This year we got started with our long time friend Ernesto Padilla. In recent years, Ernesto has had a fairly modest booth at the IPCPR trade show, with his latest cigars the main focus of the booth. This year he did a 540 with his booth design, a flashy overhead sign replacing the familiar backdrop, […]
General Cigar Factory Tour 2017 Part 2
Now that we’ve explored the farm, and gotten an in-depth look at the long, involved process tobacco goes through on it’s way to becoming a cigar, it’s time for photogenic part of the tour. The part everyone thinks about when they hear “cigar factory tour” – the bunching, rolling and packaging of the finished product. […]
General Cigar Factory Tour 2017 Part 1
After a day spent taking in the farm atmosphere, we picked up on the next leg of the journey for tobacco. After it spends time hanging in the curing barn it’s off to the factory. There’s still a lot in store for the leaves before they are rolled into handmade premium cigar. After a short […]
Jose Blanco 12/2/16 Interview
Jose Blanco was one of the people we missed at this year’s busy trade show, and that’s something that has been bothering me ever since. So when I heard he was going to be in the area doing a blending seminar, I made a point to grab my handy GoPro and brave Atlanta traffic to […]
IPCPR 2016: Complete Digest
And our IPCPR 2016 coverage is complete. It took us a little longer to get everything posted, due in large part to our decision to switch our gear and software out all at once. But it all worked out in the end. We didn’t talk to everyone we wanted to interview, but we never do. […]
IPCPR 2016: John Drew Brands
After hoofing it around Drew Estate’s planet-sized booth with Pedro, we climbed to the top of the bridge at the heart of the booth to talk to Jonathan Drew about his new venture, John Drew Brands. JD tells us that the next step for him doesn’t involve leaving Drew Estate behind, it’s a matter of […]
IPCPR 2016: Drew Estate
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, […]
IPCPR 2016: Foundation
Nick Melillo was back this year with a colorful new booth, new Foundation cigar lines and of course, new insights into the world of tobacco. We got started with The Upsetters. Nick has been a long time fan of reggae music and Jamaican tobacco, and he also has a history of working with Nicaraguan tobacco. […]
IPCPR 2016: White Hat (HR)
As the show was winding down on the last day we dropped by the White Hat booth for a quick chat with Spencer Drake about what’s new with HR. Of course the first thing that is new since the last trade show is White Hat handling distribution of HR, which means that the original line […]
IPCPR 2016: 26 Minutes With Pete Johnson
No IPCPR is complete without another episode in the growing Minutes With Pete Johnson series. This year we met up with a slender Pete behind the bar in his 2016 Best In Show booth. It seemed more like he was tending bar in his shiny new booth than selling cigars. (He was behind the bar […]