Our General Cigar booth tour continues with Rick Rodriguez in the CAO section. Rick tells us about the new CAO Nicaragua in this interview. The goal was to create a mellower, complex Nicaraguan cigar that everyone can enjoy, not just the bold spice bomb that is so common with cigars produced there. On the subject […]
IPCPR 2018: Cohiba
Sean Williams was bringing sexy back this year in the Cohiba section of the General Cigar booth. And sexy, it turns out, is named Spectre. Sean describes Spectre as his ultimate cigar geek project, that started with finding a 22 year old tercio (palm bark-wrapped bale) of piloto cubano in the factory. The blend includes […]
IPCPR 2018: Partagas
The next stop in the General Cigar booth was the Partagas section. Andres gave us the scoop on the packaging design updates (the blends remain the same) and the new Partagas Legend, which features a Connecticut Broadleaf maduro wrapper, a Honduran binder, and Piloto Cubano filler.
IPCPR 2018: La Gloria Cubana
We got our tour of the General Cigar booth started with a stop at the La Gloria Cubana section. Yuri Guillen was ready with a big smile and details about the new “white box” La Gloria Cubana Esteli. It’s a budget friendly cigar retailing from $4.99 to $6.99 and features a blend of Nicaraguan and […]
IPCPR 2018: Gran Habano
George Rico catches us up on the latest Gran Habano news, including the new medium-bodied Blue in Green, the seriously aged Gran Reserva #5 2012, and the La Coleccion De Elegancia Corojo No. 5 Maduro, which is presented in a way reminiscent of the old Cuban sampler boxes from the 1980’s and 90’s.
IPCPR 2018: Mombacho
In the Mombaco booth this year, Claudio tells us about the second release of Cosecha, Cosecha 2013. It’s a proper vintage, a Nicaraguan puro that’s made exclusively with one year’s harvest of tobacco. All the tobacco from these cigars was harvested in 2013, as the name indicates. Because the cigars age so long, he tells […]
IPCPR 2018: Gurkha
We dropped by the Gurkha booth again this year, and Carlos Llaca Torano took us on a tour of the latest cigars. We started with the Ghost Gold extension to the popular Ghost line. It sports and Ecuadorian Habano Rosado wrapper and has a pigtail and closed foot. Next we look at the Marquesa, which […]
IPCPR 2018: Royal Agio San Pedro de Macoris
Another new cigar that we were shown at the Agio booth was the San Pedro de Macoris. This is a more budget friend cigar available in two wrappers: Brazilian arapiraca and Ecuadorian Connecticut. The cigars are the daily smoker cigars for the workers in the factory and is named after the area where they are […]
IPCPR 2018 – Day One Thoughts
The first day is in the books and we covered quite a few companies including: United Cigar AVO/Camacho Room 101 Tatuaje After the show we enjoyed the hospitality of General Cigar at Carson’s Kitchen downtown for drinks, cigars and appetizers. After that Tommy Bahama invited us to the 55th floor of their suite at the […]
IPCPR 2018 Day 1
It is 9:30 in Las Vegas and I just made the “long” drive from home to the convention center. Time to get my badge and meet up Brian, The Great Beard and Ben for our first days of sights and smells. I will do my best to post some quick blurbs as we seen […]