News: IPCPR 2011 Odds and Ends

Last week I reported live from the 2011 International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers (IPCPR) Association Trade Show. Catch up on my updates from Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, as well as the show preview. But even this coverage isn’t comprehensive.

While two and a half days on the convention floor wasn’t enough time to hit every booth, three days of updates still wasn’t enough to capture all of the info I gathered. So here are some odds and ends that didn’t make my previous IPCPR coverage:

Last year Drew Estate won the award for best booth, and they followed it up this year with another eye-catching display. In addition to more custom-painted shoes (last year it was sneakers, this year it was women’s pumps) the Drew Estate booth featured dozens of graphic cigar molds.

Drew Estate had many new releases, including a number of blends based on the popular Liga Privada line. Included was Undercrown, a blend created by the torcedors who roll Liga Privada. As Drew Estate President Steve Saka explained to me, when they were smoking too many Liga Privadas, they created this blend from the same tobaccos used for the Liga, but using different primings and vintages not used in the Liga blend. According to Saka, while the Liga is medium- to full-bodied, this is a more medium-bodied blend.

The Miami Cigar Co./La Aurora booth was full of new releases. In fact, if there’s an award for most new lines, they surely won it. One of the most anticipated of those new releases was Casa Miranda, which was blended by Willy Herrera at the El Titan de Bronze factory in Miami before Herrera left to join Drew Estate. Despite selling for around $10 a cigar, Jason Wood tells me this was a top seller for Miami. Another new cigar in the super-premium line was the Nestor Miranda Grand Reserve ($12 each), a box-pressed torpedo made by the Pepins at the My Father factory in Nicaragua using a Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper.

La Aurora 107 was a big hit for La Aurora in 2010, and so a maduro extension was almost inevitable. While they had banded and boxed examples of the new 107 Maduro for display, I was told the actual blend isn’t ready yet. The blend was recently tweaked, but they still are aiming for a release by October.

La Aurora Preferido Corojo Vintage 2003 is one of those new cigars that isn’t actually very new at all. After looking through their aging room in their Santiago factory, they “discovered” that they had enough of these circa-2003 Preferido Corojos to put out a limited release.

In case you forget that Miami Cigars is a distributor as well as a cigar maker, take note of the new Humo Jaguar made by Nestor Plasencia in Honduras. The cigar shares the same name as the Honduran Humo Jaguar cigar festival. I was told that a number of Honduran makers created blends for the festival for blind tasting by attendees. Plasencia’s blend won and is now being distributed by Miami Cigars. Next year a new blend will be crowned.

Tomorrow, stay tuned for my final thoughts on this year’s IPCPR Trade Show. Until then, be sure to let us know which blends you are most looking forward to trying.

–Patrick S

photo credits: Stogie Guys