Oliva Serie V Melanio Maduro Torpedo 6"1/2 * 52

Released in 2013, Oliva Serie V Melanio Maduro is the follow up to the highly successful Oliva Serie V Melanio. It comprises the same blend as the Serie V Melanio (Nicaraguan Jalapa filler and binder) but swaps the Ecuador Sumatra wrapper for a San Andres Maduro wrapper grown in Mexico. This is a complex, medium to full bodied smoke.

The Torpedo was traditionally a fat cigar with two closed, tapered ends. Today, it is any cigar with a cut foot and straight body which tapers to a closed, pointed head.

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 6"1/2 inches long, or 165.1 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.

Oliva Cigar Company is Nicaragua's second largest grower of tobacco and one of the largest cigarmakers in the world. It all started in 1886 when Melanio Oliva first grew tobacco in Cuba. In 1995, his grandson Gilberto Oliva would launch the Oliva cigar brand, produced in Esteli, Nicaragua. The company's flagship brand, Oliva Serie V, has obtained some of the highest ratings in cigar publications worldwide. Their cigars use mostly tobacco harvested by the company in their various farms in Nicaragua.

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.

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