Oliva Serie V Melanio Figurado Review

2026-08-22  Hand-Me-One · 2/4 My Money · by Eric

Filed under: Burn Issues · Ecuador · Figurados · Nicaragua · Sumatra · Sale Math · Bitter Cigar?

Verdict: Hand-Me-One (2/4). Nothing bad, nothing good, just nothing... the most forgettable cigar I've smoked in a long time, from a line that's supposed to be phenomenal. I'd smoke one if you handed it to me. I wouldn't buy another, and I don't know how this cigar earns the ratings it gets.

This is the first Melanio on the site. It's Oliva's top-shelf line, the one that sits above the regular Serie V: an Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper grown from habano seed, Nicaraguan binder, and Nicaraguan aged-ligero filler out of Condega, Estelí, and Jalapa, rolled at Oliva's TABOLISA 1 factory in Estelí. This exact vitola was Cigar Aficionado's Cigar of the Year back in 2014. The regular Serie V Toro earned a Five-Pack from me in July... this is the fancier cigar, and it gave me less.

The Setup

• Cigar: Oliva Serie V Melanio, Figurado (6.5 x 52). Ecuadorian Sumatra (habano-seed) wrapper, Nicaraguan binder, Nicaraguan aged-ligero filler from Condega, Estelí, and Jalapa. Made at TABOLISA 1 in Estelí, Nicaragua.
• Street price: ~$14 MSRP, and singles run $13–16 at retail.
• What I paid: about $11.07 a stick... won a box of 10 on CigarBid in July of last year, my own money. A genuinely good deal against street. The verdict still rides street.
• Storage: main humidor at 69% RH since the box landed, so this one had a year-plus of rest on it.
• When/where: around 1:30 in the afternoon, outside hanging out by the creek. 83°F with a feels-like of 85, humidity right around 78%, and windy.
• Smoke time: right about an hour and five minutes going by the recorder timestamps. Call it approximate.
• Food beforehand: a ham and turkey sandwich on whole wheat with mayo earlier in the day, and a bottle of water.
• First cigar of the day, paired with water only.

Light Up and First Third

Pre-light, this is a good looking cigar. Chocolate brown wrapper with that slight red hue, not toothy at all, veins you can hardly see, nice wrap job. It looks like maybe a triple cap up top... or it may just be the way they finish a torpedo end. Straight cut with the Xikar XO.

The cold draw is a very mild sweetness with the tiniest bit of tingle if you retro it. Great draw... and I'll save you the suspense, the draw was great the entire smoke.

On the initial light-up there's just a touch of bitterness and a little nuttiness. Not much else. On the retro, a mild sweetness... not much else there either.

The burn started acting weird early in the first third, and the best way to describe the cigar to this point is very forgettable. There's nothing bad, but there's nothing great. A very mild tobacco sweetness and some bitterness, and that's about it, whether you blow the draw out of your mouth or you retrohale.

By the end of the first third the ash was tight and clearly not going anywhere, so I just let it ride... I'm hanging out by the creek, it can hang on as long as it wants. Same bland profile: light bitterness, light sweetness, and on the retro a bit of white spice... white pepper... with no sweetness riding on it. The burn line's still wonky. This is supposed to be a phenomenal cigar. It's not. It's not bad, but there's nothing that makes you go wow I don't like that, and nothing that makes you go wow I like that.

Second Third

About halfway through the second third the ash was still holding on great, but the burn kept getting wonkier. So I knocked the ash off and touched it up to get the line even and see if the flavor improved.

The touch-up gave me something, at least: a little breadiness finally showed up. Otherwise it's the same profile... white pepper on the retro, mild sweetness, mild bitterness, nothing else.

A little later the retro flashed a faint honey sweetness for a fraction of a second. Then it was totally gone, back to that same light sweet, slight bitter, some spice.

Getting close to the end of the third, the best descriptor I've got is bland. Light bitterness, light sweetness, and when you retrohale some white pepper and a hint of nuttiness that goes away as quick as it shows up. By the very end of the third the light sweetness was mostly gone, leaving mostly the light bitterness, with an occasional peanut note riding the retro. The burn had been really wonky the whole way through all of this while the ash stayed great, so I ashed it and touched it up again... not expecting it to get any better. My guess at the time was it would just stay the same. It found a way to do worse.

Final Third

A little over halfway through the final third the burn went really wonky again, and the bitterness stopped being mild... it climbed to a medium-plus bitterness. Touched it up again to see if I could get anything better out of it. That touch-up provided some relief from the bitterness, but only a little. And there was nothing else behind it... no other flavor to step into the space.

I called it with a tiny bit left. This cigar gave everything it was going to give, and that was not much.

Construction

• Wrapper: chocolate brown with a slight red hue, not toothy, veins you can barely see, nice wrap job. Maybe a triple cap, or just the torpedo-end finish.
• Draw: great the entire way, from the cold draw to the end.
• Burn: wavy the whole smoke. I tried letting rotations handle it early, and it still took three or four touch-ups start to finish. Every touch-up evened the line without ever fixing it for good.
• Ash: tight and held on for a long time. I let it ride at the end of the first third because it clearly wasn't going anywhere, and it didn't.
• Smoke output: good the whole way through.
• Strength: mild-plus start to finish. It never felt even medium the whole way.

Bottom Line

The whole review in one line: there was nothing bad, there was nothing good, there was just nothing. A mild tobacco sweetness, a light bitterness, white pepper on the retro, and then the fleeting stuff... a fraction of a second of honey, a little breadiness after a touch-up, a hint of peanut on the retro... none of it stayed long enough to build on. The final third traded the sweetness away for a medium-plus bitterness, which is the wrong direction to develop. And the fundamentals underneath were fine: great draw, tight long-holding ash, good smoke production, a burn line that needed babysitting.

I know this line's reputation. This is supposed to be a phenomenal cigar, this exact size has a Cigar of the Year trophy on the shelf, and I don't get it. The flavor was so mild there was nothing to hang onto. There's just nothing about it that makes me want to come back to it.

Would I smoke it again? Hand-Me-One. I wouldn't turn one down, and I wouldn't spend money on another. At $13–16 a single street, there are too many cigars that actually do something. And this is one of those times where buying on CigarBid can bite you: I got a really good deal, about eleven bucks a stick for a box of 10, a legitimate bargain against street... on a cigar I now own nine more of. The deal doesn't move the verdict. It just means I'm well stocked for yard work.

Best for: exactly that. This is the cigar you grab when you're doing something in the yard and you aren't really paying attention to the actual flavor of the cigar. Great draw, good smoke, nothing that asks for your attention... and nothing that rewards it.

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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