Liga Privada No. 9 Toro Review

2026-08-29  Five-Pack · 3/4 My Money · by Eric

Filed under: Burn Issues · CT Broadleaf · Nicaragua · The Ash · Relighting · Retrohale · Strength vs Body

Verdict: Five-Pack (3/4). A leather-coffee-cream cigar with no bitterness, a near-perfect draw, and the most smoke production I've ever had from a cigar... it doesn't transition much, it just does what it does extremely well. The construction hiccups it had, I'm laying at the feet of whoever pinched it in the shop, not Drew Estate.

This is the cigar everyone name-drops when Liga Privada comes up: Drew Estate's original Liga, a Connecticut Broadleaf oscuro wrapper over a Brazilian Mata Fina binder with Honduran and Nicaraguan filler, made at La Gran Fabrica Drew Estate in Estelí, Nicaragua. Liga's H99 and UF-13 are two of my favorites, so this review was me giving the famous one a real sit-down.

The Setup

• Cigar: Liga Privada No. 9 Toro (6 x 52). Connecticut Broadleaf oscuro wrapper, Brazilian Mata Fina binder, Honduran and Nicaraguan filler. Made by Drew Estate in Estelí, Nicaragua.
• Street price: ~$18 a single online; a box of 24 works out to right about the same per stick.
• What I paid: a B&M pickup a few months back... I don't remember which shop or the exact price, but figure a few dollars over street, which is the usual B&M math. My own money.
• Storage: main humidor at 69% RH, resting four or five months.
• When/where: on my back deck, started at 5:11 in the evening on a Saturday. 85°F with a feels-like of 86 and 59% humidity, no wind at all.
• Food beforehand: a turkey and ham sandwich with mayo on whole wheat bread I made at home from freshly ground wheat, at minimum two to three hours before, with water.
• Only cigar of the day, paired with water.

Light Up and First Third

Pre-light, everything about this cigar looked good: a very dark, rustic-looking wrapper in the sense that you can see some decently thick veining, a really good wrap job, a double cap, and a clean foot. The band was on tight. Straight cut with the Xikar XO double guillotine, lit with the Guevara Lux single-flame torch... same daily go-tos as always. The cold draw was basically perfect... a very nice sweetness, a little tingle in the nose on the cold retro, and if you licked your lips after a draw, spice.

Toasting and lighting brought chocolate, nuttiness, and spiciness right away. Once it was going, blowing the draw out of my mouth gave leather, coffee, some spice you feel on your tongue, then a nuttiness and a chocolate sweetness that develops, and a light leather that just sits on the palate. On the retro: white pepper, then leather, then a medium-roast black coffee, a little chocolate, and a very light cream that sits on the palate before the leather comes back and intermixes into this creamy, leathery flavor and feel.

Here's the thing that jumped out immediately: leather and coffee usually bring bitterness with them. This had basically no bitterness at all. Just a leather-coffee creaminess, and the smoke itself was creamy in texture and a little bit in flavor.

And the smoke production. I can comfortably say it's more smoke production than any other cigar I've had. There was no wind, so the smoke just hung and lingered in the air in front of me. If you like smoke, I understand why people like this cigar.

This is not as sweet as my typical lane, but it is really good. Deeper into the third, the draw gave a mixed leather and dark chocolate... a little sweet, very intertwined... with light-roast black coffee, a little cream, and maybe a bit of roasted nuttiness. On the retro the spice mostly dropped away and left a sweet creaminess, chocolate, leather, and light-roast black coffee, with a very light creaminess and leather sitting on the palate between draws.

By the end of the first third: a sweet creamy leather right off the hit, light-to-medium black coffee, maybe a touch of bitterness now, and a faint dark chocolate transitioning off the leather-coffee. Retro: a mild-plus white pepper, very nice creaminess, leather, black coffee, and that creamy leather coating the palate and hanging out. The burn line was a touch wavy... one or two small rotations, and I'm not sure they even mattered. Tapping the ash off, it came off completely clean in one piece, totally together in the ashtray. Basically exactly what you're looking for. No drop in flavor after ashing either. Just consistent.

Second Third

Not a ton of transition, and by this point I wasn't sure how much more to expect. It feels like a cigar that does what it does, but does it extremely well: perfect draw, basically flawless burn, fantastic ash, and that sweet creamy leathery coffee with subtle chocolate sweetness through it. Strength through here I'd put at medium-plus, and my guess was it'd be full by the end.

About a quarter inch in, the burn got a bit wavy... workable, so I rotated and let the slow side catch up. Then about half an inch in, I noticed something odd: the cigar looked pinched in the middle, noticeably taller than wide, with the pressed sides burning faster than the narrow sides. I don't remember it looking that way, and rotating mostly kept it corrected. My conclusion by the end of the smoke: someone pinched this cigar at the shop before I bought it.

Flavor mid-third: leather, medium-roast black coffee, a little creaminess. Retro: white pepper, cream, leather, medium-roast black coffee. Pleasant, in its lane, not dropping off at all. The draw stayed excellent, the smoke production stayed phenomenal, and the strength climbed to more of a medium-full.

By the end of the second third the creaminess backed off a little and a little bitterness showed up on the palate... not super bitterness, but enough to overwhelm the cream a bit. The retro got strange in a good way: on a single draw it was all sweet cream, no pepper at all; on a double draw the pepper was mostly gone too. And right as I was retroing, the ash let go, fell a good two feet, and crumbled... didn't hold together at all, completely unlike the first third's clean one-piece ash. Between that and the shape, I have to think the pinch is the story: the ash construction shouldn't change that much from one third to the next.

I touched up the burn after the ash fell, and that told me the pinch had affected more than I thought: the creaminess came right back to the forefront with the leather, and the bitterness was just gone. That doesn't usually happen... in my experience, when a cigar starts to dip, it keeps dipping. This one snapped right back. Retro after the touch-up: a medium-ish pepper... white, almost black pepper but not quite... creamy sweetness, leather, and coffee.

A public service announcement while I'm here: if a cigar doesn't feel right to you in the shop, please don't pinch it. Someone else is going to buy it. Set it back down, or hand it to the tobacconist and let them make the judgment call. It didn't ruin anything here by any stretch, but be considerate.

Final Third

An interesting single-versus-double-draw split showed up: on a single draw you get some roasted nuttiness you don't really get on a double, and on a double the leather is far more prominent with a little bitterness in the background. That was about the only difference between the two.

My dad called, and while we talked, about half an inch into the final third, the cigar went super thin and just went out... while I was still drawing on it. I'm not trying to make excuses for the cigar, but this again screams of being over-handled in the store. That's one of the downsides of a B&M: an online retailer's stock has been touched by nobody but the people shipping it. I waited until we got off the phone and touched it up.

Strength was definitely full by this point. On the relight, that creamy leather was right back at the forefront with coffee, a touch of earthiness, and just a touch of bitterness. The retro was at the black pepper stage with some creaminess still, plus leather and coffee. The draw was still excellent.

Dad came over, so I stopped taking detailed notes, but the rest of the final third didn't die or dip. Excellent smoke production, same flavor profile on the draw, great draw the whole way down. I took it to where you can still hold it in your fingers without burning yourself and still get a draw.

Construction

• Wrapper: very dark, rustic-looking with decently thick veining, really good wrap job, double cap, clean foot. Mid-smoke it revealed what I believe was a pinch from the store... noticeably taller than wide through the middle.
• Draw: basically perfect cold, excellent the entire smoke, right down to the nub.
• Burn: a touch wavy through the first third with a couple of small rotations; wavier through the pinched section; one touch-up after the second-third ash fell, and one relight after it went out in the final third during a phone call. Both times it came back immediately.
• Ash: first third stacked super tight with no flyers and tapped off clean in one piece. Second third crumbled from two feet. Flaky only at the pinched spots. Two different cigars' worth of ash behavior, which is why I blame the pinch.
• Smoke output: the most smoke production of any cigar I've had. Thick, creamy in texture, hanging in the still air.
• Band: on tight pre-light, came off perfectly clean.

Bottom Line

The famous Liga earns the reputation on flavor delivery, not fireworks. There's no real transition arc... it picks a lane of leather, coffee, cream, and subtle chocolate sweetness with zero bitterness, and runs it start to finish at a level most cigars can't hold for a single third. Add the heaviest smoke production I've encountered and a draw that never wavered, and the only marks against this particular stick... the odd ash, the thin-out, the go-out... all trace back to a pinch I'm confident happened in the shop, because every time I touched it up, the full profile snapped right back. It's not in my sweet-leaning lane, and at $18 it's priced like the legend it is.

Would I smoke it again? Five-Pack (3/4). Yes... a few of these belong in the humidor. The flavor is excellent and the construction fundamentals are as good as it gets, but it's not in my sweeter lane and it doesn't transition much, so at $18 a stick it doesn't push into box territory for me. If leather-coffee-cream IS your lane, I'd understand a box on your shelf completely.

Best for: an evening smoke with time to sit, for anyone who loves a leather-and-coffee profile without the bitterness those flavors usually drag along, or anyone who wants to see what serious smoke production looks like. Full strength by the end... not a first-cigar-of-the-morning stick.

My rating scale, one question only... would I spend my own money on this again? 4 Box Buy (box on hand, always) / 3 Five-Pack (yes, a few live in the humidor) / 2 Hand-Me-One (wouldn't buy it, wouldn't turn one down) / 1 Not Even Free (I'd rather smoke nothing).

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