It had been decades since the Cuban Punch brand saw a new size in its regular-production portfolio, but at the 2019 Habanos Festival, a most unexpected announcement was made: Punch was getting a robusto. This was particularly exciting news for Punch fans for a number of reasons. First, there was the sheer novelty of any addition to the brand whatsoever, as Habanos had only been deleting Punch sizes over the years, not adding them. But secondly, Punch was a rarity among Cuban cigar brands, one that never had a robusto in its regular portfolio, so the advent of the Short de Punch created much buzz among Habanophiles. As it turned out, the cigar more than lived up to the hype—it’s one of the finest Cuban Punches we’ve encountered in years. Each puff brings all the warm qualities of holiday baking from nutmeg and oatmeal cookies to pecans and graham cracker, but there’s a spicy hint of hot chili oil tying it all together in unexpected ways. Over the last decade, Cuban Punches have come and gone, either appearing as Regional Editions or the occasional Edición Limitada. Some of them have even been released in the robusto format, but production was small, availability was limited to a particular country and none of them were ever as good (or as accessible) as the Short de Punch.