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REYES FAMILY BRANDS DEBUT Print E-mail
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Los Angeles, June 11 – Veteran smokers are well familiar with the Cuba Aliados and Puros Indios brands, both made in Honduras by Rolando Reyes.

A set of new lines has been created under the title of “Reyes Family” cigars, underlining the company’s name change from Puros Indios to Reyes Family cigars. The blends were created by company president Carlos Diez, with input from the legendary Reyes.

  • Reyes Family Classic is designed as a mild-to-medium-bodied blend, featuring an Ecuadorian-grown, Sumatra-seed wrapper and binder and filler leaves from Brazil, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. Four sizes will be offered at mid-level pricing of $4.50 to $6.00 (not including local tobacco taxes) in boxes of 40 cigars each.

  • Reyes Family Premier is designed as medium in body, but with a dark maduro wrapper, also from Ecuador. The binder leaf is from the Condega region of Nicaragua and the filler leaves are exclusively from the Jalapa region of Nicaragua. Richer in flavor than the Classic, it is being offered in five sizes at retail prices of $6.00 to $9.00 per cigar, in boxes of 20.

    With these introductions, Reyes Family now offers six distinct brands: Cuba Aliados (in two styles), Puros Indios (in two styles), Cienfuegos and Roly (a bundled, mixed-fill brand which is one of the best value cigars on the market today) and the two new Reyes Family lines. This is only the beginning, however, for Diez, as a Reyes Family Vintage line is also in the works.

    Venerable House of Windsor sold to Renegade Tobacco Group
    The maker of well-known machine-made brands including Caribbean Rounds and Wolf Bros. Crooks has been sold and will close its long-time location in Yoe, Pennsylvania.

    The House of Windsor, which was founded in 1918, was purchased by Renegade Tobacco Group of Mocksville, North Carolina on May 30, and manufacturing all of its brands will move to Mocksville in the third quarter of 2008 and be fully operational by the end of the year.

    House of Windsor brands – all machine-made – include Caribbean, Gladstone, House of Windsor, Mark IV, Palma Throw-Outs, S.F.S., Summerdale and the Wolf Bros. lines, plus a group of old regional cigar lines obtained a couple of years ago from National Cigar Company. These include Dry Slitz, Emerson, Lord Clinton, Odin and Y.B.

    In “Red Lion, PA. Cigar Town U.S.A.” in the Winter 2007 issue of Cigar Magazine, the ownership of the company has changed quite a bit in the last few decades. U.S. Tobacco, then as now primarily in the smokeless tobacco business, bought Wolf Bros. in 1959 and purchased the House of Windsor operation in 1962, combining operations in the House of Windsor factory in Yoe. In 1987, UST sold House of Windsor to John Woltman, one of the company’s employees. Woltman said in the article that about two million Wolf Bros. Rum Crooks are made annually and about one million of the Crookettes.

    The move of the House of Windsor factory continues the closing chapter of Pennsylvania as a cigar-production hub in the U.S. Cigars are still being made there, however. G.W. Van Slyke & Horton is still in operation in Red Lion and F.X. Smith’s Sons is still churning out machine-made brands such as F.D. Grave in McSherrystown. But that’s about it.

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