Oscar Valladares The Oscar Maduro – Toro (6 x 52)
The Particulars
| wdt_created_by | cigarkey | brand | cigarname | vitola | strength | wrapper | binder | filler | infused | sweettip | origin |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| mcclossm | Oscar Valladares The Oscar Maduro - Toro (6 x 52) | Oscar Valladares | The Oscar Maduro | Toro - 6.00" x 52 | Medium - Full | Mexican San Andrés, Maduro | Honduras | Honduras / Nicaragua | No | No | Oscar Valladares Tobacco & Co., Honduras |
| COMPANY / BRAND: | Oscar Valladares |
| CIGAR: | The Oscar Maduro |
| VITOLA: | Toro - 6.00" x 52 |
| STRENGTH: | Medium - Full |
| WRAPPER: | Mexican San Andrés, Maduro |
| BINDER: | Honduras |
| FILLER: | Honduras / Nicaragua |
| INFUSED: | No |
| SWEET TIP: | No |
| ORIGIN: | Oscar Valladares Tobacco & Co., Honduras |
Prolegomenon and Other Random Thoughts
My review queue is an overblown mess—a burden I will gladly suffer through. But choosing what to review next is always the biggest challenge. Do I go by what has been sitting the longest before it sits too long? Do I go by what’s hot and new that people want to know about ASAP? Do I go by whatever I’m feeling and is easy to get to? Usually, it’s a juggling act of all three, but my stash of The Oscar decided to make the decision for me by violently pushing to the front of the line. How? Two of the four started growing mold. 🤬
Now, before the humidor police jump into the comments to tell me I’m not storing my cigars properly: I have many, many, many cigars, and they are all meticulously kept at 65-69% RH in a room that sits at 68 degrees year-round. I don’t want to name names, but the only time I ever experience mold is with naked cigars that come from a certain mail-order retailer… let’s just say they have a page dedicated to cigars. I firmly subscribe to the notion that naked cigars are wildly susceptible to temperature and humidity shock in transit, making them way more likely to develop fuzz. Put me down permanently for Team Cellophane.
Luckily, one of each blend of The Oscar avoided this tragic fate, so I decided it would be best to smoke them ASAP before the spores came for them, too. Because of this little humidor massacre, we only have one example each of the Habano and Maduro blends to base these reviews on.
| Journaling Date | Cigar | Appearance | Draw | Burn | Flavors | Overall Experience | Burnable? | Base Rating | Final Score | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-04-08 | Oscar Valladares The Oscar Maduro - Toro (6 x 52) | Good | Good | Good | Poor | Average | Better to not tell you now (kind of meh) | 3.00 | 5.33 |
The Review
This review for the Oscar Valladares The Oscar Maduro - Toro (6 x 52) is based on the journal entry dated 2026-04-08
Appearance & Construction (0-3): Good (3)
The Mexican San Andrés Maduro wrapper used here is a super dark chocolate brown. It’s super oily, heavily mottled, and packed with a lot of color variation. This is a great-looking leaf with a ton of character. There are a couple of thicker veins, but the seams are tight with a clean triple cap. The band is an inverse of the Habano, featuring aqua on black with a gold accent instead of black on aqua.
Draw (0-3) & Burn (0-4): Good (3) / Good (3)
The draw is just a hair tight of perfect, but it’s much better than the Habano. The burn starts off unruly and wavy as hell, but it eventually starts to self-correct. The ash is a medium gray with tight cracks and tight spacing between them. The burn line is crisp and improves nicely after the first third. It never gets dead-flat, but it’s a great improvement over the start. The ash holds just past the first third before falling.
Flavor Profile (0-5): Poor (1)
It starts with light malty chocolate and a lot of charred oak, alongside a mild raisin sweetness. There’s a bit of baking spice, cinnamon, earth, and a light must mixed in. But there’s an increasing black pepper hitting the back of the throat right along with a lot of that charred oak, and it’s getting noticeably harsh by the end of the first third.
The second third carries that heavy charred oak base, earth, dry must, dry baking cocoa, and harsh black pepper. I’m not really loving this blend, and we’re only at the midpoint. I start getting a light coffee note in the mix, but it’s not improving things. This blend kind of sucks. Rather than getting a delightful and savory mesquite, it’s just harsh and smoky—like chewing on campfire ash. Getting into the final third, this feels more like a fight; I’m just getting pummeled and waiting for a break. Honestly, this blend doesn’t just kind of suck, it does suck, and I’m not a fan.
Overall Experience (0-5): Average (2)
To bring this full circle, I had two of these in my reserves and lost one to mold. It happens. But this blend was so harsh and unsatisfying that I don’t want to buy more just to give it a second chance. Maybe at some point, that Irish Catholic guilt I was raised with will kick in. Maybe if I smoke through absolutely everything I have in the backlog, and there is nothing else I need to do more than revisit this cigar, I’ll try it again. But that’ll likely never happen. 😂
Fuck this cigar. You won’t hear me say this often, but this is a total dog rocket. Even if this was just a one-off bad example, I just don’t want to do it again.
Review Base Rating (0-5):
3.00
Is it Burnable?
Better to not tell you now (kind of meh)
Review Final Score (0-10):
5.33
Overall Score and Individual Journal Entries
While the review is based off one instance of journaling this cigar; there’s a number of reasons you can have different experiences smoking the same cigar multiple times. A blend can evolve with age (for better or worse), palates evolves, preferences change, and sometimes you just get a bad example! This section captures the ratings from each journal entry and the related journal photo. Below you’ll find an aggregate score based on every time the cigar has been journaled. Unless it was a gift or on-off smoke, this section will be updated every time I journal this cigar!
| Times Journaled | Base Rating | Burnable? | Final Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3.00 | Better to not tell you now (kind of meh) | 5.33 |
| Journaling Date | Cigar | Appearance | Draw | Burn | Flavors | Overall Experience | Burnable? | Base Rating | Final Score | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-04-08 | Oscar Valladares The Oscar Maduro - Toro (6 x 52) | Good | Good | Good | Poor | Average | Better to not tell you now (kind of meh) | 3.00 | 5.33 |
Journaling Photos
The Flavor Wheel
| Category | Strength |
|---|---|
| Baking Spice | 2.00 |
| Pepper | 2.00 |
| Coffee / Espresso | 2.00 |
| Anise / Licorice | 0.00 |
| Sweet | 1.00 |
| Chocolate | 2.00 |
| Bready / Toasty | 0.00 |
| Woody / Charred | 3.00 |
| Grass / Hay | 0.00 |
| Earth | 2.00 |
| Leather | 1.00 |
| Floral / Aromatic | 0.00 |
| Fruity | 1.00 |
| Nutty | 1.00 |
| Salty / Mineral | 0.00 |
| Creamy | 0.00 |
| Musty / Barnyard | 2.00 |
| Bitter | 1.00 |
| Smooth | 1.00 |
| Harsh | 3.00 |
With every cigar I journal, I capture simple ratings of the basic flavor categories that I experience. These are more generalized than what you would see in a review, but a distinct profile can still be built out. When multiple instances of the same cigar have been journaled, the scores are averaged out in an attempt to build a reliable flavor profile based on my palate.
The values entered for the strength of each flavor range from 0 to 3.
- 0: No flavor detected
- 1: Mild flavor
- 2: Medium flavor
- 3: Strong flavor
Note: desktop / large screens will see a flavor wheel while mobile / small screens will see a bar chart.
With every cigar I journal, I capture simple ratings of the basic flavor categories that I experience. These are more generalized than what you would see in a review, but a distinct profile can still be built out. When multiple instances of the same cigar have been journaled, the scores are averaged out in an attempt to build a reliable flavor profile based on my palate.
The values entered for the strength of each flavor range from 0 to 3.
- 0: No flavor detected
- 1: Mild flavor
- 2: Medium flavor
- 3: Strong flavor
Note: desktop / large screens will see a flavor wheel while mobile / small screens will see a bar chart.
| Category | Strength |
|---|---|
| Baking Spice | 2.00 |
| Pepper | 2.00 |
| Coffee / Espresso | 2.00 |
| Anise / Licorice | 0.00 |
| Sweet | 1.00 |
| Chocolate | 2.00 |
| Bready / Toasty | 0.00 |
| Woody / Charred | 3.00 |
| Grass / Hay | 0.00 |
| Earth | 2.00 |
| Leather | 1.00 |
| Floral / Aromatic | 0.00 |
| Fruity | 1.00 |
| Nutty | 1.00 |
| Salty / Mineral | 0.00 |
| Creamy | 0.00 |
| Musty / Barnyard | 2.00 |
| Bitter | 1.00 |
| Smooth | 1.00 |
| Harsh | 3.00 |
Questions on how the ratings work?
Check out the detailed explanation here.
Want to Comment?
Leave a comment on our Facebook page.
