La Dulce Vapor Company Review
– A Spinfuel eLiquid Team Review
MONTEZUMA • CHUPACABRA • LA LLORONA • MACHU PICCHU
Vendors: Interested in selling La Dulce e-Liquids? Contact Matt here:
La Dulce Vapor Company officially launched at the end of October and is already beginning to appear in Vape Shops in the Kentucky and Colorado, even without a website to call home. As shop owners experience these four delicious blends it doesn’t take long to go from a ‘taste’ to a full-blown wholesale partnership. Once you vape any or all of the four blends you too will be sold on these luscious blends. We spent 3 full days with them and not a drop was left as I sat down to turn my team’s notes into this review.
La Dulce Vapor Company was created by Matt Lashlee and Zac Gnadinger, one time college roommates. Zac is the designer of their signature flavor profile, a smooth and flavorful candy line, while Matt takes care of the business end of running, and promoting this fast growing company. After spending several grueling months perfecting the first four flavor blends, La Dulce Vapor Company became a reality.
Creating four excellent eliquid flavors is quite the accomplishment, but in order to establish credibility and withstand any FDA hurdles that, sooner or later, will affect us all, Matt and Zac sought out a professional, first rate, large sale eliquid manufacturer in the US that could turn their exacting recipes into an eliquid line that was above reproach. The only company that fit the bill, and could match the hand crafted eliquid perfected by Zac and Matt was California Vapors. By handing off the actual manufacturing of their delectable flavors the partners could spend the necessary time building the company and designing even more flavors. And that is exactly what they’ve been doing.
Building just the right brand for their company was a painstaking process, but one that had to end with what they imagined for their company in the very beginning. Everything from the graphics, the label designs, the choices for the right bottle and dropper, all had to mesh with the premium high end line they developed with these four eliquids.
After learning about the dedication and the large investment Matt and Zac put into La Dulce Vapor Company we invited them to participate in a Spinfuel eLiquid Team Review and Interview.
The Flavor Profiles
MONTEZUMA – Essentially a smooth gummy bear layer with peach and raspberry notes. Montezuma was the first fully realized e-liquid from La Dulce Vapor Company.
CHUPACABRA – A Green Apple candy flavor with a hint of the sour found in green apple hard candies.
LA LLORONA – A luscious blend of sweet ripe strawberries smothered in cream.
MACHU PICCHU – A sweet lime with other ‘citrus’ flavor notes blended to offer up a sublime vape that can last all day.
Characteristics of the La Dulce Vapor Company Signature
The one thing that ties a successful brand together is a signature. It doesn’t matter if its e-liquid or fu
rniture, something about the brand must run through the entire line of products. La Dulce Vapor Company is no different. Without a signature to the brand a company is just a haphazard collection of goods, like an importer/exporter business. Thankfully, La Dulce Vapor Company does indeed have a signature that ties the four e-liquids together.
Each of the four e-liquids from La Dulce Vapor Company have a high VG ratio of 80%. All fourdeliver an even flavor intensity which allows for each flavor to work wonderfully as all-day-vapes for RDA’s and sub-ohm tanks. While delivering abundant flavor and massive clouds of vapor, they are never overwhelming or harsh. These blends are luxurious, designed in a way that allowed our team to take extended lung hits and slow exhales so each nuance of flavor could be absorbed and enjoyed. Each e-liquid begins and ends with the same flavor notes, whether it was an hour or a day. No one experienced the dreaded Vapors Tongue during the entire review period. That alone made all four of us fans of the brand. You can bet that we’ll be waiting in line for new flavors coming from Matt and Zac.
In the end, how could we not award the Spinfuel Choice Award to all four brands?
Our Impressions of the Four Flavors
Montezuma – A Spinfuel Choice Award
Julia: 5 Stars – Spending time with Montezuma was as pleasurable as spending time with every e-liquid in my current private rotation. Actually all four blends were just as pleasurable. Montezuma lights up all the right taste buds as smooth, sweet, and dense clouds of vapor rolls through on the way in and the way out. The flavors of candied peach and raspberry is a joy to experience, and no matter how long I stayed with any one blend, including Montezuma, the flavor never gave out, and my taste buds were never blinded.
Having said that, Montezuma in particular proffered two distinct flavor profiles depending on the amount of wattage applied to a low resistant coil. Vaping with my ProVari Radius at 30.0 watts with a 0.5-ohm coil head inside an Aspire Triton v2 delivered a slightly warm gummy bear vape. Bumping up the wattage to 36w the flavor exploded into something intense, where each of the individual flavor notes came alive. One second I tasted a rich candied peach, the next a rich candied raspberry. Both wattage settings were delightful, but when the time comes for a super-charged flavor, give it another 5w or so and be prepared to experience a humongous burst of sweet fruitiness.
Kiera: 5 Stars – It was funny listening to Julia try and describe the flavors in Montezuma. Funny because Julia has never experienced the flavor of a gummy bear, worm, reptile, or any other form of this marvelous candy staple. Whenever we go to the movies this is the candy of my choice, so I am well-versed in its flavor profile.
Montezuma IS gummy bears in vapor form, right down to that dry sugar sweetness that makes a gummy bear a gummy bear. That said, there are plenty of gummy bear e-liquids available, so why does La Dulce deserve 5 stars for a flavor profile that has been around for years? Here’s why:
La Dulce was, I’m guessing, looking for a new way to present an old favorite to modern vapers using low resistance coils and plenty of wattage. I believe this because while vaping with my IPV D2 and Triton tank at 38w the incredible combination of the flavor notes, together with enormous clouds of vapor, the gummy bear experience was increasing exponentially with each passing second of the inhale. The exhale of warm sweet vapor was not unlike the experience of trying a new delicacy that you instantly realize as something you’ll keep with you forever.
Tom: 5 Stars – Vaping La Dulce flavors reminded me of a recent review we did with another High VG brand. Palatable flavors, colossal clouds of aromatic vapor, and a sense of gratification that eludes so many e-liquids of lesser quality, were shared by both this new brand and the other recent brand under review. However, the previous brand did not offer a gummy bear experience, so here I can give the same score I did before, and for pretty much the same reasons.
La Dulce took the gummy bear profile, tweaked it to accent a peach and raspberry note that is definitely a part of the flavor’s ‘presence’, and presented it in a way that can be enjoyed in a high wattage vaping instrument using a low resistance atomizer. A wonderful rendition of a world-class candy to be enjoyed with today’s vaping tools.
Jason: 5 Stars – Not many people are aware of this, but the gelatin used in most recipes for gummy bears contain prions, infectious agents made of protein, which has been linked to a transmissible form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy and a new form of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (Mad Cow), though the risk is very tiny. Nonetheless, when I heard about this a couple of years ago I stopped eating any food containing large amount of gelatin, just in case. But I LOVE gummy bears! So, when I read that Montezuma was a gummy bear flavor I went straight for it as soon as the review period began. And I am so glad I did.
The flavoring used in gummy bear recipes is not a health risk, though that magical flavor that we all recognize as the trademark flavor of a gummy bear is an artificial gelatin flavor. Montezuma nails this flavor, and adds to it with a bit of peach and raspberry flavoring. The end result is an amazing gummy bear vapor, and lots of it. So the next time you feel like having a few gummy bears reach for Montezuma instead. Better be safe than sorry, yea?
CHUPACABRA – A Spinfuel Choice Award Winner
Julia: 5 Stars – What made me a believer in the Chupacabra was an instant recognition of a delightful green apple, followed by that hard-candy flavor. If you are familiar with the rectangular hard candy, green in color, with a large green apple flavor and a twist of sour flavor, then you know what Chupacabra will taste like.
La Dulce has produced a flavor that is recognizable, but also a crisper, cleaner, and well, a better flavor than the candy. This High VG formula delivers just the right amount of apple, and the right amount of ‘sour’ to produce a vape experience that will become a well worn favorite in no time. While Montezuma busts wide open with extra warm vapor, Chupacabra seems to be best vaped at normal wattage ranges.
For this review I used my new HCigar DNA200 box mod and a SMOK TFV4 tank equipped with a sextuplet coil head (0.2-ohms total) I found 60w to be more than fine for a spectacular amount of smooth green apple flavor and enough clouds of vapor to fill a small room in under 3 minutes. Bumping up the wattage to 91w the vapor was toasty, and the flavor remained about the same. This is a well-deserved all-day-vape because the ‘sour’ component never overwhelmed the green apple sweetness.
Kiera: 5 Stars – I find myself being drawn to fruitier type e-liquid flavors these days then ever before. Of course I’ll need to see what happens once we’re back in Boston for the rest of the winter before I figure out if it is because of warmer temperatures that draw me to lighter, fresher flavors over heavier, thicker flavors. In any regard, Chupacabra was very enjoyable and I found it to be a very high quality flavor profile.
The green apple flavor, while sweet, gives a clean, crisp green apple flavor with a tinge of the sour hard candy treats. While talking about this e-liquid with Jason a couple of nights ago we agreed that if a person likes the green apple candy that’s been around forever then there is absolutely no reason why that person wouldn’t enjoy it in vapor form. Add to that the smooth and thick vapor that a quality VG provides and Chupacabra becomes an e-liquid you’ll want to keep around.
Tom: 5 Stars – I awarded Chupacabra the full 5 stars, but I don’t want to mislead any reader that shares the same ‘taste’ that I have into thinking that this is an e-liquid they would love. I undeniably enjoyed vaping it, the green apple sour candy is represented here 100%, but I wouldn’t vape sour green apple e-liquid often. Let’s be real here, there is only so much time in a day, and only so much time you spend vaping, so dedicating time every day to certain e-liquids in your current rotation is important. So it is certainly possible to enjoy, even love, a particular e-liquid flavor, without wanting to add it to your list of e-liquids in your rotation.
If you enjoy the green apple hard candy you can buy in any supermarket candy aisle, or if you actually have some in a candy jar somewhere than the chances of you wanting to buy this e-liquid is very high. The flavor between the two is identical, the difference being a solid candy or vapor, and that is partially responsible for the 5-star score, the other factors are the quality of liquid in the bottle and enormous amount of vapor you can get when vaping with a low resistance atomizer and plenty of power. I vaped Chupacabra with the Freemax Starre Pro with the standard 0.25-ohm ni200 coil head at 68w and the WISMEC Reuleaux DNA 200.
Jason: 5 Stars – The word Chupacabra means “goat-sucker“, it is a legendary cryptid said to inhabit parts of all the Americas. The first sightings were reported in Puerto Rico. The name Chupacabra comes from the animal’s reported habit of attacking and drinking the blood of the livestock, mostly goats. I’ve been trying to find a tie in with the name and the green sour apple candy vape from La Dulce. So far, not luck. But, there really doesn’t have to be a tie in, does there?
Regardless, as an e-liquid, Chupacabra is a winning blend. On the inhale you’ve delivered a pleasant smack of a sweet green apple (definitely green apple), and on the exhale is when the sour part kicks in. As an all-day-vape Chupacabra doesn’t lose itself to your tongue, not even the sour-tic exhale, and instead remains true to its nature as a smooth, flavorful vape that produces some of the best vapor ever experienced in an apple e-liquid.
LA LLORONA – A Spinfuel Choice Award Winner
Julia: 5 Stars – My review of this strawberry and cream e-liquid required half a dozen rewrites until I was fairly satisfied with it. If you can understand what I am trying to say, then I chose my words well. If you don’t understand, then I have failed you and La Dulce.
La Llorona is not a simple strawberry and cream blend, and as such there are a couple of ways to vape it that can enhance the flavors to create a near state of bliss, and a couple of ways to vape it that will turn most people off the flavor for good.
Have you ever vaped an e-liquid for the first time, with a long, slow straight-to-the-lungs followed by a long and slow exhale so that every molecule of flavor can skim across your taste buds? If you have then you now know how to vape La Llorona.
Now, have you ever followed up that long, slow method with a very strong, very deep inhale and exhale that seemed to produce the very opposite effect?
The first, slow vape was blissful, followed up by a vape that destroyed the complex flavors that seconds ago was pure ecstasy, and the follow-up was a ripped to shreds flavor layering that tasted burnt, sharp, and ugly? It happens to even the best e-liquids because sometimes these flavors are carefully balanced in order to combine in just the right way that at times you wish the brand would put a warning label on the bottle cautioning people about being aggressive with it.
La Llorona is one of these judiciously balanced blends. Vape it deep and slow, exhaling the same way, and the flavor is a magically sweet, ripe strawberry flavor resting in a pool of thick sweet cream. Vaped within the safe range of wattage and resistance the experience is unforgettable. But if you react to that extraordinary experience with a rushed, aggressive pull that same luscious strawberry becomes a spoiled strawberry in a bowl of curdled cream, and everything you experienced just a handful of seconds before is now ruined.
I prefer the latter experience, and so I suggest, strongly, that if you want to experience a magical strawberry and cream e-liquid that you do so when you able to take your time with it. La Llorona is meant to provide a peaceful, glorious vape experience, and it will if you savor it.
Kiera: 5 Stars – La Llorona is a superb blend of ripe strawberries and rich sweet cream. The flavor is familiar, as it should be, but the combination of an expert blend of quality flavor and thick vapor, plus some added warmth provided by a high wattage/low resistance vaping instrument set to 4 or 5 watts higher than the mechanical instrument indicates, creates a strawberry and cream vape experience you won’t soon forget.
I have a couple of strawberry and cream e-liquids in my collection that I vape often, but I will add La Llorona to my collection as well, and for the time being I’m sure I will choose La Llorona more often than the others.
Tom: 5 Stars – I get that La Llorona is an impressive strawberry and cream vape. And while this combination of flavors isn’t necessarily one that I embrace very often, it is still a magnificent display of the level of artistry in which La Dulce operates.
The strawberry flavor is ripe, sweet, and authentic. The rich cream is bursting with a clean, yet deep flavor, and together creates an aromatic and plentiful vapor. Plus, the flavor holds up throughout the day, making it one of the only strawberry and cream e-liquids that could justifiably be called an all-day-vape.
Jason: 5 Stars – Sometimes during a review I have to keep in mind the standards we, as a team, agreed to when it comes to scoring an e-liquid. The weight of whether or not I like whatever flavor component there is in an e-liquid carries a little weight, but the far more important components are the execution of the intended flavor as described by the brand itself, the sense of quality in the VG and PG used in the ingredients, and the satisfaction it is likely to have on vapers. Reviewing La Llorona brought to mind these contributions more so than the other three.
I don’t dislike a strawberry and cream e-liquid out of hand, its just that the flavor doesn’t do much for me. In fact, combinations of the strawberries and cream has been done hundreds of time, and they all taste about the same. The only defining factor was vapor production and aroma.
Some recipes for this combo are downright awful, much of the time a result of using poor quality, or inexpensive, flavoring and/or PG/VG solutions, and sometimes it’s a poor choice in the amount of flavoring used. Still, no matter how poorly a strawberry and cream e-liquid is made it will often taste like strawberries and cream. That is not the issue here with La Llorona.
If you love e-liquids, and if you pay attention to how well an eliquid is made, you can tell the difference in the quality of a familiar flavor instantly. And the first lung hit of La Llorona I knew instantly that it was made with first-rate ingredients in first-rate ratios. This is a high quality blend, offering the best flavors possible in a VG blend that takes advantage of the best elements of a high quality VG. Thick, aromatic clouds of vapor, smooth, yet deep flavors of ripe strawberries and a sweet creaminess.
Strawberry and cream has been done to death in the e-liquid marketplace, but La Dulce delivers one of the very best. After a few hours of comfortable vaping with La Llorona I discovered a new-found respect for this common blend. If you keep a bottle of strawberry and cream handy, make the next one this one, and La Dulce’s efforts are paid off handsomely.
MACHU PICCHU – A Spinfuel Choice Award Winner
Julia: 5 Stars – First and foremost Machu Picchu is definitely an all-day-vape. This is a sweet lime flavored e-liquid with small notes of “other” citrus flavors, flavors so small I can’t quite determine which other citrus notes are there. As a team we enjoy lime e-liquids so much that last year, when we announced our 2014 Spinfuel e-Liquids of the Year we offered a Lime category while leaving many other categories off the list, that’s how much we enjoy lime in vapor form.
Machu Picchu is assuredly not a Key Lime, or Key Lime Pie e-liquid. It is a straight up “lime”, with mostly sweet characteristics, and a bit of that citrus tang. Very pleasant, with flavor notes that do not disappear after a lot of vaping. You know how we can all go blind to certain tastes and smells, right? Somehow this very natural lime flavor doesn’t let you go blind to it, which has to be a difficult thing to pull off by La Dulce Vapor Company.
Machu Picchu was a solid vape at the minimum wattage and at higher wattages. I started off with a simple Halo Cigs Reactor (an iStick 50W) and a Kanger Subtank with a 0.5-ohm OCC and found wonderful flavor and vapor at just 28w. While this wattage produced excellent flavor and vapor the vapor was room temperature. Then, working up the wattage ladder the flavor and vapor really took off at 36-watts (for a 0.5-ohm Kanger OCC that’s pretty high), producing toasty-warm vapor that took out my frontal vision for several seconds. (Don’t vape this kind of e-liquid while driving)
If you want a lime e-liquid that is not trying to be a Key Lime Pie, this is one you need to try. As always, La Dulce’s blend was super high quality, with just the right amount of flavor and vapor for an all-day-vape.
Kiera: 5 Stars – The lime flavor in Machu Picchu is a very clean and crisp profile. As such, it is terrific for warm days and nights because you won’t feel as though you’re vaping something too rich or too heavy. The lime is an authentic, more-sweet-than-tangy flavor, which makes it a prime all-day-vape. You won’t find other flavor notes to bog down the crispy notes, like a Key Lime Pie flavor, and you’ll discover what a genuine lime tastes like in the form of vapor. Lots of vapor!
Although the flavor description tells us there are other citrus notes here I cannot tell you what they are. I can tell you that on the end of every exhale I taste something citrus-like, but whether its lemon, orange, or grapefruit I can’t say. (although I’m pretty sure it is not grapefruit) Definitely keeping a bottle around for at least weekly vaping. I think this one would also make a great palate cleanser between heavier flavored e-liquids.
Tom: 5 Stars – What I liked about Machu Picchu was the clean, bright flavor of a fresh squeezed lime with a little sugar added to cut the tangy characteristics that define a real lime. I don’t think its trying to be more than it is, it’s not trying to fool you into believing it is a complicated flavor profile with many hidden layers that appear at different parts of the inhalation and exhalation of a decent sized lung hit.
Instead, like the other three flavors in this review, La Dulce seems to have set out to create evolutionary flavors, not revolutionary flavors. We’ve had lime flavors, strawberry flavors, peach and raspberry flavors, and we’ve had green apple flavors before this, and I’m sure we will… after this review. What La Dulce seems to want to do is to take some flavors that might be established, but need to be defined in a new way; super high quality ingredients, yes, but more importantly in a super high quality vape experience. Clean flavors, luscious blends, and a smooth, aromatic and gentle vegetable glycerin vape… that’s Machu Picchu.
Jason: 5 Stars – For personal vaping I would choose a Key Lime Pie e-liquid over a lime-only e-liquid every time. That delicious meringue flavor and buttery piecrust go so well with a sweet lime flavor that I will sometimes drop all the other e-liquids for a few days and stay with one of 3 different Key Lime Pie e-liquids I keep in my collection. However, for vapers that also love lime but may not go for that Key Lime Pie characteristics, Machu Picchu is a solid choice.
What Machu Picchu has that Key Lime Pie doesn’t have is an unclouded (if you’ll forgive the pun) window into a what a genuine, slightly sweet lime flavor can be. This e-liquid blend by La Dulce is so high on the quality ladder that we’ve only reviewed a handful of brands this year that can produce an e-liquid of this status.
So while I still prefer a Key Lime Pie e-liquid over a lime e-liquid, I would definitely vape Machu Picchu during the summer months when I need something that will cut away heat and humidity, something a Key Lime Pie could never do.
If there was one thing about La Dulce e-liquids that caused us all to rate the four flavors 5 Star e-liquids it would be “quality”. But the truth of the matter is more nuanced than that. In addition to superb quality there is exacting recipes that bring out the best these flavors have to offer. There is the 80% VG factor that brings vapor production to new heights, and there is the performance of these wonderful flavors that make them splendidly satisfying.
La Dulce’s first four flavors are not radical or all that original. They are using familiar flavors but presenting them as ‘candied’ flavors, so maybe there is a bit of originality there, though recognizable. There isn’t anything here that we haven’t tasted before in other ways. That said, there is one thing about La Dulce’s e-liquids that hold them in the same esteem as some of the very best brands in the business… they are all the epitome of perfect execution.
After much discussion we all agreed that, as it stands, there is nothing about these four e-liquids that we would change, hence the four Spinfuel Choice Awards. So, the next round of flavors must meet these same standards if La Dulce is to ultimately succeed where others have failed. With these e-liquids under their belt they will soon need to create something original, something different than what’s come before, and they must do so with the same dedication that comes with the first four. It won’t be easy, but it won’t be impossible either. We think they’ll do just fine.
If Matt and Zac can produce four winning e-liquids for the launch of La Dulce they have an excellent shot at creating another 4, 10, 14, or even 20 new flavors that will possess the same level of quality, of flavor purity, and of superb satisfaction.
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Julia Hartley-Barnes, Kiera Hartley-Barnes, Tom McBride and Jason Little