Cigar Review: Punch Bottle Rockets

The Punch Bottle Rockets is the 2025 limited release from Punch Cigars. It’s part of their Lunar New Year Series, so, technically, the Bottle Rockets is for the Year of the Snake.

Initial Thoughts

If you grew up in a world before the internet, i.e. the 1900s as the kids say, you might remember lighting a bottle rocket to celebrate the 4th of July. Well, Punch remembers the late 1900s, and today we’re going to smoke a cigar that not only bears the name of a bottle rocket, but it actually looks like one too.

The Punch Bottle Rockets is a short, dark, oily-looking cigar that’s been attached to a red piece of wood to make it look like something you could stick in the ground (which makes shipping difficult, lol). Despite how it looks, the Mexican San Andres wrapper was actually a little dry, and the cigar smelled very leafy. While some cigars smell great, the Bottle Rocket wasn’t super impressive before lighting.

On the cold draw, the Bottle Rocket had notes of wood and cedar. However, once lit, the flavors were very good, and I could immediately pick up on the Dominican filler tobacco.

Is the Bottle Rocket a worthy addition to Punch’s line of yearly releases? Let’s find out.

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CigarScore:

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Final Thoughts

The Punch Bottle Rockets was a good cigar, though, perhaps, not quite the home run that Punch’s previous Limited-Edition cigars have been.

These little cigars pack a ton of flavor into a small package. I mostly enjoyed how this cigar tasted, but there were a few flavors that were a bit budgety. The draw was pretty good and the overall construction was good. For a cigar that cost less than $8, the Bottle Rocket is, by all accounts, a great cigar, especially for the money.

While, in my opinion, it’s not as good as some of Punch’s earlier yearly releases, this cigar does not disappoint. The Punch Bottle Rockets earns a CigarScore 5.

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