Product details
The LCA Mexican Chocolate starts with a binder that almost never had a home. AJ Fernandez had been talking up a particular Estelí binder he grew himself — the problem was there was only one hectare of it, nowhere near enough for a national release. So it made its way to Tabacalera Annex, the joint factory built around a simple idea: give odd lots, tiny harvests, and one-off experiments somewhere to go. Since 2020 the Annex has been the landing spot for exactly that kind of tobacco, and this binder was too good to waste. Privada and LCA wrapped it in an extremely dark Mexican San Andrés wrapper, filled it with Estelí leaf from AJ's main tobacco arsenal, pressed the whole thing into a 6×54, and put it away for four years before anyone touched it.
The Mexican San Andrés wrapper is as dark as it looks — and it looks almost black. That color isn't decoration; it signals the natural oil content and fermentation depth that makes San Andrés one of the great Maduro-style wrappers available regardless of processing. The single-hectare Estelí binder is the secret underneath, contributing a layer of complexity that a standard production binder doesn't deliver, and four years of aging has had time to meld all three components into something that smokes with the cohesion of a blend that was always meant to taste exactly this way. The box-press keeps the burn even and the draw consistent throughout.
Pre-light you're getting sweet molasses and baking spices at the foot — the cold draw delivers cocoa, red pepper, and spice before the first flame is applied. Once lit the profile runs through sweet molasses and cocoa in the first third, red pepper and cedar building through the middle, and espresso arriving on a long, rich finish that rewards every minute of the four years it spent waiting. Pair it with a mocha stout, an aged rum, or a cup of Mexican hot chocolate and let the season catch up to what the tobacco already knew.