Every cigar shop counter conversation I've had this year eventually circles back to this one. The Padrón 60th Anniversary debuted a couple of years back to mark six decades of the Padrón family business, the Natural blend picked up Cigar Aficionado's Cigar of the Year for 2025 at a rare 97 points, and then promptly became almost impossible to find at anything close to the $75 sticker price. It's still the cigar everyone in the trending lists is talking about in 2026, mostly because the allocation problem never really went away. My local shop finally got three boxes in last week, and I bought one before I could talk myself out of the price.
Sixty Years, One Perfecto
Padrón only made this in a single vitola — a 6 1/2 x 56 rounded perfecto, in both Natural and Maduro wrappers. I went with the Natural, the one that actually won the award. The wrapper itself is Nicaraguan-grown, a light-to-medium roast with a faint rosado blush that tells you this leaf got real sun exposure. Construction on my stick was tight, the seams practically invisible, and the perfecto taper gives you a gradually widening burn that changes the draw character as you work down the cigar — tighter and more concentrated up top, opening up and mellowing by the midpoint.
The Smoke: An Hour and a Half of Classic Padrón
This is Padrón doing what Padrón does, just with the volume turned up. Cold draw is cocoa and dried fruit. First third brings cedar, cinnamon, and a molasses sweetness that's more restrained than the 1964 Anniversary line — less sugary, more like dark rum reduced down. By the midpoint, nutmeg and baking spice take over, and a black coffee bitterness starts pushing back against the sweetness in a way that keeps it from ever feeling like a dessert cigar. The final third is the best part: earthy, almost mineral, with dark chocolate lingering into a finish that's genuinely long. This is a 90-minute smoke if you don't rush it, and you shouldn't.
About Those Quality Control Complaints
I'd be lying if I said I went into this without baggage. Plenty of reviewers had a rough first experience with this release — soft spots, uneven burns, one well-known reviewer scored a Natural in the mid-80s over construction issues that had nothing to do with the blend itself. I think what happened is straightforward: demand outran the allocation so badly that cigars left the factory faster than Padrón's usual aging and resting process would allow, and early boxes got out into a market that expected perfection because of the score attached to them. My stick, bought well over a year after the initial release, burned clean start to finish. That's not proof the problem is fully solved, but it does suggest patience is worth more than panic-buying the first box you see.
What to Pour With It
The molasses-and-cinnamon early third wants something with real oak spice behind it, and the coffee-and-earth back half wants proof to match. I smoked mine with a pour of Old Forester 1920 Prohibition Style at 115 proof — the bourbon's dark fruit and baking spice notes track right alongside the cigar's cinnamon and nutmeg, and neither one gets steamrolled by the other's intensity. If you've got something barrel-proof and wheated in the cabinet, that works too; the extra sweetness balances the cigar's dry, earthy finish nicely.
If your local shop has one in stock at MSRP, don't overthink it — this is one of the few hyped releases that actually delivers.
Is the Hype Deserved?
Mostly, yes. Strip away the "Cigar of the Year" headline and the secondary-market markups, and what's left is a well-built, complex, thoroughly enjoyable Padrón that plays to everything the brand does well — balanced sweetness, real complexity across three distinct thirds, and a finish that sticks around. It's not a $75 cigar that reinvents anything; it's a $75 cigar that executes the classic Padrón formula about as well as it's ever been executed. The score got attention, the allocation created scarcity, and the scarcity created resale prices that have nothing to do with what's actually in the wrapper. Judge the cigar, not the hype cycle around it, and it holds up.
Final Verdict
The Padrón 60th Anniversary Natural deserves its reputation as one of the best smokes to come out of the brand in years — complex, well-paced, and worth the wait if you can find one near sticker price. Skip the secondary-market flippers charging double, and don't judge it by other people's bad-luck boxes; a properly rested stick is everything the score promised.