For those of you that don’t know….

Back before the infamous split of Pepin and Padilla around March of 2008, they produced a limited edition 1932 Oscuro, which (as the name implies) was the awesome 1932 blend with an Oscuro Wrapper attached…The Padilla 1932 Oscuro were only available in limited edition humidors consisting of 45 cigars; 15 each of the Robusto, Torpedo, and Churchill vitolas. Supposedly, there were only 300 of these boxes produced (which means a total of 13,500 sticks) although I have not been able to independently verify that…And, taking a page from Padrón, all of the cigars in this Edition are individually numbered (as you can see from the photos)…

Here is what the original box of Padilla 1932 Oscuro looks like:

(photo courtesy elitecigar.com)

I had been looking for a few of these for a while (they are NOT easy to find, I can assure you), and happened to find a great BOTL who was willing to trade, and ended up with two of each size…For this review, I smoked both of the Torpedoes I received in the trade…

[Also, just a note, but there are quite a few Padilla 1932 Oscuro Salomons in production and for sale (mostly at CigarBid and Cigar.com, who has an exclusive on selling them) but these are NOT the Pepin rolled versions, and were not released with the Original Humidor...]

But enough of that, let’s get down to business, shall we?

• Cigar Reviewed: Padilla 1932 Oscuro Torpedo
• Country of Origin: USA
• Factory: El Rey de los Habanos
• Wrapper: 5 year-old Cuban Corojo Nicaraguan Oscuro
• Binder: Nicaraguan Criollo
• Filler: Nicaraguan Criollo
• Size: 6 1/4 inches
• Ring Gauge: 52
• Vitola: Torpedo
  
• Est. Price: $30ish
• Release Date: 2007
• Production Numbers: 300 boxes of 45 cigars each (13,500 total cigars)

The first thing I noticed about the Padilla 1932 Oscuro was the great wrapper…it is a nice, VERY Dark chocolate brown, with a bit of tooth to it, and smelled slightly of tobacco, spice and chocolate… the two torpedoes I smoked each had a bit of plume on them, which was nice to see…

As soon as I took the first puff, I knew this was going to be a great smoke…there was a bit of spice up front, but beneath that was a combination of Leather, tobacco, and a creamy note that really set the first third off…And while there was a sweet undertone, it was a different kind of sweet then I normally taste…it was more of a Tangy sweet, then a sweet sweet, if that makes sense…It was very interesting to taste…

The Second Third switched gears almost totally…instead of the above flavors, I started tasting a fairly strong woodsy note (oak), along with leather and Dark chocolate…The spice that was present in the first third was also almost totally gone at this point, just a shadow of what it once was…The creaminess was also still present…also a VERY faint fruitiness (which could have just been the remnants of the “Tanginess” from the first third)…

At roughly the start of the Final Third of the cigar, I was rolling along, really enjoying the flavors that were present, when it was almost like someone flipped a switch labeled “SPICE”…it was almost overwhelming at times during the last third (and made my mouth tingle like mad), but I could still taste the Oak, leather, chocolate and cream in the background…It continued that way until the end…

Final Notes:

• I do love the second band look on these (ala Padrón)…makes differentiation from the normal blend easy, and it is well done…
• The wrapper is CRAZY dark…not unusual for an Oscuro Wrapper of course, but I think it is even darker then what I am used to seeing from a normal Oscuro…
• The Burn was great for the entire stick (as to be expected from Pepin) but the draw was just a bit tight…not enough to be an issue, but enough to comment on…
• The Final Smoking Time for this cigar was 1 Hour and 45 Minutes…

The Bottom Line: This was an EXTREMELY complex smoke from the start to the finish…I was hoping for the wonderful flavors of the classic 1932 blend, with the added sweetness and spiciness from the Oscuro wrapper, and honestly, that is exactly what I got…What I was not expecting was the added creaminess that was present, and that in combination with the aforementioned flavors really pushed it over the edge for me…This is a very different cigar from most of Padilla’s sticks (and quite different from most of Pepin’s as well)…Quite honestly, it is in a class by itself…

Final Score: 92