Jonathan Drew can be a hard guy to track down at IPCPR, and a tour of the all the new products in the Drew Estate booth would be difficult to accomplish without numerous interruptions from customers and fans. Everyone’s looking for a few minutes of Jonathan’s time. So we took the pragmatic approach this year, we had Pedro Gomez take us on the tour, freeing up our time with Drew to focus on other developments.
Ben and I have known Pedro for years now. We met him on Drew Estate’s Cigar Safari, and we’ve watched him grow from energetic safari tour guide to the Factory Spokesman who headlines Drew Estate events around the U.S.
Pedro gets the ball rolling by showing us the Liga Privada No. 9 and T52 Flying Pigs. It isn’t the first time the blends have been seen in this vitola, but it has been a number of years. And when they released years ago, they were very limited and disappeared quickly. (2000 boxes back in 2008.) You’ll be able to find these “unicorns” at every Drew Estate Diplomat account soon. No. 9’s and T52’s are also coming in tubos.
We also take a look at the Liga Privada Velvet Rat, formerly a Cigar Safari exclusive. In the past, consumers that came to events promoting the Drew Estate Diplomat smart phone app will got one of them for free.
Pedro shows us that the Tabak Especial especial has gotten a line extension and a packaging update. Nothing has changed with the cigar blend itself, it’ll just look a little different.
We also take a look at the Undercrown tubos, Undercrown Shade tubos, and Undercrown Shade Flying Pigs.
Pedro then announces “we got the bitches” before showing us what’s next. It turns out that by “bitches” he means Sweet Jane, Fat Bottom Betty and Crazy Alice. These cigars aren’t new, but they’ve never been available to retailers other than Deadwood Tobacco in South Dakota before this year.
Pedro tells us that Drew Estate cracks him up with all the interesting cigar names as he asks us to pronounce the next thing he has for us, the candela-wrapped Kentucky Fire Cured Swamp Thang and Swamp Rat. The key is a little drawl when you’re producing “Thang”.
After that it’s over to the Joya de Nicaragua section to check out the completely new Joya Black and the updated Cabinetta line presentation. As with the Tabak Especial, the blend Cabinetta blend hasn’t changed, only the packaging.
Before we’re done, we also take a moment to watch an traditional Japanese Kiseru pipe being made by hand in the Tsuge corner of the Drew Estate booth.
We conclude our tour with a discussion of another tour, Cigar Safari. Ben and I have both been, and can vouch for it being a great time.
IPCPR Coverage Sponsored By
Drew Estate
