Alfonso: Five Years in Cedar and French Oak

Alfonso is the brand Nelson Alfonso Egüed put his own surname on, and it is the most technically interesting of the three Selected Tobacco lines. Where Atabey ages in Spain and Byron ages by vintage, Alfonso ages for five years in a combination of cedar and French oak rooms in which the humidity is deliberately fluctuated rather than held constant. Our Alfonso collection carries four Extra Añejo vitolas and both porcelain ashtrays.

This profile covers the two lines, the ageing method, every published size, and one honest note about a conflict in the published blend.

Selected Tobacco's third brand

Alfonso is made at Tabacos de Costa Rica in Santiago de Puriscal, the same factory as Atabey and Byron, and is distributed in the United States by United Cigars of New Hampshire. Nelson Alfonso Egüed, the Cuban born designer behind the company, is the creative force; the company does not publish a separate named master blender.

Four Extra Añejo sizes, small to large

The same blend across four formats, from a 4 inch petit robusto to a 9 inch double corona.

Cedar, French oak and moving humidity

Extra Añejo is aged five years in cedar and French oak rooms with the humidity deliberately fluctuated. That last detail is the unusual one, because every instinct in cigar storage says to hold humidity steady.

halfwheel has described four Selected Tobacco lines as using the French oak ageing rooms: Alfonso Extra Añejo, Byron 1850, Alfonso Gran Selección and Atabey Black Ritos.

Extra Añejo

Launched in 2022. The blend is an Ecuadorian Connecticut wrapper over an Ecuadorian Connecticut binder, with a filler of Nicaraguan ligero and Peruvian leaf. That is an interesting combination: a pale, delicate Connecticut shell over the strongest priming Nicaragua produces. The five years of ageing is what reconciles them.

All in boxes of twenty five. The No. 6 at nine inches is a genuinely long cigar and belongs in our Double Corona collection; the No. 1 sits in Petit Robusto.

Gran Selección

Gran Selección debuted at the July 2023 trade show and shipped that November, as the darker sequel to Extra Añejo. It uses an Ecuadorian Habano wrapper over a Peruvian binder, and is described as medium to full. Vitolas are Estelares 5.5 by 54, Exclusivos 6 by 54, Preciosos 7.5 by 40, Enormes 6.5 by 60 and Grandiosos 8 by 50, in boxes of twenty five, limited to 5,000 cigars per size.

On the filler there is a genuine discrepancy in the record, and we would rather flag it than pick a side. United Cigars' own page describes the filler as Dominican and Peruvian. halfwheel and Cigar Aficionado describe it as Dominican and Nicaraguan. We do not know which is correct.

One correction while we are here: a line called Selección Suprema circulates online as an Alfonso release. We could not verify it on any source, so we do not list it.

The ashtrays

Alfonso makes two porcelain cigar ashtrays, one for Añejo and one for Gran Selección. Porcelain is an unusual choice in a category dominated by ceramic and crystal, and it is the right one for a desk: it takes heat without staining and it cleans properly, which glazed ceramic often does not.

Compare them against the rest of our ashtray range.

What we notice first-hand

Alfonso is the Selected Tobacco line we would put in front of someone who thinks a Connecticut wrapper means a light cigar. It does not, not here. Ecuadorian Connecticut over Nicaraguan ligero produces something that looks pale and smokes with real weight, and that gap between appearance and effect is the whole character of the brand.

Size advice: the No. 3 at 6 by 54 is the balance point. The No. 6 at nine inches is a beautiful object but it is a two hour commitment, and a nine inch cigar that goes out halfway is a waste of a good cigar. Buy the long one when you actually have the afternoon.

A note on the price bracket. These are expensive cigars from a brand almost nobody has heard of, which is a hard sell and an honest opportunity. You are paying for five years of storage rather than for a name, and that is a better trade than it sounds.

Alfonso at Cigar Inc., live

Browse all Alfonso

The bottom line

Start with the No. 1 or the No. 3. If you like it, the same company's Atabey and Byron take the ageing idea in two other directions, and all three share a factory. Add a porcelain ashtray if the cigar is going to live on a desk rather than a patio.

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