Fuente Fuente OpusX Churchill, courtesy of Tabacalera A. Fuente y Cia

The person responsible for creating these atrocious looking smokes -- which were sent to Cigar Aficionado Online by Tabacalera A. Fuente, the makers of the genuine Fuente Fuente OpusX -- clearly has access to a color copier and issues of Cigar Aficionado magazine. He's taken an ad from our pages and copied and pasted it onto this box top. Never mind that the genuine Fuente Fuente OpusX box doesn't have such an image.

If the box somehow fooled a customer, the cigars should be a dead giveaway. OpusX cigars are notable for their Cuban-seed, Dominican-shade wrappers, which tend to be reddish-brown and oily. (See the photo of the genuine article for a comparison.) The wrappers on these fakes are as pale as an Antarctic researcher after a six-month winter stay. The bands, too, are poor imitations. We admit to being too cowardly to try the cigars to judge their flavor.

The Fuentes found the cigars in their home country of the Dominican Republic, which the uninitiated might believe to be the ideal place to buy hard-to-find Dominican cigar brands. It is not. Most of the country's cigarmakers produce their cigars in free trade zones, which means the cigars must be exported. Some legitimate Dominican cigars, including the rare Fuente Fuente OpusX, are sold in the Dominican Republic, but most of them, particularly in the tourist areas of Puerto Plata and Punta Cana, are fakes. Buyer beware.

-- Filed by David Savona