Padrón Family Reserve No. 96 Shipping Next Week
A new, round cigar from the Padrón family is heading to shops soon. The Padrón Family Reserve No. 96, a cigar measuring 5 3/4 inches long with a 52 ring gauge, will be in humidors next week. The cigars come in boxes of 10 and are made in either maduro or natural wrapper. Each cigar will have a suggested retail price of $30.50.
Padróns have long been known for box-pressed smokes, but the last few releases of Family Reserve have been round, rather than square. The No. 95, which is shorter and fatter at 4 3/4 by 60, is also round. The cigar took the highest score in our Grande category in the March/April issue of the magazine (with James Hetfield on the cover), scoring 95 points.
The No. 95 and No. 96 were both PCA exclusives, exhibited at the PCA trade show and sold only to retailers in attendance. The 95 was offered at the 2021 show, the 96 offered in 2022.
The No. 96 was meant to commemorate what would have been the 96th birthday of José Orlando Padrón, who was born in 1926 and founded Padrón Cigars in 1964. “Most of the cigars we release, we release for specific reasons,” Jorge Padrón told Cigar Aficionado this morning. “We’re not a company that does a lot of new product introductions. This was done to support the PCA and reward people for coming to the trade show and participating.”
Padrón Family Reserve cigars debuted in 2007 with the release of the No. 44, a box-pressed pirámide. The original plan was for Family Reserves to only be presented at cigar dinners where a member of the Padrón family was present, but the line ended up being sold in stores, albeit on a more limited basis than other Padrón cigars.
Family Reserves have a stellar history in the pages of Cigar Aficionado and Cigar Insider, with no shortage of high ratings, and the Padrón Family Reserve No. 45 Maduro was named Cigar Aficionado’s Cigar of the Year for 2009, the year it hit the market.
For a rating on the new Padrón Family Reserve No. 96, see a future issue of Cigar Insider.
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