Perdomo Double Aged Vintage Connecticut Staff Review
Recently, we hosted Nick Perdomo, founder and owner of Perdomo Cigars, at Holt’s headquarters for a much-anticipated retail event featuring his brand. When we were catching up, I smoked a Double Aged Vintage Connecticut in a 5-by-56 Robusto, and I’m going to outline why this cigar underscores my appreciation for Nick’s passion for cigar-making and his insistence on producing cigars of the highest quality and consistency.
Perdomo 10th Anniversary Champagne is the biggest-selling Perdomo cigar. If you’re a fan of that blend, Double Aged Vintage Connecticut is drawn from similar tobaccos but with double the amount of aging, as the name implies. A seamless, golden-blond Ecuador Connecticut wrapper leaf embraces premium Nicaraguan binder and filler tobaccos grown on Perdomo family estates in Estelí, Jalapa, and Condega. Every leaf of tobacco is aged for ten years before resting for two final years in a white oak bourbon barrel to achieve optimal smoothness. Nick’s goal was to work with stronger, richer tobaccos and offset their intensity with extra-thorough fermentation.
Perdomo Double Aged Vintage cigars are full-flavored but medium-bodied. Consider the blend a richer and more refined iteration of 10th Anniversary Champagne. Because the tobaccos rest for so long, Nick makes fewer of his Double Aged Vintage blend, and the cigars are only available at around 130 select Perdomo accounts throughout the country.
The added selectivity and maturation of the tobacco shows when I slice open a fresh box of Double Aged Vintage Connecticut Robustos. Stately cigar bands, rendered in red, orange, black, and gold colors, encapsulate an entire row of perfectly uniform cigars. With its 56-ring gauge, the Double Aged Vintage Connecticut Robusto is on the thick side, but that’s common throughout the Perdomo portfolio. Nick’s been producing fat cigars since the ‘90s, and his brand has stimulated demand for them.
When I slide a Robusto out of the cellophane, the aroma and cold draw are soft and creamy after I cut the cigar and take a few cold puffs before lighting it up. The Double Aged Vintage Connecticut imparts notes of cedar and baking spices with a nice, lingering sweetness, and the whole portrait translates wonderfully when I toast the foot of the cigar. Milky streams of smoke steep my taste buds and nasal cavity with luscious aroma and soft but complex flavor.
Mellow notes of cashew, almond, vanilla, and coffee bean coat my palate with a touch of pepper over the course of the first ten minutes. The extra time and energy it takes to age tobacco for over a decade are worth the wait in Perdomo Double Aged Vintage Connecticut. The blend is phenomenally smooth and exhibits zero harshness. The Robusto reveals a particularly nutty character while a foundation of cocoa, pepper, and wood persists with hints of cinnamon and caramel. This cigar is clearly an elevated version of other Connecticut-seed wrappers Nick works with.
You can taste that the tobaccos have been tucked away for a long fermentation, and finishing their rest in old bourbon barrels channels a sweeter profile. This is an excellent cigar to smoke with a silky glass of pinot noir or a vintage bourbon like Basil Hayden’s. After fifty minutes, the Robusto has burned beautifully, and Perdomo Double Aged Vintage Connecticut is a cigar I can readily endorse. The blend is also available in Nick’s signature Maduro and Sun Grown wrappers as well.
This past April, our General Manager of Holt’s Retail Operations, Anthony Mazzola, sat down for an interview with Nick Perdomo during his visit. Throughout their conversation, Nick reflects on his time in the cigar industry and what has made his brand successful.
Perdomo Cigars is a family operation. Nick got the bug to be in cigar business from his father and grandfather, both of whom worked in premium cigars in Cuba before Castro came to power. Nick followed in their footsteps after spending five years in the Navy and working as an air traffic controller. He started very modestly making cigars in Ybor City and Miami before going into Nicaragua in 1994. There, Nick has steadily grown Perdomo into a top-selling brand sold in over fifty countries. He once dreamed of making 100,000 cigars per year. Today, among his three cigar factories and a growing network of farms, the company produces 100,000 cigars per day, and the Double Aged Vintage Connecticut is one of his favorites. Add it to your rotation today.
