Padilla Obsidian Especiales Review

[ghost]

I have been hearing a lot of these smokes and decided last night to try one. I won some on Devil's and they have been sitting in my long term storage humi for about 10 days at 67-69%.

Setting: Outdoors and in the garage. Temps in the low 50s. Light up was at around 7 PM.

Appearance: Dark oily wrapper. Looks like a powerful, meaty smoke. My mouth was watering just looking at it. Body was firm with some give (slight sponginess).

Cut: Used my Xikar Xi3; Nice cut.

1/3rd: My lips started to tingle just by putting the cigar in my mouth. I toasted the foot and a strong burning aroma came off the smoke. The initial drag presented some spiciness and a sort of earthy-woody flavor. Faint hints of something that I can only describe as raisin and rum could be detected. Again very faintly. I was taking down some of the outdoor Christmas decorations so had left the cigar for about four minutes. It had gone out on me. So looking to relight it, I took the ash off only to reveal some serious tunnelling. Purged lit the wrapper, some more of this rum/raising flavor but noticed that the draw had gotten tigher. I actually started to get a watery taste out of it at this point. Burn was also very uneven. Smoke it produced was good but when the draw got tigher it was noticeably less.


2/3rd: At this point, some multiple touches were needed. Also, I was trying to stick to the 1 puff per minute rule and found that it was again going out on me. The cigar was having a problem staying lit. Everyonce and awhile a watery dewey taste would come through along which muted the flavors of this cigar. The only thing that I could detect was spice. The spiceness seemed to build in this 3rd.

3/3rd: Never got it as I put it out.

Smoke: Mixed amount of white smoke produced. Sometimes plentiful and sometimes not.

Ash: Nice salt & peper ash. Just like the smoke, sometimes it stayed on longer and other times for shorter lengths.


Final Impressions: I really wanted to like this cigar. Obviously it was too WET. I think it needs A LOT more time to rest as it may also be too green. Some people recommedned that these cigars (some go as far to say as all corojos and criollos) should be kept at a lower RH (63%) to get the full taste out of them. I may leave one out of the humidor for a day or two to let it dry out and then give it a try (suppose to get mid 60s this weekend in NYC ). The rest will stay in storage in one of my 65% humis for a long, long sleep. So not giving up on these despite the bad experience.


I hope you guys found this review helpful.

Stay strong and happy smokes!

[Big D]

Just won some of these from the Devil. I will be sure to give them at least a month or so to sleep. I hope 65% will do these good.

[kheffelf]

Thanks for the review, I really enjoyed the one I had.

[lenguamor]

I have about 35 of these and tried one; I found it to be harsh as hell and much too green. Also had the gut feeling that this one should be treated as a Cuban/premium, and kept at no more than 65%.

I'm letting these and the Padilla Achilles sit for about a year at -65% to see the result, and I have a feeling that result will be very good.

[ghost]

Tried one more over the weekend and it was pretty much the same. I left it for a day to see if I could dry it out some. Not much better. These are going for a long, long nap at 65%.