Cigar Aficionado has consistently rated the Romeo y Julieta No.4 Exhibicion highly and scores in the nineties for this cigar are not uncommon. This hand-made hermoso no.4 is 127 mm long with a ring gauge of 48. This high selling vitola comes with a solid reputation as an aromatic, medium to strong smoke with excellent combustion. The drink partnering this cigar for the review is the new Platinum Blonde low-carb beer. Incidentally this beer has just been launched as a private label by the Woolworths supermarket chain in an effort to capture 10% of the $420 million low carb beer market by the end of the Australian summer. Anyway.. on with the review!

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Winston Churchill’s love of Cuban cigars has been well documented over the years and it has been said he typically smoked between eight and ten per day.

Churchill’s favourite brands included Romeo y Julieta and the now extinct La Aroma de Cuba. Churchill had many supply options and even during the prohibitive war years managed to keep stocks high. At Chartwell Manor, his home in the English countryside, Churchill stocked between three and four thousand cigars, most of which were Cuban, in a room adjoining his private study. In storage the cigars were kept in original boxes on the shelves, all of which were labelled. Churchill categorised his cigars in the following groups: large, small, wrapped and naked. The idea was to differentiate the cigar sizes and if in fact they were wrapped in cellophane. Over the years Churchill spent vast amounts of money on his cigar collection. Roy Howells, one of Churchill’s valets, wrote in his book, Simply Churchill, “It took me a little while to get used to the fact that in two days his cigar consumption was the equivalent of my weekly salary.”

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