Cigar Review: HVC Cigars Black Friday 2024

The Black Friday from HVC Cigars is one of the most highly anticipated limited releases every year. The Black Friday series began in 2015 with the intent of delivering a unique blend, yearly, that over delivers. Year after year, in my opinion, they hit the mark. This year the focus of the blend is on some viso from the island of Ometepe in Nicaragua. As always with this release, I am excited to light it up! 

Wrapper: Mexican San Andres Maduro

Binder: Nicaragua

Filler: Nicaragua

Vitola: 5 ⅞ x 52 Toro

Price: $12.40 MSRP

Link to Purchase: The Cigar Farm (Use code “Review” to save 10%!)

This hefty cigar sports a dark chocolate wrapper with the classic looking Black Friday band and a foot band that says “2024 Ometepe”. Overall the cigar is visually pleasing. The scent is faint, but there’s some dark fruit and earth. The cold draw has some cocoa and toast. This Black Friday 2024 kicks off with full bodied smoke and full flavors of citrus, baking spices, and sweet cocoa. The retrohale echoes the sweet cocoa and citrus. About an inch in there is a savory bread-like note that has joined the draw.  Coming to the end of the first third the flavors are staying consistent and performance has been perfect. It is still a full flavor experience and the smoke is plentiful. Hitting the halfway point the profile still has the sweet cocoa and spices but has added some earth and coffee. The retrohale is decadent - full of milk chocolate and spices. The final third is seeing a little uptick in pepper in both the draw flavors and retrohale. Coming to an end at about an hour and a half the profile continued with the pepper, added some earth, and maintained the sweet cocoa. The performance was flawless throughout.

Overall Experience

HVC delivered again. This blend may be my favorite Black Friday release… This blend was full bodied and flavored from the start, and never took its foot off the pedal. The profile, surprisingly considering how much I enjoyed this, is not typically a strong preference for me. It was very decadent with prominent sweet cocoa and baking spices throughout, but there was always some more savory component that intertwined perfectly with the more dessert-like flavors, yielding a sweet and savory core that really hit my palate wonderfully. I think every smoker should give this one a try. I think there is something here for everyone.

Have you smoked this one? Let me know your thoughts!