An unranked editorial retrospective of lines available by 2025, informed by manufacturer accounts. These selections are not historical award results or firsthand tasting notes from cigars produced that year.
The final year of this series brings both a change of ground and a return to an earlier idea. My Father Blue turns toward Honduras; Cuatro Cinco Secret Cask revisits Joya’s original all-Nicaraguan concept. New World Decenio and Perdomo Legacy add different family commemorations. Our selection of the best cigars of 2025 gathers those developments with established lines, closing twenty-five years through the subjects that have given the series its substance: leaf, place, people and the patient work of making.
My Father Blue
Debuting in 2025, Blue combines Connecticut Broadleaf Rosado wrapper with Honduran binder and filler from Finca La Opulencia. The Honduran direction opens another geographical chapter for My Father after so many Nicaraguan stories. A named farm and a specific wrapper give the Garcia family’s new expression a clear agricultural beginning.
AJ Fernandez New World Decenio
Decenio brings Mexican wrapper, Nicaraguan binder and filler from Nicaragua and Honduras to AJ Fernandez’s New World family. Released in 2025, it commemorates the earlier line’s tenth-anniversary milestone. The tribute broadens the composition across several origins, adding another distinct expression to a family that began with a Nicaraguan tobacco focus.
Joya de Nicaragua Cuatro Cinco Secret Cask
Announced in late 2025, Secret Cask is a limited return to the original all-Nicaraguan Cuatro Cinco concept. Joya reaches back to the idea introduced for its forty-fifth anniversary in 2013. The release creates a deliberate connection across twelve years, revisiting that earlier composition after Reserva Especial had taken the line in another direction.
Perdomo Legacy Nicaraguan Shade-Grown
Nicholas Perdomo III’s tribute to his father takes an all-Nicaraguan form in this Legacy expression. Nicaraguan wrapper, binder and filler are joined by barrel aging in the maker’s wrapper preparation. The personal dedication becomes specific through the selected Shade-Grown version, tying another generation’s regard to the family’s working methods.
Padrón 60th Anniversary
Padrón’s shaped sixtieth-anniversary cigar carries its 2024 milestone into the following year. The contours keep the roller’s craft visibly connected to the company’s history. In this closing selection, it gives the newer family tributes a companion whose commemoration can be seen directly in the form of the cigar.
Perdomo 30th Anniversary Maduro
Long-aged Nicaraguan tobacco and barrel-treated wrapper underpin Perdomo’s thirtieth-anniversary Maduro. Beside Legacy, it brings a company celebration into conversation with a son’s tribute to his father. The shared portfolio holds both histories, with the individual wrapper expression keeping the anniversary cigar clearly defined.
La Aroma de Cuba Connecticut
La Aroma de Cuba’s Ecuadorian Connecticut-wrapper line brings a gentler expression to the closing year. Its Garcia-made background adds another view of the family’s work beside My Father Blue’s Honduran direction. The range of that work becomes clear through separate choices of origin, wrapper and blending purpose.
Foundation Olmec Maduro
Olmec Maduro places Mexican San Andrés wrapper around Nicaraguan tobaccos. Foundation’s chosen expression gives Decenio another Mexican-wrapper cigar to share the year, while following a separate composition and manufacturing story. The specific leaf remains a useful point of connection between otherwise distinct lines.
E.P. Carrillo Encore Black
Connecticut Broadleaf maduro wrapper and Mexican binder give Encore Black a different composition from the original Encore, with Nicaraguan filler completing the blend. Carrillo carries a familiar family name into another recipe. The change is there in the materials, giving the newer expression a clear reason for its separate description.
Oliva Serie V Melanio
Melanio closes the selection with a family tribute introduced in 2012. Ecuadorian wrapper and a box-pressed form distinguish Oliva’s separate Serie V expression, named for an earlier generation. It gathers several of the series’ recurring subjects into one cigar: ancestry, a particular leaf and craftsmanship made visible through shape.
Looking back at 2025
Twenty-five years leave us with more than a procession of names. They reveal sons honoring fathers, growers putting their own names on boxes, factories finding new expressions and old ideas returning in another form. The cigars change, but the most compelling stories remain close to the work: tobacco chosen with purpose, carefully prepared and shaped by hand.
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