Now I’m sure prefacing this review with what I’m about to say will create some backlash, but let’s just say those who won’t agree with me on this have fallen prey to a great Fuente plot: I don’t normally smoke anything from the Opus X collections because they are often overrated.  Anytime someone immediately makes something in limited supply and creates hype around it, it’s generally just a really good PR campaign and that lets me know not to waste my time.  I would’ve never smoked this cigar had my friend Barry not bought two sticks and like a typical man, told me we would have to have a “love affair”  together. <insert corny laughter here> I’m sorry to have to say it was better for Barry than it was for me and I finished first…. ;o)

Familia Fuente Opus X “Love Affair” (a cigar tribute to  Andy Garcia’s film, “The Lost City”): 50 x 4 9/16″

Appearance and Construction: The above pic was actually of Barry’s cigar and I have to say overall they are attractive perfectos.  Nice Dominican tobacco, slightly oily wrapper and it had very little veins, so it looked promising.  Unfortunately I did have two major appearance issues with the stick, and the paramount of the two was there were shiny, light-coloured spots on my cigar not too far underneath the label on the body.  I mentioned to Barry it looked like the watery glue that’s used to seal the label on cigars and he disagreed, but guess who was right? ; ) Also on the aesthetic side of things, if Fuente is going to make such a short cigar, I really feel they need to amend their labels because from the very beginning the giant Opus label was basically getting in the way.

I don’t have much to say in regards to construction, but for me the roll was a bit on the sloppy side.  (25/30 overall for category)

Delivery (Notes, etc): To the cigar’s credit the draw was incredibly easy throughout and upon lighting there were immediate — albeit slight — hints of coffee and wood.  Once off the “bulb” of the perfecto and into the main body of the smoke there were some lovely hints of sugar that for me didn’t last long enough, since I honestly hoped upon their initial tasting they would return later in the cigar but did not.  I know that in the Opus line there tends to be more spice than in your average Fuente, but here the spice notes were rather mellow and only made their entrance once I was halfway through the stick.

I really don’t like being negative, but one thing occured for both Barry and myself and that was almost three-quarters of the way through the “Love Affair.” Have you ever put a cigar down long enough to have it go out and then truly re-light it?  If so, then you are familar with that old ash/old smoke, semi-bitter Earthy taste that you get when that situation arises and this actually happened naturally for the both of us at the same point in our respective cigars.  (29/35 overall for the category)

Burn/Ash/Draw: Like I said before, the draw was just easy and that’s personally a good thing.  The ash was solid and although a bit flaky, wasn’t flying away from me, but I think that can be attributed to it’s size.  The burn itself was alright, but remember how I mentioned those supposed glue spots?  Well, let’s just say they came back to haunt me.

It didn’t take long for me to remove the imposing Opus X band and upon doing so, my glue theory was proven fact: after slowly beginning to remove the band, low and behold there was so much glue holding it together it took off a nice chunk of the wrapper.  Once this happened I have to say it started to crack and burn unevenly; honestly had this not been such a short cigar, I probably wouldn’t have been able to finish it based on this issue alone.  In the picture below you can see where the wrapper was ripped off by an overzealous, glue-loving employee of Tabacaleria Fuente:

Out of a possible 35 points, this rather unfortunate issue for me left the cigar’s score at a 25.

Overall Assessment: I hate to say “I told you so,” but I have to in this situation. I really want to give the Fuente family the benefit of the doubt, but here we have an example of a cigar manufacturer overextending itself with a specialty line that at the beginning was a good thing. Carlito Fuente Jr. seems a bit too bent on making a profit from the allure of the Opus X Collection because he knows consumers will not just pay the price, but they will often go on hunts for these limited edition cigars.  Just like the patching issue many of you have had with Rocky Patel cigars lately, I think my glue predicament is just as bad because I want to smoke tobacco, not tobacco with dried glue fingerprints on it.

*Final Score: 79

If you would like another opinion, go check out Barry’s site (www.acigarsmoker.com) because his experience was a bit different than mine; but then again, isn’t is always better for the man than the woman?