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“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.”
If you know what that means, buy yourself a cigar. You’ve earned it for sitting through a university seminar on Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy.”
Here are the Cliffs Notes: “Abandon all hope, you who enter here.” That’s the final inscription on the gate to hell in “The Inferno” — the first part of the epic Dante poem.
Yes, inferno literally means “hell” in Italian. I doubt the folks at Oliva Cigar had that in mind when they named a private-line cigar they make exclusively for the Famous Smoke Shop, and I can’t imagine they wanted fans of milder cigars to abandon all hope. (Update: the always-helpful Scott Shemtov at Famous Smoke informs me that it was his company, not Oliva, that picked the name.)
Smoking the “Inferno by Oliva” isn’t a hellish experience. It is, however, a pepper factory in a neat little Nicaraguan package.
The going rate online is $20.99 for a 5-pack of robustos (5 inches x 50 ring gauge), which is a pretty good deal at retail. Be aware, though, that the price probably isn’t going to go down since the cigar is made exclusively for one retailer.
But a funny thing happens when you start a cigar column: People send you free cigars. Famous Smoke sent me a few Infernos to try, so my cost for this review is a big fat $0.00. (Note to self: Launch a big-screen TV column as soon as humanly possible.)
I had the pleasure of sharing a pair of Infernos with my good friend Kelly Maher, the brains behind RevealingPolitics.com, while she was in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. She’s my first guest smoker and, I hope, not my last.
We both agreed that pepper was the primary flavor of this full-bodied cigar, but Kelly had a more nuanced take. “It’s more like a habanero pepper, where it slowly creeps up on you — and then ‘Bam! It’s pepper!’ — than it is like a jalapeño, which is ‘Bam!’ immediately.”
I didn’t think to tell her that the Inferno’s dark Nicaraguan wrapper leaf is cut from — drum roll, please — a Habanero leaf. Go figure.
