Do you enjoy a Strong & Spicy taste to your cigar, or do you enjoy a Mild & Creamy experience? VICE VERSA by Fratello gives you a choice every time you decide to light one up.
VICE VERSA is uniquely capped on both ends. One end, the Strong & Spicy, is triple capped with a dark San Andres Negro Oscuro and the opposite end, the Mild & Creamy, is triple capped with a light Ecuadorian Connecticut leaf. What’s in between consists of a Habano Ecuador HVA wrapper, an Indonesian binder, and fillers from Pennsylvania as well as the Estelí and Condega regions of Nicaragua.
While the tobacco you’re actually smoking when you light-up a VICE VERSA is exactly the same, no matter which end of the cigar you choose to light, the tiny amount of Connecticut or San Andreas tobacco touching your tongue transforms the cigar based on what your tastebuds tell your brain.
“This project is easily one of the most challenging projects I have had the pleasure to work on. We blended a cigar and tripled capped both ends. The consumer decides if they want to start their smoking experience Mild and Creamy or Strong and Spicy.”
Omar de Frias, Owner of Fratello Cigars
VICE VERSA isn’t the first cigar to take advantage of the addition of a complementary tobacco in order to create a taste experience. The Joya de Nicaragua Cabinetta, is generally a fairly mild cigar, but with the addition of a segment of Nicaraguan Criollo wrapper leaf to the head, tells your brain that the Cabinetta is fuller flavored than it actually is with the actual tobacco you’re smoking.
As I opened my first box of VICE VERSA, I found everything was well executed, as I’ve come to always expect from Fratello. For my first sample smoke, I chose to make the Strong & Spicy San Andres Negro Oscuro the head of the cigar. I cut the Ecuadorian Connecticut cap at what was now the foot as I felt that trying to burn away the triple cap may cause the tobacco to scorch before a draw was established. The small amount of rich, dark tobacco, touching my tongue, instantly set the stage in my mind for a robustly flavorful smoking experience.
Then I prepared the second cigar, again, I cut both ends. This time, the Mild & Creamy Ecuadorian Connecticut tobacco served as the head through which I would draw the smoke. This time, with the more subtle flavors of the Connecticut leaf touching my tongue, I can say without hesitation that the cigar performed as designed. Even though the body of the cigar is the same exact tobacco, that little segment of cap leaf made a huge, and welcome, difference.
A NOTE ON CUTTING: While I personally always use a double guillotine cutter to shave just the very tip of the cigar away, I’m very confident that V Cutters, Punches and even a simple hole poked with a golf tee or knife tip will do the trick very well. HOWEVER, no matter what tool you use, make sure you don’t cut too much off the head, or you’ll completely miss the taste experience.
Rounding out the description of my smoking experience, no matter which end I smoked, the cigar produced a dense solid white ash and very consistent burn. I will also say that, despite the actual body of the cigar being exactly the same, the taste from the two different caps made me think I was smoking two completely different cigars.
VICE VERSA was created to celebrate Fratello’s ninth anniversary. The limited edition 7 x 52 Churchill comes in boxes of twelve, which are shipped in master packs of 5 (5×12=60 cigars per master pack). Production was limited to 2,000 12-count boxes total.
UPDATE March 28, 2025
Starting in January 2025, we’ve started hosting a SPECIAL CIGAR TASTING EVENT at the shop on a Sunday evening monthly at the shop. The Fratello VICE VERSA came to mind as a perfect cigar to spotlight for one of these monthly events, HOWEVER, how do you smoke a cigar that sold-out two years ago? Well, you ask, politely I might add, if perhaps there were some leftovers / stragglers / archived / lost / squirreled-away VICE VERSA’S I might be able to purchase, PLEASE!
Omar came through BIG for us! He sold me the LAST TWO cases of VICE VERSA. that the company had. That’s 10 total boxes of 12-VICE WERSA’S! One hundred and twenty is just enough for our monthly tasting soiree, a Tuesday Club Spotlight and still leave enough for a few other folks can get in on the action.
As I end many of my product explanations — a BLINDING FLASH OF THE OBVIOUS…
Get ‘Em While We Got ‘Em!
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