Vitola: Corona- 5.5” x 44 ring gauge
- Out of production, unavailable
- Gifted by a friend
Background
Seven years ago…that’s how long ago it has been since the Paradigm Corona was released by 262 Cigars. It’s amazing how much the world has changed since then. In case you weren’t there, 262 Cigars began in 2010 with the Paradigm blend. The blend and the brand were the brainchild of Clint Aaron and a good friend that he started the company with. “262” because February of 1962 was when JFK signed the Cuban Embargo preventing the import or sale of Cuban products in the United States…conveniently signed for after Kennedy received a large shipment of his personal favorite Cuban cigars.
The Paradigm Lancero was a contender for Cigar of the Year in 2012 (back when this site was known as the Tiki Bar). In 2014, 262 decided to give Burns Tobacconist in Chattanooga, Tennessee (my “home store”…and also where I worked for some time) an exclusive vitola: this Corona. In the meantime, I did work at Burns part-time…then full-time…then quit to go back into the graphic design and marketing field…and we went from President Obama to Trump to Biden…in and out of a pandemic (or are we out yet?)…learned that “Lola” by The Kinks is more true-to-life all the time…and eventually all these 262 Paradigm Coronas would find homes…or get burned down. I hadn’t seen them in a couple years and didn’t expect to again when a friend gave me a box…he had been one of the ones to buy a 10-count box when Burns tried to clear out inventory, but ended up just putting them in a coolidor and forgetting about them. With my recent financial constraints, he elected to just give me some of the cigars he didn’t think he would smoke…including these.
The 262 Paradigm blend was made in Honduras in the Plascencia factory. It used Columbian (Cubito) and Nicaraguan (Viso and Seco from Jalapa and Estelí) fillers, a Honduran binder, and a Brazilian Mata Fina wrapper leaf.
I fired one up a few days ago and was surprised by how well it held up after 7 years of age. I gave one to our Drew Estate rep yesterday…he was our 262 rep back in the day. And I’m sure I’m smoke the rest in fairly short order.
Notes
The color of the wrapper was an even milk chocolate brown and it had a fresh earth and cedar aroma to it. I clipped the head and got a good cold draw that had flavors of earth, unsweetened cocoa powder, and bell pepper.
Firing up the Paradigm Corona, I got strong vegetal notes, echoing the bell pepper from the cold draw. Mild sweetness and earth and wood came in after that, along with some black pepper spice.
I paired up this cigar with a new Bourbon (at least to me), Davidson Reserve…a Tennessee Straight Bourbon Whiskey. I had a single-barrel, store pick that I will give a full review to at a later date, but let’s just say this stuff is hot out of the bottle at 114 proof or so. I added water, but it was still hot and only added a little sweetness with a lot of spice. More experimentation would be required with this one.
The 262 Paradigm Corona continued on with some cinnamon and baking spice, earth, cedar, and just a touch of dark chocolate with a tiny bit of sweetness. All in all, I was amazed at how well the blend held up to 7 years of age. It still smoked medium-plus in body with a tremendous complexity after the first few minutes.
