Ashton Aged Maduro

Most maduros are Nicaraguan and built for weight. The Ashton Aged Maduro takes the opposite approach — a mild Dominican blend with a Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper aged long enough to lose its roughness, so what you get is cocoa and a honeyed sweetness over cream and cedar, with almost no pepper. It is mild-to-medium and extremely smooth, and it is the maduro we point people toward when Padrón and Liga Privada have put them off the whole category. Fuente makes it, so the burn and draw are dependable. The No. 10 is the robusto and the sensible size. It is priced as an Ashton, which is to say the premium band, but it goes on sale often enough to catch under $12.

A gentle after-dinner maduro, or a first maduro for someone who found the Nicaraguan ones too much.