Vitola: Short Corona
Size: 4″ x 47 ring gauge
Price $16.99 ($11.99 in free states)
Purchased at Total Wine Brea
Background
This is the third in a series on Andrew from SmallBatchCigar.com’s favorite short smokes. He gave me the first two to review and I remembered him mentioning his third when I saw it for sale at my local Total Wine. If you want to check out the first two, the first one is the Davidoff 702 Entreacto and the second is the Davidoff Millennium Petit Corona. I will note that Andrew prefers the 1926 natural but I prefer the maduro so that is why I went with it. The Serie 1926 cigar line commemorates the birth year of the founder of Padron cigars, José Padrón. They come in two wrappers; natural and maduro, all with Nicaraguan binder and fillers. They come in quite a few different sizes and there have been some special editions in this line over the years. The #35 name is to be the number of minutes that it is supposed to take you to smoke this cigar. I don’t know how many of these over the years I’ve had but this was the second one in this size I smoked in the last couple weeks.
Prelight
The wrapper was a medium-dark brown in color with lots of tooth and some oils. The cap on this cigar was a little bit rough, but it is something I’ve seen on other cigars and is cut off before smoking anyway. When I gave it a squeeze there was some give but no soft spots. Putting my nose to the wrapper I got the aroma of leather, with wood coming from the foot. After clipping and taking a cold draw I noted a taste of cocoa with a good draw.
Flavor
It starts off with lots of earth, chocolate, leather and coffee flavors with a good amount of spice on the retrohale and tongue. It starts off at the upper end of medium-full strength. The second third saw the spice still be very present with flavors of earth, leather, coffee and cinnamon. It still was at the upper end of medium-full strength as well. As I moved into the final third the spice mellowed out a lot. The flavor turned more sweet with the prevalent flavor being chocolate with some leather, earth and coffee thrown in. It stayed the same strength throughout.
Construction
The draw was perfect and the burn was only slightly wavy.
Value
While the cigar costs over $10 even in the free states I think this cigar is a good value for the enjoyment you get out of it. Here in CA it is less so but I would still buy them on occasion.
Conclusions
While all three of the cigars in this series were excellent I can easily say that the Padron 1926 was my favorite, with the 702 being second and the Millennium in third. I honestly don’t think you can ever go wrong picking up a Padron 1964 or 1926 when you want a great cigar, no matter what size or wrapper you choose. If you’d like to give this size or any of the other 1926 sizes a try our sponsor SmallBatchCigar.com has quite a few in stock at the moment.
By-The-Numbers
Prelight: 2/2
Construction: 2/2
Flavor: 4.5/5
Value: 1/1
Total: 9.5/10
