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| "THE BIGGEST BRAND" BY 2015? |
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Page 1 of 2  Plus: Our Register & Win winner of the week!Las Vegas, Nv., July 14 – “We want to be the biggest brand in the country by 2015.” Whoa, that’s a tall order with Macanudo and Romeo y Julieta acknowledged as the top two premium brands in the U.S. and powerful brands like Arturo Fuente and Punch also in the mix. But Rick Chandler of General Cigar, who is in charge of marketing the company’s Honduran-made brands, is determined to make the sesquicentennial of the Hoyo de Monterrey brand one to remember. If he somehow succeeds, it won’t be the first time that Hoyo at the top of the charts. When brand founder Jose Gener died in 1900, his factory was the largest in the world, making more than 50 million cigars a year! Although enormously popular since, it hasn’t been at the top of the sales charts – anywhere – in a long time. At this year’s International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association convention and trade show, Chandler introduced the Hoyo de Monterrey Excalibur Legend, the fullest-bodied cigar in the entire Hoyo line to date. “It’s not hard to make a harsh cigar,” said General’s director of marketing Bill Chillian, “but it is hard to make a good cigar that’s full-bodied.” The Legend stands out with a red-tinged band and uses Connecticut-grown, Havana-seed leaves for both wrapper and binder and Nicaraguan and Dominican-grown filler leaves. As the Legend comes in, offered in three sizes, the Excalibur Royal Sterling is being retired. Created because of the availability of some sandy-colored, shade-grown Honduran wrappers in 2004, the line has run its course and is no longer being offered. If you liked it, buy it now, because it’s going to be all gone very soon. Up and coming, however, was last year’s star, Hoyo de Tradicion, which has been very well received and appears capable of becoming the second-best-selling line in the Hoyo brand, behind only the original blend. Also of note at the show: The Altadis line is called Mi Dominicana (“My Dominican”) and was blended by Tabacalera de Garcia chief Jose Seijas. Always quiet and modest, he dropped all pretense about this blend: “Everything that is beautiful about the Dominican Republic has gone into this puro,” said Seijas. “Superior tobaccos and the pride and artistry of our most experienced rollers have created what I believe is the perfect smoke.” Wow. The Mi Dominicana is offered in eight sizes and packed in elegant white boxes with the Dominican flag on the top. The cigars range in price from $7.50 to $9.00 each before local sales and tobacco taxes; there’s also an eight-cigar size sampler at $66.50 each. |
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Did you know?
“Alfred Dunhill opened his first shop in 1893, his first tobacco shop in London in 1907 and the New York store in 1923.
