If there’s a theme for this Week In Smoke, it’s a mix of new cigars and relaxation. Heavy on the relaxation. Maybe a little procrastination too. It’s been a busy summer, and I for one am ready to welcome a less hectic season of bourbon and heavier beers. Sure, I drink both year round, but […]
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: 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 […]
IPCPR 2016: Perdomo
We caught up with Chris Harper in the spacious Perdomo booth the last day of IPCPR and we learned that everything old is new again. By that I mean, Perdomo is bringing back all of their pre-2007 brands, though some of them may have some packaging updates. That means the reintroduction of a lot of […]
IPCPR 2016: Romeo y Julieta
Our IPCPR tour continues with Yasemin Ozoncul in the Romeo y Julieta section of the Altadis booth. Before we get into the new product she gives us a little background, telling us about her first project at Altadis, 2011’s ROMEO. That leads us into the Plasencia-made ROMEO 505 Nicaragua, a box-pressed puro that was created […]
IPCPR 2016: Montecristo
In this first part of the Altadis IPCPR booth tour, we focus on the new Montecristos for 2016. Our tour guide is Yasemin Ozoncul, Marketing Director for Altadis USA. We get started with the Montecristo Pilotico Pepe Mendez and the story of Dominican Pilotico tobacco, which made its debut with last year’s limited edition Montecristo […]
IPCPR 2016: Daniel Marshall
We met up again with Daniel Marshall at IPCPR 2016, and he was only too happy to give us the tour of his cigars and high end humidors. He’s in a good position in the context of the new FDA regulations, as all of his Heritage Brand cigar lines have been in production since well […]