La Palina El Ano 1896 Oscuro Robusto 5" * 52

La Palina El Ano 1896 Oscuro is named after the year 1896 when the original La Palina cigar was created by Samuel Paley. Bill Paley, his grandson, pays homage to the brand's beginnings with a premium stick handmade in the Dominican Republic by Abe Flores at the PDR factory. The Mexican San Andres maduro tobacco wraps over Dominican binders and fillers and is their first box pressed cigar. The cigar also features the new La Palina logo and comes in three sizes.

The Robusto is a short Churchill size, traditionally 5 to 5.5 inches by a 50 ring gauge.

A box pressed cigar is a cigar that has a square shape. Originally, this shape came from the practice of packing round cigars tightly in cardboard boxes which are then compacted using a manual press. The cigars are thus pressed into each other and become a "squarish" or semi-square shape. Today, cigar makers use square shaped molds or a wooden trunk press for their box pressed cigars, achieving a more defined square section.

This cigar is 5 inches long, or 127 mm.

Most cigars are manufactured in the Caribbean and Central America.

The cigar ring gauge corresponds to the diameter of a cigar, this cigar has a ring gauge of 52, so his diameter is 52/64 inches or 20.57 mm.

Cigar wrapper color varies from green (Double Claro or Candela) to black (Maduro or Oscuro) with a full range of browns in between.
Maduro wrapper can go from dark coffee brown with a reddish tint to blackish brown (the latter also called Oscuro).

Handmade cigars are completely made by hand from start to finish.

The wrapper is the last tobacco leaf to be rolled on the cigar, so it is the one the smoker will see.
Mexican tobacco is very dark and the best leaves can be used as maduro wrappers. In San Andres de Tuxtla (Vera Cruz), there is a very interesting production of Sumatra seed wrappers. San Andres Maduro is a thick, medium bodied dark leaf, also called San Andres Morron.

The binder is a full tobacco leaf that is used to roll the cigar, binding the filler tobaccos together.
Dominican Republic is a traditional tobacco-growing country. In the 60's, a Cuban seed was introduced and the resulting tobacco, called Piloto Cubano, became famous as a good substitute of the Cuban tobacco that was no longer allowed to enter the USA. Piloto Cubano is full bodied while the Dominican Olor tobacco is milder but more aromatic.

Filler is the term used to describe the tobacco inside a cigar or the "guts" of the cigar.