[stearns]

In my experience, the two factors that best predict if an NC will age are initial strength and quality of tobacco. There was an old saying that crap + age = old crap, you can't start with something mediocre and expect age to turn it into something stellar. As far as strength, I've found that it takes pretty strong tobacco to hold up to the aging process.

I have a whole bunch of stuff that has been sleeping for a while due to my general lack of time to smoke, but maybe if I get a warm day soon I'll break out some old Padron anni's and see how they are coming along, I assumed they would be good for a while since age has always been a part of their business model (as said above, Padron always said their expensive stuff was the same tobacco as their more affordable stuff just different age) but I wouldn't be surprised to find they have started to decline

For what it's worth, I've found flavors in really old Opus X that I've never found in anything else before, I like to keep those around because they are incredibly unique, at least in the few samples I've had the pleasure of acquiring