Padrón cigars

About Padrón

Padrón is one of the most respected family houses in tobacco. It was founded by José Orlando Padrón, born in Cuba on June 10, 1926, into a tobacco family. He arrived in Miami in 1962 as an exile, and the story the family still tells begins with a small hammer: a friend at the Cuban Refugee Office gave it to him, and with it he did carpentry at night, while working as a gardener by day, until he had saved 600 dollars. In 1964 he opened his cigar company in Miami with a simple dream: to make cigars like the ones they used to smoke in Cuba.

In 1970 he moved production to Estelí, Nicaragua, as one of its pioneers. The country's instability cost him dearly: his factory was burned and his Miami offices were bombed. He returned to Nicaragua in 1990, once the embargo was lifted, and the house has made its cigars there ever since.

Padrón controls the whole process, from seed to smoke. It grows sun-grown habano tobacco on its own farms in Nicaragua, cures, ferments and ages it before rolling, and keeps large reserves so each blend tastes the same year after year. The 1964 Anniversary Series was introduced in 1994 to mark the company's 30th anniversary: tobacco aged four years, box-pressed in the Cuban tradition, with a numbered band against counterfeits. Its Torpedo was Cigar Aficionado's Cigar of the Year in 2021.

Don José died in 2017, at 91, and Padrón is still a family business, with his son Jorge and his grandchildren working in the company. My note for the 1964 Anniversary Maduro is one of the highest scores I have given.