Padilla 554 BHK Corojo Robusto Gordo

Blend Details:

There are cigars you smoke and cigars you reckon with. This one is the second kind.

Corojo was born in the Vuelta Abajo in the 1940s, on a farm called El Corojo, and for half a century it was the wrapper that dressed the great Havanas. It was proud, temperamental, and vulnerable to blight, and Cuba eventually turned its back on it. The seed survived in the hands of men who refused to let it die.

The 554 BHK takes that leaf and does something unexpected. We chose a medium priming, leaf from the heart of the plant, neither the shy top nor the brutal crown. The result is all the Corojo you came for: spice, cedar, and that old leathery sweetness. It is tempered and deepened by Nicaraguan filler from Jalapa, a valley that grows tobacco with elegance in its bones. The two don't fight. They conspire.

It comes from the house that has put five cigars on Cigar Aficionado's Top 25. We don't release a blend unless it can stand in that company.

The format is a 5½ × 54 robusto gordo, a new classic size. It's broad enough to let the smoke breathe and short enough to finish before the night turns philosophical.

This is a limited release. Once this allocation is gone, there is no second run. You will either have smoked it or heard about it.

Introductory price: $44.99 $35.99. Put it in your humidor before someone else does.