• FEATURE: Interview with Ernesto Padilla
• CIGAR NEWS: Dominican Primeros – Newest Edition
• CIGAR.COM RADIO: Jose Blanco joins the crew
• Q & A: Help! I need to pick out a gift!
• Review: CAO Black

A: With the holidays coming up, this couldn’t be a better question to ask. Believe it or not, buying a gift for a cigar enthusiast is easier than you may think. Whether you know what they like or dislike, samplers and cigar clubs are a safe and easy way to go.

Samplers are a great option and are available in an array of quantities and prices. You can find samplers by brand, size, best rated - you name it. Cigar.com offers a vast number of samplers. From the highly acclaimed house blends, to premium cigar samplers, there is something for everyone.

Now if you want a guaranteed winner, then the Cigar.com Cigar of the Month Club isn’t only an easy gift – it's the best! For just $29.95 per month, club members receive 5 hand-selected cigars every month with a common theme, be it brand, size, country of origin, etc. In addition, to the monthly sampler, each installment also includes an informative newsletter discussing the featured brands complete with reviews and ratings so members can follow along with the experts at Cigar.com. If a Cigar of The Month Club member finds a selection they are fond of, they can come back to Cigar.com and receive a 10% discount on all of their retail purchases. Furthermore, and perhaps one of the most compelling aspects of Cigar.com’s club is the selection that every member receives for their initial installment. In your first package, Cigar.com guarantees $100+ worth of premium cigars. Now you can’t beat that!

If you still have trouble making up your mind, give Cigar.com a call at (800) 357-9800 and let one of the highly qualified cigar consultants guide you to the perfect gift.

The CAO Black was one of CAO’s original blends and is considered by many to be the cigar that put the Nashville-based company on the map. With changes to their portfolio of brands over the years, the Black is now very limited in production, but can still be found at a small handful of cigar suppliers throughout the country. For this issue’s tasting, we put this classic time honored brand to the test. Here is what we found:

Mosaic (6 x 42) Creamy brown, silky wrapper. Very attractive cigar. Pre-light flavors of cedar and light tobacco. Excellent construction with cedar, earthy aromas and some notes of honey. Salty on the palate but well balanced. Spice present through the nose and on the finish. Attractive cigar in a very classic size. Medium to full flavored and bodied with a delicious, long finish. 91/100 [Buy Now]

Storm (5 x 50) Oily, light brown wrapper. Classic robusto size packed with flavor and well balanced. Great draw and flawless construction. Earth, cedar and salty notes on the palate. 90/100 [Buy Now]

Frontier (7 x 50) Impressive, cedar wrapped cigar. Silky, creamy brown wrapper with an excellent draw. Salt and earthy notes with wood on the palate. Well balanced and medium to full bodied. 89/100 [Buy Now]

Bengal (6 x 50) Classic toro size. Excellent burn and construction, which was consistent with all other sizes – extremely well made. Medium flavor and body. 88/100 [Buy Now]

Gothic (6 x 52) Big cigar with a great deal of flavor. Silky, golden brown wrapper and cool notes on the palate. Never became hot or bitter. Medium to full bodied with earth and wood notes on the palate. Very unique character. 88/100 [Buy Now]

Ernesto Padilla is most often described as the younger blood of the cigar industry. His innovative blends have created quite a following. Born in Cuba to a highly respected tobacco family, he has surpassed the title of "up and comer", and is now considered one of the most respected cigar makers in the industry. Recently his Padilla Miami line received numerous 90+ ratings from Cigar.com in a vertical tasting.

Cigar.com - When did you start smoking cigars as a hobby, what brought you in?

Ernesto Padilla - My dad grew up on a tobacco plantation owned by his grandparents in the tobacco growing region of Cuba, Pinar Del Rio. Growing up I didn’t smoke cigars, but I knew my family was involved in the growing and brokering end of the tobacco business. I smoked a couple of cigars in high school and turned green, falling to the ground. So I tried it in my teens, but didn’t get into until my early twenties.

Cigar.com - Do you blend all your own cigars?

EP - That’s a good question. I had some guy on an internet board say “Well he never blends anything” I don’t know who this guy was and I wish he knew how much time I spend in the factory. When we set out to blend a cigar, there is more to consider than just what country it is made in. There are different regions that have different profiles, and that's probably what makes Nicaragua so unique outside of Cuba for premium tobacco. Jalapa, which is close to Honduras, produces a sweeter filler tobacco; it is a fuller, grainier tobacco as well. So when I talk to someone who has a lot of knowledge, I'll say let's try to go for the profile of the Montecristo from Cuba. We start by looking at which tobaccos we’re going to work with. It is a lot like cooking in a kitchen, do you add more salt, more pepper? We know our regions, and in those regions different farms produce different flavors. As to how we blend, without going into too much detail it is as follows: First we need to say, what kind of cigar are we going to build? Our Hybrid, for example, is made in the Dominican Republic but has very little Dominican tobacco in it. It actually uses Peruvian, Nicaraguan, Dominican and Ecuadorian leaves. Sometimes certain tobaccos work well together, and sometimes they don't. The key is that you have to blend from different farms and different regions, and that’s what we set out to do. I am very much involved with the blending, that’s what I enjoy the most. My family has been in the tobacco business for a very long time. I'm young, but there are things I've seen from experience and picked up. I continue to learn everyday. I spend a lot of time in the factory here in Miami, either every day or every other day.

Cigar.com - So how did you find your way into the cigar industry?

EP - I don’t know if I was ever out of it (as funny as that may sound)! I knew many people coming into the business from my time in Cuba. Where I grew up in Cuba, Pinar Del Rio, not to get off the subject, we all came from the Canary Islands of Spain. My father was a writer and Cuba's foremost poet, he won the Guggenheim award and was nominated for a Nobel Prize. He knew Castro from college and he spoke out against the revolution, and became an anti-revolutionary and they had to release him, it was this huge ordeal. I left Cuba when I was six years old. After studying advertising and marketing, I met Nick Perdomo Jr., I think in 2000 or 1999, and he was taken aback by how much I knew about tobacco. Several years later I emailed him and asked if he needed help with his marketing and he offered to bring me on board. Since I knew so many people in the industry, I wanted to branch out and do things that weren't being done at Perdomo, so I started my own business.

Cigar.com - Your company emphasizes quality over quantity. I've noticed a growing demand for your cigars. How can you continue to grow and maintain the same quality that you've become known for?

EP - That's a good question. We’ve had great demand for our product and we open up new retailers almost everyday. In this business you always have to think several years ahead, that’s what we're doing now. I haven’t been able to get out to more retail stores because I've been here in Miami trying to solve problems. This year's crop is fantastic for wrapper, so I need to figure how much we can buy to make sure that we have up to five years of wrapper and filler. And then the other thing is making sure our tobacco is handled properly through fermentation. We're doing very well, making sure we have ample materials for the long term and making sure we make the same cigars that our customers have gotten accustomed to. We only produce cigars that are up to our standards of quality. But all of our cigars have the same quality of tobacco, the same quality of roller, the proper fermentation; you're always going to get a good cigar when you smoke a Padilla.

Cigar.com – Thanks for your time, Ernesto.

EP – No, thank you!