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| IMITATION, ONE LEAF AT A TIME |
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Page 1 of 2  Plus: our new look and Register & Win winner of the week!Los Angeles, January 9 – The story of the Pinar cigar line is well known. A very old batch of pre-embargo Cuban tobacco was discovered in a New Jersey warehouse in 1998 and the result was the famed Pinar line, created and distributed by Puros de Armando Ramos. The last blend in the line that used the old Cuban tobacco was the 2003-introduced Pinar P3000, which last shipped to retailers in early 2007. Another blend, the Pinar Suprema, was introduced in 2004, but didn’t last too long. Now, Puros de Armando Ramos chief Paul Magier thinks he has the blend right, without (of course) resorting to the use of Cuban-grown tobacco. So now comes the debut of the Pinar P4000 line. "This time around, we didn't just try to make a worthy successor to the name, we went a whole lot farther," wrote Magier in an e-mail message. "Taking the P3000 blend apart leaf by leaf, we spent several years selecting a specific new leaf to replicate the flavor of each original one. Once we had chosen the right farm, right seed, right cut for each leaf, then we got deep into sorting and selecting by very tightly defined fermentation times and temperatures. The point was to make a cigar truly indistinguishable from the P3000. "Those who had the pleasure of smoking the originals will be more than pleased. Those who never had the chance will finally, and more easily, be able to see what the brewhaha was all about." Magier has considerable experience behind him in creating new blends. His farms and factory in and around Guayaquil, Ecuador have become popular providers of Ecuadorian leaf for wrapper and binder for many other cigar companies and his factory has been the producer of a number of brands which are nationally distributed by others. The new, full-bodied Pinar P4000 comes in six sizes which proved most popular in the P3000 line: |
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Did you know?
“After popularizing so many Havana brands, Dunhill had its own brand, made in Cuba, from 1970 to 1991.
