Cigars in Dante’s Inferno?
It takes capital, guts and some industry knowledge to design and launch a brand of cigars. Some retailers want to surpass just selling sticks and the more adventurous of them invest their own capital and enter the production side. One retailer in the DC area did just that and launched the Dante brand, named after Dante’s Divine Comedy where the nine circles of Inferno (Italian for hell) are...
Rodrigo’s G 6
A Big Boutique Blend Cigar We have recently reviewed a couple of Rodrigo’s cigars (Lancer and Cinco 5) and now add his Boutique Blend to the list. George Rodriguez began Rodrigo Cigars a short time ago in the Dominican Republic where he linked up with William Ventura, past master blender for Davidoff. All Rodrigo cigars are made in Tamboril, a municipality of Santiago in the Dominican...
A “Ruthless” Cigar
The Gurkha brand has been around a long time, often releasing new products under other recently established trade names. In this instance, Gurkha used its East India Trading Company to launch its Rogue brand. Rogues are marketed as medium bodied cigars with Ecuadorian Habano wrappers, an Ecuadorian binder and a filler blend of 3-year aged Ligero’s from Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominican...
Stuck on a Classic Lancero
The lancero vitola is a long and slim cigar measuring 7 x 38. Lancero is Spanish for “lancer”, hence the logic behind the name for this cigar style. Rodrigo Cigars makes a lancero in their Habano Classico line that Rodrigo states follows the best traditions of cigar making. Rodrigo Cigars is known for boutique blends based upon Dominican Republic tobaccos for the binder and filler....
An INCH really is a big deal!
Ernesto Carrillo has a long history with cigars, notably his famous La Gloria Cubano line sold to General Cigars some time ago. In 2009, at the nadir of the great recession Ernesto left General to found EPC Cigar Company along with his son, Ernesto III and daughter, Lissette. During 2012, EPC Cigars launched the INCH series of medium to full bodied cigars with ring sizes of 60, 62 and...
A Quality Gordo Maduro From Erez
Erez Cigars targets their products at the premium segment of the cigar market and uses the internet as its primary sales channel. Their cigars are all hand rolled and sent from the factory direct to the smoker. I met Yaniv Erez at the 2013 IPCPR where he was promoting his brand of Dominican cigars. Yaniv states that the Reyes Family, with over 150 years in the tobacco business, grows the leaf...
