What is a maduro cigar?

What "maduro" means

Maduro is Spanish for "mature" or "ripe," and on a cigar band it describes the wrapper. The name refers to the longer cure a dark wrapper needs. The leaves are either toasted in a pressure chamber or fermented longer in above-average heat.

So is maduro a color? Partly. On the usual seven-shade wrapper color scale it's a shade between colorado maduro and oscuro, running from deep reddish-brown to almost black. But the word refers more to how the wrapper was processed, and the processing is what darkens the leaf. The color comes along with it.

The binder and filler underneath are a separate choice. That's why two maduros can smoke very differently.

How a maduro wrapper is made

Guides describe this a few different ways, and some of them are describing older practice. Here's how the claims line up.

The processing. There are two routes: toasting the leaves in a pressure chamber, or fermenting them longer in above-average heat. Many retailer guides mention only the second. The heat converts starches in the leaf into sugars, and the sugar rises to the surface of the leaf during fermentation. That's where the sweetness comes from.

The leaf. That much heat takes a thick, hardy leaf. The two most common are Connecticut Broadleaf and Mexican San Andrés, and both are usually stalk cut, which means the whole plant is cut near the ground instead of being picked leaf by leaf.

Where on the plant. Several guides say maduro wrappers come from the top of the tobacco plant. That was once the practice. Today the name refers more to the fermentation than to where on the plant the leaf grew. Cigar Aficionado's definition of maduro doesn't mention leaf position at all. It brings up top-of-plant leaves only for oscuro, the darkest shade.

Maduro vs. natural

"Natural" is the other half of the split. It covers light wrappers like Connecticut Shade, explained in what is a Connecticut cigar?, and more loosely, any wrapper that isn't processed as maduro.

The difference most guides point to is sweetness. Cigar Aficionado says a maduro wrapper "tends to be mild in aroma, but to have robust, almost sweet flavor." Not every maduro is strong and not every natural is mild, though. The binder and filler shape the taste too.

The clearest comparison is one line made in both wrappers. Padrón 1964 Anniversary comes in natural and maduro, with Nicaraguan wrapper, binder and filler either way. Cigar Aficionado more often rates the 1964 maduro a step stronger, though that's one line, not a rule for every maduro. The cleanest side-by-side is the Hermoso, which Cigar Insider, CA's newsletter, rated in the same June 2016 issue: Medium for the natural, with toast, herbs and spice, and Medium-Full for the maduro, with chocolate, spice and nuts. On the product page, choose a size marked Maduro, or one of each. How the two Padrón wrappers compare, size by size, is in Padrón natural vs. maduro.

Is a maduro stronger?

Not by itself. Some lines rate a step stronger in maduro, the Padrón 1964 among them, but the dark color alone doesn't tell you how strong a cigar is. On our pages, strength means nicotine: the physical effect you feel. It comes from the blend of tobaccos inside the cigar. A common misconception is that a dark cigar must be strong. Cigar Aficionado's own roundup of maduros opens by saying the dark color "can be perceived as overwhelmingly strong," and then: "But that's not always the case."

Sometimes the wrapper pulls the other way. Holt's notes that a maduro's sweetness can take the edge off a strong blend, and gives La Flor Dominicana's Double Ligero as an example. Its maduro version swapped the original Sun Grown Ecuador wrapper for a maduro leaf, which added sweetness and "tamed the finish."

For how strength, body and flavor differ, see cigar strength, body and flavor, explained.

The maduro wrappers you'll see on a band

Spec sheets often name the leaf along with the word maduro. Two names come up most.

Connecticut Broadleaf is grown in the Connecticut River Valley. Cigar Aficionado's tasters described the Rocky Patel Sun Grown Maduro Toro, an all-Nicaraguan blend under a dark Broadleaf wrapper, as "charmingly sweet and distinctly dessert-like," with fudge and espresso bean.

Mexican San Andrés comes from Mexico's Veracruz region and is also called San Andrés Negro. It's a thick leaf that holds up to higher fermentation temperatures, and as a maduro it's usually described as naturally sweet and spicy. Drew Estate uses it on Undercrown Maduro. If you're weighing that cigar against the Undercrown 10, see Undercrown 10 vs. Undercrown Maduro.

You'll also see Habano, Corojo or Connecticut on bands. Those describe the leaf itself, its seed or where it grew. Cigar Aficionado's ratings, for example, list one wrapper as a "Corojo-seed Ecuador Habano wrapper." Maduro describes what was done to the leaf after harvest, and leaf from any region can be processed that way. So "Habano or maduro?" compares the kind of leaf with how it was processed.

How to tell if a cigar is a maduro

Check the band and the line's name, not the color. Many lines with a maduro wrapper say so in the name, like Undercrown Maduro or Ashton Aged Maduro.

Color alone can mislead. Some natural wrappers, like Ecuador Habano and Cameroon, run darker than the golden-blond naturals people picture, even though they don't reach maduro brown.

Choosing a maduro

These are the makers' and reviewers' descriptions, not our tasting notes.

On the milder side. Ashton Aged Maduro. Holt's lists its strength as Mild-Medium, under a Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper given a three-year fermentation.

Medium-full body, San Andrés wrapper. Undercrown Maduro. Drew Estate lists the body as Medium–Full and the taste as "lush, earthy, rich, and naturally sweet." On the product page, choose a Maduro size.

Broadleaf, on the sweet side. The Rocky Patel Sun Grown Maduro above.

One line, both wrappers. The Padrón 1964 Anniversary, if you'd rather taste the difference than read about it.

The best way to learn the difference is to smoke a natural and a maduro from the same brand close together. The Jessup shop sells singles, so you don't need a box of each.