As one of the lengthiest vitola in the original Arturo Fuente Opus X line, the Opus X Double Corona will give the dedicated smoker as much time as possible to savor what made this cigar so famous in the first place.
By now, most cigar lovers are familiar with the story; roughly 10 years after moving his company to the Dominican Republic in 1980, Fuente family scion Don “Carlito” Carlos Fuente Junior was labeled by a French retailer as a mere “assembler” of cigars using tobacco acquired from other sources.
The seller’s remark hurt. Carlito quickly became obsessed with producing a “puro” all-Dominican cigar (by cultivating his own shade-grown Cuban-seed wrapper) that could compete with any cigar made by any other firm in any country of the world.
By 1995, the stick he’d been dreaming of was finally ready for release. When it was introduced, it literally set the cigar business on fire; lines formed around the block at retailers in places like New York City and L.A.; the industry had never seen anything like it.
In 2005, the Double Corona of the Opus X — this very vitola — won Cigar Aficionado’s Cigar of the Year award (with a distinguished 95 rating), and the line proceeded to appear in the magazine’s Top 25 list an unprecedented eight additional times since then (taking second place in 2020). The publication gave the Double Corona a 93 rating in April 2021.
Have you had a chance to sample the original Opus X? If you haven’t, you don’t know what you’re missing. Like all the other vitolas in this most famous line, the Double Corona is made exclusively by a select set of rollers who produce just 75 sticks per day at the Fuente family’s Tabacalera A. Fuente factory.
Cigars don’t come with any more flavor or complexity than this; the taste is replete with essences of creamy coffee, chocolate, leather, earth, cedar, nuts, candied citrus, cinnamon and other baking spices. The strength is near full, the draw is easy, and the burn is dead-even; get some of these for your humidor today, and you’ll have a stash of the best on hand as a reference to measure all your other smokes by.