Crowned Heads Le Careme Pastelitos

Description

Crowned Heads Le Careme Pastelitos

Le Carême is named after Marie-Antoine Carême, the legendary 19th-century French chef credited with popularizing the soufflé — and true to that culinary theme, this limited-edition Pastelitos vitola is itself named after a traditional Cuban puff pastry, often stuffed with something sweet.

Construction & Origin

Released for winter 2023, Crowned Heads built this as a stubbier, more compact departure from the standard Le Carême’s usual Belicoso format — a short robusto measuring 4″ x 54, finished with a distinctive pigtail cap and a rounded parejo shape rather than the line’s typical box press. It’s handcrafted at Tabacalera La Alianza in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic — the same factory behind Crowned Heads’ Four Kicks and Headley Grange lines — using aged Nicaraguan long-filler tobacco, an Ecuadorian Sumatra binder, and a rich Connecticut Broadleaf Maduro wrapper. Production was capped at just 1,250 boxes of 24 cigars.

Flavor Profile

Medium to medium-full bodied, and genuinely dessert-like — expect creamy cocoa and chocolate soufflé up front, developing into caramel, toffee, espresso, sweet spice, and leather, with a peppery, earthy finish. As co-founder Jon Huber put it, this was built specifically as “a quick but satisfying smoke” for cold-weather months — roughly 40 minutes of real, layered flavor in a shorter format.

Why It’s Sought After

The Le Carême line has built a genuinely strong reputation among reviewers — previous limited editions have scored as high as 92 points from dedicated review outlets, and this release continues that streak. Between the strictly capped production, the rare short-format take on a normally larger blend, and Crowned Heads’ track record for quality small-batch releases, this is a cigar worth grabbing while it’s still around.