Perdomo 20th Anniversary Sun Grown

The Perdomo 20th Anniversary Sun Grown is one of two blends released by Tabacalera Perdomo to commemorate the company’s 20th anniversary.  While announced prior to the trade show, the Perdomo 20th Anniversary line made its debut at the 2012 IPCPR Trade Show. A couple of weeks ago, we took a look at the other 20th Anniversary blend – the Perdomo 20th Anniversary Maduro.  Today, we take a look at its Sun Grown wrapper counterpart.  While I thought the 20th Anniversary Maduro was a good cigar, I believe the 20th Anniversary Sun Grown is the better cigar.

Perdomo Cigars has done a good job of “verticalizing” their cigar brands.  In other words, they provide a similar blend of binder and filler and then offer different wrapper options.  The Perdomo 20th Anniversary Series follows this pattern with both the Maduro and Sun Grown releases.

Let’s take a closer look at the Perdomo 20th Anniversary Sun Grown and see what this cigar brings to the table.

Blend Profile

Both editions of the Perdomo 20th Anniversary are Nicaraguan puros.  The cigars utilize the best tobacco from Perdomo’s farms in Nicaragua.

20th Anniversary Sun Grown
Wrapper: Cuban Seed Sun Grown
Binder: Nicaraguan
Filler: Nicaraguan

20th Anniversary Maduro
Wrapper: Cuban Seed Maduro
Binder: Nicaraguan
Filler: Nicaraguan

Perdomo 20th Anniversary Maduro

Vitolas Available


Both blends of the Perdomo 20th Anniversary series will be available in five vitolas.  The cigars will be packaged 24 per box.  The vitolas are geared toward larger ring gauges and are offered in a box-press shape.

Robusto: 5 x 56
Epicure: 6 x 56
Torpedo: 6 1/2 x 54
Gordo: 6 x 60
Churchill: 7 x 56

Appearance

For this cigar experience, I smoked the Robusto vitola of the Perdomo 20th Anniversary Sun Grown.  

The wrapper is an oily sungrown caramel color wrapper.   There are some dark spots on the wrapper.   There are also some visible veins and visible wrapper seams.  Overall I considered the 20th Anniversary Sun Grown to be a well-packed box-press.  

The band to the Perdomo 20th Anniversary Sun Grown has the black, white, and gold Tabacalera Perdomo sunburst logo on the upper portion of the band.   The lower half of the band has a large black stripe with gold and black stripes on the top and bottom.  On that stripe it says “20th ANNIVERSARY” in gold font.

Preparation for the Cigar Experience

As I normally do with most cigars, I opted to use a straight cut to remove the cap.  Once the cap was successfully removed from the 20th Anniversary Sun Grown, I proceeded to begin the pre-light draw.  The dry draw notes provided a mix of natural tobacco, wood, and citrus sweetness.  Overall, this was a nice pre-light draw experience.  At this point, I was ready to toast the foot of the Perdomo 20th Anniversary Sun Grown and see what his cigar experience would bring to the table.

Flavor Profile

The Perdomo 20th Anniversary series is a great example on how a wrapper can change a cigar despite having the same binder and filler tobacco.    I found the 20th Anniversary Sun Grown to be a very different smoke than the 20th Anniversary Maduro.

The start to the 20th Anniversary started with some bold notes of citrus sweetness and pepper.  I also detected some notes of wood and natural tobacco in the background.  As the smoking experience moved through the first half, the pepper subsided to the background and some nut flavors joined the citrus notes in the forefront.

In the second half of the cigar experience, the pepper notes increased and joined the citrus and nut flavors as the primary notes.  The background flavors still had the natural tobacco flavors and complemented the primary notes very nicely.   Toward the end of the cigar experience, the story would be the citrus and pepper spice.  The end of the cigar was not harsh.  The resulting nub was cool in temperature, but soft to the touch.

Burn and Draw

The burn of the Perdomo 20th Anniversary Sun Grown did have some unevenness to it.   While touching it up with my lighter is not uncommon with any burn, I felt the 20th Anniversary Sun Grown needed more touch-ups than I would have preferred.   The resulting ash was a salt and pepper color.  While I wouldn’t categorize it as a “loose ash”, there was some flaking to it.   The burn rate and burn temperature were ideal.

No issues with the draw.  I found the draw to be low maintenance and it made the Perdomo 20th Anniversary Sun Grown and made it very easy to puff on.

Strength and Body

I found the 20th Anniversary Sun Grown to be slightly dialed back in strength than its Maduro counterpart.  While I assessed the 20th Anniversary Maduro to be a full strength cigar, I had the 20th Anniversary Sun Grown to be medium to full in terms of strength.   From a body perspective, I actually found the 20th Anniversary Sun Grown to have a little more depth to its flavors than the 20th Anniversary Maduro.  I assessed the 20th Anniversary Sun Grown’s flavors as having enough depth to be considered a full-bodied smoke.  As for the balance between strength and body, I give a slight nod to the body here.

Final Thoughts

Back when I assessed the 20th Anniversary Maduro, I made the comment that I was really curious to see what the Sun Grown wrapper would do.  As mentioned above, this is a nice case study for what happens when a wrapper on a cigar changes.  While the 20th Anniversary Maduro was a good smoke, the 20th Anniversary Sun Grown is better.   I found this to be a smoother cigar experience and one that had a better flavor profile.   This is a nice cigar for an experienced cigar enthusiast to smoke.  There still might be a little more strength on this for a novice.  This is a cigar I would definitely smoke again – and one I will look forward to trying some of the other sizes in.

Summary

Burn: Good
Draw: Excellent
Complexity: Medium
Strength: Medium to Full
Body: Full
Finish: Good
Assessment Nice to Have
Score: 90