The Stogie Guys

As we have since July 2006, each Friday we’ll post a mixed bag of quick cigar news and other items of interest. Below is our latest Friday Sampler.

1) General Cigar on Tuesday announced Punch Gran Puro Nicaragua, a “Nicaraguan-forward blend” that will debut in February. Four vitolas will be made at General Cigar’s HATSA factory in Danlí, Honduras, each with an MSRP ranging from $5.29 to $6.99. The blend recipe includes high priming Nicaraguan binder and filler tobaccos enveloped in a Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper. “Punch Gran Puro has been a true staple in humidors for over a decade, and the brand’s recently-received high ratings have cemented its legacy in the handmade cigar category,” said Ed McKenna, director of marketing strategy for General Cigar. “For the extension of the Gran Puro line, our artisans built a blend that balances Nicaraguan tobaccos with a Maduro wrapper to deliver a layered, dimensional flavor not traditionally found in Nicaraguan-based cigars. We are confident that Punch Gran Puro Nicaragua will be a fast favorite among tenured smokers.”

2) Yesterday, President Obama announced an end to “wet foot, dry foot,” a policy which allowed Cubans who make it to U.S. soil to stay and become legal residents. Obama characterized the policy as “designed for a different era.” The change is part of Obama’s move towards normalization of relations with Cuba. Florida news outlets reported mixed reactions from members of the Cuban community there.

3) Inside the Industry: Matt Booth is, for the time being at least, walking away from the cigar industry. Booth is owner of the Room 101 portfolio of brands—cigars that were made by Camacho prior to Davidoff’s acquisition of Camacho in 2008. Room 101 has since been distributed by Davidoff. Booth recently told Cigar Aficionado his agreement with Davidoff has come to an end, and he has decided not to renew. “For now, I am going to concentrate on the jewelry and accessories side of the business,” Booth said. “It’s a business that’s growing rapidly for me and not over-regulated by the government.”

4) From the Archives: Perhaps surprisingly, one of the most popular articles in the decade-plus history of StogieGuys.com is our tip on how to perform a salt calibration test. The test will help you ensure your hygrometer reading inside your humidor is accurate. Best of all, with the exception of maybe distilled water, the test can be done with a few household items you’ll almost certainly find in your kitchen.

5) Deal of the Week: We recommend Bespoke Post, a monthly collection of awesome items delivered to your door for just $45. Past boxes include fine bar accessories, shaving kits, coffee, and more. You can skip or purchase every month. Currently available is “Churchill,” a box featuring four E.P. Carrillo cigars (including one exclusive blend), a reclaimed wood ashtray that doubles as a candle-holder, a smoke-eating candle, cedar spills for lighting your cigar, and a cutter. Click here to sign up today.

–The Stogie Guys

photo credit: General Cigar Co.

A spicy Nicaraguan Corojo wrapper so oily you might fear it’ll slide through your fingers highlights the latest release in the Nestor Miranda Collection from Miami Cigar & Co. It also makes for a tasty, satisfying cigar.

Sporting the line’s trademark Art Deco style foil bands with electric-yellow highlights, Corojo is the fourth in the collection. Like the others, it is rolled at the My Father Cigars factory and comes in four sizes with MSRPs ranging from $7.50 to $9.50.

The line is named for Miami Cigar’s gregarious president and co-founder. Vice president Jason Wood said in a press release that Miranda had been “adamant about introducing his beloved Corojo wrapper to the collection.”

It was introduced at this summer’s industry trade show in Las Vegas and recently began shipping to merchants. The short Robusto—4.5 inches long with a ring gauge of 50—is firmly packed with Nicaraguan filler that exudes a nutty pre-light aroma. The first smoking impression is the pepper common to Corojo tobacco.

Along the way, I also experienced spice, a little cedar, burned coffee, and a rich tobacco sweetness. The three I smoked for this review each had an excellent draw. None exhibited the burn difficulties sometimes associated with Corojo tobacco.

The ash was ivory white and held firmly until I tapped it off. The burn was slow, extending the smoking time beyond what might be expected, given the cigar’s length. I’d put the strength level in the upper-medium to full category, as it tends to build along the way.

StogieGuys.com has smoked and reviewed many Miami Cigar & Co. productions over the years. They include several from the Nestor Miranda Collection since it was repackaged and re-blended in 2014.

This is the best in that line. And the Robusto format seems to take advantage of all it has to offer. I rate this a strong four stogies out of five.

[To read more StogieGuys.com cigar reviews, please click here.]

–George E

photo credit: Stogie Guys

La Aurora has again expanded its well-regarded 107 line that debuted in 2010 as an anniversary smoke. The Cosecha is a limited edition with tobaccos from 2006, hence the Cosecha name, Spanish for “harvest.”

There are three sizes, each packaged in ten-count boxes: Robusto (5 x 54), Corona Gorda (6 x 47), and Churchill (7 x 50). Per-stick prices are $9, $10, and $11, respectively. It’s distinguished from the regular 107 line by a second identifying band.

So far, 107 Cosecha isn’t featured on either the La Aurora website or that of Miami Cigar & Co., La Aurora’s U.S. distributor.

The wrapper is a Habana seed grown in Ecuador. Binder is Brazilian Mata Fina with filler from Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. The wrapper doesn’t provide much pre-light aroma, but an almost cherry-like sweetness comes off the filler.

I got more fruit notes smoking through the first third. Occasionally, there was a papery overtone that, fortunately, didn’t last long. Pepper came and went, building into the final half. Other flavors I picked up were burned coffee and wood.

Strength was medium, with a light finish. Construction was excellent, as is to be expected from cigars coming from La Aurora’s Dominican factory. The burn was very slow, making for a smoking experience considerably longer than that of most cigars this size. One annoyance was a fairly loose ash.

These days, limited editions in the $9 to $11 range are fairly limited themselves, whether they deserve a higher price tag or not. That in itself is likely to entice quite a few cigar smokers, especially those already familiar with La Aurora’s broad array of smokes.

If you measure cigar palate impact in megatons, the Cosecha isn’t likely to make your needle move. But if you enjoy cigars further down on the power scale, I recommend checking out this offering. I also have a feeling it will improve with age, possibly eliminating that papery taste.

I give the La Aurora 107 Cosecha 2006 Corona Gorda three and a half stogies out of five.

[To read more StogieGuys.com cigar reviews, please click here.]

–George E

photo credit: Stogie Guys

Each Saturday and Sunday we’ll post a Quick Smoke: not quite a full review, just our brief verdict on a single cigar of “buy,” “hold,” or “sell.”

This new offering from Christian Eiroa is a box-pressed beauty partially wrapped in tissue paper with a striking blue and silver band. The blend is an Ecuadorian Connecticut wrapper around Nicaraguan filler and binder, creating more pepper and kick—and more smoking interest—than might typically be expected of a Connecticut cigar. Construction and smoke production in the Robusto (5 x 50) was excellent. It’s a tasty treat, well worth the list price of around $7.

Verdict = Buy.

–George E

photo credit: Stogie Guys

Each Saturday and Sunday we’ll post a Quick Smoke: not quite a full review, just our brief verdict on a single cigar of “buy,” “hold,” or “sell.”

This new Dunhill line—the brand’s first maduro—was introduced last summer in three sizes. The extremely dark wrapper encloses what distributor General Cigar calls “the classic Dunhill Aged blend” of Dominican leaves. If you’re a maduro fan, you’ll almost certainly enjoy the characteristic flavors of coffee, cocoa, and tobacco sweetness with a little added kick. It’s especially one to consider by those in colder climes seeking a quicker winter smoke. The drawback is the $10.45 price, but you’ll find boxes of 10 online at less than $6.50 per stick.

Verdict = Buy.

–George E

photo credit: Stogie Guys

As we have since July 2006, each Friday we’ll post a mixed bag of quick cigar news and other items of interest. Below is our latest Friday Sampler.

1) Black Label Trading Co. yesterday announced the upcoming release of Sindustry, a three-vitola blend that sports a Mexican San Andrés wrapper around Nicaraguan binder and filler tobaccos. The brand will be part of the Black Works Studio (BLK WKS) portfolio, which also includes the Killer Bee, Green Hornet, NBK, and Rorschach lines. It is made at Black Label’s Fabrica Oveja Negra factory in Estelí. “I’m very excited about our first Limited Edition at BLK WKS,” said Black Label Trading Co. creator James Brown. “Sindustry is a big, bold, badass smoke. The flavor profile is very unique with flavors of black currant, clove, and coco paired with the rich earthiness of the San Andrés wrapper.” Each of the three sizes—Robusto, Toro, and Lancero—will be available in February. They will retail in the $9.50 to $10 range.

2) Tickets are on sale now for Big Smoke Miami, which will be held at the Fontainbleau Hotel in Miami Beach on Friday, April 7. The entrance fee is $325, and the event runs from 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM (you can get in 60 minutes earlier by paying an extra $50). Included in the price is the opportunity to visit with at least 25 premium cigar makers, drinks, food, and, of course, cigars. That said, Cigar Aficionado, the host of the event, notes “smoking is permitted in all outdoor areas of the hotel.” So it is not yet entirely clear if attendees will be able to smoke on the event floor, which is presumably indoors.

3) Also on sale now are tickets for The Great Smoke, an annual event put on by the Palm Beach-based retailer Smoke Inn. The $150 ticket gets you a commemorative bag with goodies, 45 cigars, and a wide selection of fine food, wine, spirits, and beer. Additionally, you can secure tickets to the pre-event dinner, hosted the night before at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, and a day-after brunch.

4) From the Archives: Our interviews archive features numerous conversations with well-known (and not so well-known) interesting people associated with the cigar industry. In one of our earliest interviews (going way back to 2007), we spoke with Michael Fayerverger, the general manager of one of the most famous cigar destinations in the world, Casa Fuente.

5) Deal of the Week: Cigar enthusiasts seeking a great deal should check out this clearance on Thunder by Nimish, part of the Rocky Patel line. All boxes of 20 are being blown out at the discount price of just $66, bringing the per-cigar cost down to $3.30. But don’t wait too long; this deal is sure to sell out quickly.

–The Stogie Guys

photo credit: Black Label Trading Co.

Cigar companies have a big problem. Nearly every business decision they make is impacted by FDA regulations, but the full details of those regulations haven’t yet been determined.

The 499-page deeming regulation finalized last spring officially took effect August 8. While that document provides an outline for the agency’s intentions, it leaves out many important compliance details. Even where guidance documents have been issued, the standards laid out in those documents are not legally binding (i.e., they can be changed at any time). And many other critical questions have not been addressed at all.

The resulting unpredictable cost of compliance is a serious issue for all cigar makers. The burden hits smaller brands the hardest, however, because they are least able to cope with such uncertainty. While FDA user fees are distributed proportionally according to each company’s market share, the unknown cost of successfully applying for FDA approval for a particular tobacco product will effectively be the same whether the company sells a few hundred units per year, or hundreds of thousands of units.

In a recent discussion of the ongoing process of complying with the FDA, Skip Martin of RoMa Craft Tobac described the problem cigar makers big and small face: “What we don’t know is how much that [Substantial Equivalence approval] process will cost us. We don’t know the details of what a substantial equivalence process will look like because there has never been one approved for a cigar ever.”

Even as the FDA delays many deadlines, small companies face tough choices. With product registration deadlines fast approaching, companies have to decide how much to invest in such registrations. Assuming the worst and providing numerous highly detailed registrations may maximize the likelihood of the registrations being approved. But it also increases the costs.

While the cost of gaining FDA approval—most likely through the Substantial Equivalence (SE) pathway, or by being a grandfathered pre-2007 product—is the biggest future hurdle, even the documentation needed for registration carries substantial costs, especially for a small company. Something seemingly as simple as who qualifies as a domestic manufacturer is unclear under the FDA regulations. Cigars may be rolled abroad, but what packaging changes within the United States qualify a brand as a domestic manufacturer?

That is an open question. The answer holds serious implications for the future business prospects of a company.

In the same conversation about the FDA process, attorney Frank Herrera, who represents dozens of cigar companies, gave a most lawyerly answer about whether or not you should register: “If you think you might be [required to register now], do it, list it.” In terms of maximizing the odds of complying with the FDA, Herrera is, of course, correct. For a small company operating on thin profit margins already, though, these costs could be prohibitive, or at least partially unnecessary.

Compliance with the FDA isn’t the only hurdle cigar makers and importers face. Retailers are liable if they sell a non-compliant product. This means retailers—especially large online and catalog sellers—are making buying decisions based on who appears likely (or not) to comply with all FDA regulations. Reports are already surfacing that retailers are cutting back on purchases of cigars they doubt will be on the market in two years.

So even before any deadlines pass, small cigar makers face a dilemma: Not spending money now on FDA compliance to show retailers you are likely to be on the market in two or three years means lost sales today, and those sales today may be the difference between having the funds or not to successfully pursue Substantial Equivalence in the future.

Meanwhile, with it totally unknown exactly how much a successful SE application will cost, continuing to sink money today into a process that ultimately may be cost prohibitive could itself be a fatal business decision. If a cigar maker runs the numbers and decides the volume of sales of product don’t warrant the currently unknown cost of investing in FDA approval, they risk that product being seen by retailers as a “zombie cigar” (destined to be killed off soon by the FDA).

When it comes to complying with costly regulations, larger companies with deep pockets are always better able to deal with the uncertainty. For boutique brands sold in smaller quantities, those costs represent a much higher percentage of their operating costs. As deadlines approach this year, smaller companies face impossible decisions with the fate of their businesses at stake.

–Patrick S

photo credit: Stogie Guys