Perdomo Grand Cru Maduro
I picked up the cigar up for review from The Cigar Loft, a nice local shop here in St. Petersburg, Fl. The Perdomo Grand Cru blended with all Cuban seed tobacco from Nicaragua. It is claimed to be the best yield from Perdomo’s farms in 2004. But enough of that… Lets see how the cigar is.
Wrapper: Nicaragua
Binder: Nicaragua
Filler: Nicarahua
Size: 6 x 60
Price: Around $7.00
Pre-Smoke & Construction:
The wrapper was a little bumpy with a few medium sized veins, but looked good overall. It had a sweet earthiness, mixed with slight barnyard odor, while the foot had almost no smell at all. The pre-light draw had slight resistance, and had a earthy and mild peppery flavor. The cigar was pretty consistently packed and firm when squeezed.
The burn required no corrections, and the ash held for an inch.
Flavor:
The first third had a nice peppery spice with earthy notes. That remained for a large part of this third. As I got towards the end, a sweet dry chocolate entered and rounded things out. The smoke feel was dry and smooth and left me craving water.
Although the second third did not have the addition of new flavors, it wasn’t a boring experience. The dry chocolate was the strongest flavor. The earthy flavors fell way back and were hard to detect at times, but they never went away. When exhaling through the nose, there was a smooth peppery spice. Like before, the smoke feel was very dry but became thicker. I went through a large glass of water before I hit the half way point.
The last third was basically identical as the previous third. The difference was the smoke feel. It became thicker and creamier. The dryness wasn’t as prominent. The body crept into the lowered full bodied range.
Conclusion:
This was a good medium to full bodied cigar. I know my description of the flavors sound lack luster, but overall the smoking experience was good. It just seemed to hit the spot. I think Perdomo has a nice simple cigar here, and I’d gladly smoke more of these.
This entry was posted on Friday, June 18th, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Cigar Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
John Werner February 16th, 2011 at 3:00 am
There was nothing really wrong with the Perdomo Gran Cru Natural, but it was almost too smooth so it was with hopes that the Maduro would ramp up things a bit. It does. It is still one super smooth stick, but it’s a bit more caramel sweet and a bit darker to the tongue with a small chocolate component. As for spice, well, you may notice it at first to be stronger to very shortly mellow out to light spice and it seems to remain that way. In fact, after it is lit and properly started the taste is remarkably consistent. Boring? Maybe some will say it is, yet to me it got pleasant right away and stayed that way.
It is harder, I’ve read, to blend a true “puro” with different seeds that are grown on soil that is the same. I think with that in mind Nick Perdomo Jr. has a success here. A cigar that isn’t overly complex (i.e. constantly changing flavors in order with some seeming to appear out of nowhere) that still manages to very much please is my bottom line on this one. I will smoke it again with pleasure.