sweetness with a bit of baking spice that hangs on the palate. No bitterness anywhere yet.

Halfway through the first third the burn's already a little wavy, and a small hole opened up in the side of the wrapper — something I don't think I've ever seen before. It didn't spread and it wasn't hurting the flavor. Baking spice picked up a bit, the sweetness stepped back some, still very bready. Mild, maybe mild-plus. Very enjoyable little cigar — I usually smoke a Toro, so a Robusto is small for me, but this was easy to like.

Nearing the end of the third the burn stayed wonky and rotating the slow side to the bottom didn't fix it. Leather has come up from the background and is more present now, not in a bad way. It's going to need a touch-up.

Second Third

Knocked the ash off and touched up the burn — it was wonky enough that I didn't want to run it as-is. Flavor picks up right where the first third left off: bready, with the leather more prominent now and breadiness right behind it, baking spice still on the retro. The draw tightened, so I ran the draw tool through it and opened it back up. It always amazes me how a small adjustment with the draw tool takes a cigar you have to work at and makes the draw effortless — that's exactly what happened.

Past the midpoint it's a really good cigar. The leather note I expected to build into bitterness actually dropped back, and the breadiness took over as the main flavor with more sweetness behind it and a ton of baking spice on the retro — not blowing my sinuses out, just a lot of spice flavor. It got better through the middle of this third. The burn stayed consistently slow on one side.

End of the second third, that slow quarter-inch finally caught up to the rest. Ash was good and tight and stacking well. Flavor's still excellent, smoke production solid and creamy, baking spice still on the retro, sweetness hanging on, leather present but no longer the lead. Draw started tightening again.

Final Third

Draw tightened more, so I opened it with the draw tool again — the smoke went thin until I did, then came right back. A mild mineral/chlorine note showed up on the finish, like a very faint version of the chlorine hit you get walking into a public pool. It faded off pretty quick. The baking spice started transitioning toward black pepper, the leather came up a little more prominent, and the sweetness slid toward the background but stayed. The cigar got noticeably soft in my hand near the middle of the final third. Single draws rewarded me a lot more than the double draws I default to.

That profile held all the way through. I kept waiting for the bitterness to ramp up and drop off a ledge the way it can in the last third — it never did. The black pepper didn't die, the leather didn't die, the sweetness didn't die. There's a mild bitterness that lingers between draws right at the very end, but mild, and it never took the dive I was bracing for. The burn was still wonky on that same side and the draw had tightened up substantially, so I put it down to let it go with dignity right at the nub.

Construction

• Wrapper: dark espresso-brown, veiny with a little tooth, pulled tight the way an aged wrapper looks. A small hole opened in the side during the first third — odd, but it never spread and never touched the flavor.
• Draw: a touch snug from the cold draw on, and it tightened twice as I smoked. The draw tool fixed it both times and made a real difference each time.
• Burn: wonky the whole way. One side ran consistently slow, rotating it didn't help, and it took touch-ups at the end of the first third, into the second, and once more near the end.
• Ash: the good news — tight, dark gray, stacked nicely the whole cigar even while the burn misbehaved.
• Smoke output: solid throughout, creamy texture, only went thin the couple of times the draw closed up before I opened it.
• Band: navy blue and gold "Punch 1840" crest over a "Reserve Collection" secondary band.

Bottom Line

The flavor here is good and steady: bready sweetness up front, leather that trades places with it, and a baking-spice retrohale that never quits and slowly turns to black pepper by the end. It's mild to mild-plus start to finish — never heavy, never harsh, and it doesn't take the bitter nosedive in the last third that I kept expecting. What holds it back isn't the smoke, it's the mechanics: a burn that ran crooked the whole way and a draw that kept snugging up on me. Without the draw tool this would've been a chore twice over.

The age is doing real work on this one. Whatever I paid, three years in the bottom of the humidor turned it into a stick I was sorry to see there was no way to reorder.

Would I smoke it again? Five-Pack. If I could still buy these I'd want a few in the humidor at all times — it's an easy, flavorful hour that asks nothing of you but a draw tool and a couple of touch-ups. Not a box: the burn and draw needed too much babysitting to earn one, and even setting that aside, a five is the right number for a cigar this pleasant-but-not-transcendent. I've got one more and I'm looking forward to it.

Best for: an easy evening on the porch after dinner when you've got an hour and don't want to think hard. Mild enough to be a first cigar of the day, and it rewards slowing down — single draws, not doubles.

My rating scale, one question only... would I spend my own money on this again? 4 Box Buy (box on hand, always) / 3 Five-Pack (yes, a few live in the humidor) / 2 Hand-Me-One (wouldn't buy it, wouldn't turn one down) / 1 Not Even Free (I'd rather smoke nothing).

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