What Makes a Cigar a Maduro

Chamuco Cigars offers two Maduro blends: the Chamuco Black Magic Maduro, which is a Full Body Maduro, and the Chamuco Maduro, which is a Medium Body Maduro. But do you know what a maduro cigar is?

The word maduro translates to “ripe” in Spanish, so it’s not hard to see why maduros age extremely well. After the tobacco leaves are harvested from the plants, they are transported to a curing barn, where they mature from green to brown over the course of 45 days. The leaves then ferment in large “pilones” (that’s piles to us non-Spanish speakers) for up to three years, during which time the leaves change from light to dark brown as the sugars extract and the leaves become less and less tannic.

The amount of time a leaf needs to ferment is dependent on the thickness of the leaf as well as it’s nutrient content, which is determined by various factors such as growing region, the priming on the plant and the seed type.

It can take three to five years of fermentation for a tobacco leaf to naturally ripen into a maduro. Many seeds and tobacco types spawn thin, delicate leaves, thus they can never become true maduros. Stay tuned for our next blog to learn about some of the most popular varieties.