Padrón Revived an Archival Cigar Shape for Its Latest Limited-Edition Smoke
In 1962, José Orlando Padrón, a third-generation Cuban tobacco grower, ended up in Miami after the Castro regime confiscated his family’s farms. It took only two years for him to set up shop making cigars employing just one roller. Padrón eventually relocated his factory to Nicaragua, where the mineral-rich volcanic soil, which imparts the leaves with distinctive earthy characteristics, was similar to Cuba’s Pinar del Río. As a result, Padrón Cigars has become renowned for its puros, the wrappers, binders, and fillers of which are made exclusively from Nicaraguan tobaccos.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of Padrón Cigars, and in the decades since it was founded, it has grown to produce some of the world’s most coveted smokes, ironically rivaling many of the best Havanas today. Padrón now employs around 1,200 workers, including torcedors (cigar makers) and tobacco farmers, who together make more than 8 million puros a year.
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“For our 60th anniversary, which is obviously a very special occasion, we wanted to create a cigar we hadn’t done before,” says Jorge Padrón, son of the late Don José and president of the family-owned company. “Then we had to create an entirely different blend that would be exclusive to this particular cigar.
As both a challenge to the company’s cigar-making skills and a tribute to its heritage, it has created a Salomon for the first time in nearly 60 years. The old Cuban shape is basically an elongated perfecto that gradually swells before abruptly tapering into a pointed foot. The form is so difficult to craft that only one of Padrón’s numerous rollers has been tasked with making it; consequently, supplies will likely be extremely limited and sporadic.
The Salomons are offered in either maduro or natural and are made from tobaccos grown on the family’s farms. We procured samples of both to evaluate. The extra-long design of the Salomon can take hours to finish, so its flavor needs to be complex enough to keep you engaged. The espresso-brown maduro wrapper portends its thick, velvety smoke with a subtle herbal sweetness and peppery spice, while the smooth, silky sheen of the sun-grown natural’s medium-tan wrapper emits a sweet, decidedly floral and citrus flavor on the heavier side of medium. Though Padrón is secretive about the blend’s makeup, we suspect there are 10-year-old tobaccos in the mix.
Priced at $75 each—or $750 for a 10-count presented in an elegantly lacquered dress-style presentation case—the cigars sport a retro Padrón band, are individually “coffin” boxed, and reflect the ultimate tribute to six decades of cigar-making excellence.
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