It used to be that the only claim to a Cuban Maduro cigar came from infamous online shops claiming to sell pre-embargo Cuban cigars. To me, the entire claim was ludicrous on the surface, if only because until now, there has never been a genuine Cuban “Maduro”, and if may say so, I never expected it.
So you can guess how surprised I was to see that, after all these years, during this past Habanos festival Cuba unveiled their Cohiba Maduro 5; yes, they are actually labeling these cigars “Maduro” right on the label and bands!
I’m still a little intrigued as to why they would do it now. After all, Cuban wrappers are so uniquely different on their own that I had just grown to accept the proverbial Maduro as uniquely a non-Cuban thing.
Nevertheless, Habanos S.A. is introducing the cigar as the “heir of the best tradition of Cuban dark wrapper cigars”. At first I said: A tradition of Maduro cigars? But they define their Maduro 5 wrappers as the upper leaves of the plant bearing a characteristic range of dark colors and textures brought on through their long, complex process of full natural fermentation, which, I suppose, is meant to say that they’ve not really done anything new, but just taken their fermentation process to the edge to come up with a very dark and rich wrapper, darker than they have until now. Reportedly, it takes five years of natural fermentation to produce the new wrapper, free of any chemical or temperature manipulation of any kind.
In case you haven’t guessed it just yet, these cigars are expensive, prohibitively so in most cases, costing up to $ 650.00 a box depending on the format: Genios, Magicos, or Secretos. Hmmm… I see a review forthcoming.
