EGM Encantos Cigar Review: The Most Elegant Vitola
EGM cigars have been gaining a lot of popularity in the last few years, moving from a niche retailer’s budget option to a brand people now take seriously. Most recently, EGM has entered the highly competitive UK market, while also managing to reach the biggest market in the world for cigars, the United States of America.
The UK tends to be unforgiving because people know what they like and they compare everything, while the US has sheer scale and a huge range of established brands fighting for attention. If a cigar is only surviving on price, it gets found out fast, and that is why it is interesting to see how EGM is positioning itself now.
In our latest video we review the EGM Encantos cigar. This cigar is 7 and 1/2 inches long with a ring gauge of 39, essentially making it a lanceros, although it is ever so slightly thicker than a standard Cuban lanceros and the difference is negligible. Lanceros are a format many smokers love because they can feel more focused and more direct, but they also put far more pressure on construction and blend balance.
This particular vitola requires an incredible degree of skill and experience, and it has been described as one of the most difficult cigars to roll. One of the key reasons it is so difficult is because trying to scale down a blend designed for a heavier ring gauge cigar into a lanceros can prove extremely challenging, the proportions change, the burn behaviour can change, and the cigar can lose the rounded feel it might have had in a thicker format. Additionally, rolling the cigar to make sure there is enough resistance in the draw without it being uncomfortable, or even plugged, can be a bit of a balancing act, especially because there is less room for error and less filler to hide problems.
It is because of this that many brands in the industry simply refuse to roll lanceros, or they only produce a few lines of lanceros cigars and keep the output limited. A lanceros also tends to punish impatience, because if you smoke it too hot it can become sharp and lose its composure, while a well made one stays clean and controlled with a steady burn.
Therefore, seeing a retailer produce a lanceros for its own line of cigars is quite remarkable and rare, and it raises the stakes in a good way. If the construction is right, a lanceros can show the blend clearly, and it becomes very obvious whether the tobacco selection and the rolling standards are genuinely there.
In the video linked below, we review the Encantos to see how it performs, focusing on the draw, burn, balance, and overall consistency, especially considering how much we enjoyed the Escudos.
