 Plus: Camacho’s brilliant new bag!
Houston, Texas, August 7 – Given its ancient Cuban origins, the cigar is often marketed with reference to times past. But now one company, exhibiting for the first time at the Retail Tobacco Dealers of America convention and trade show, has taken cigar marketing back to about 1905.
In those days, street vendors in Havana sold small quantities of cigars – five to ten at a time – wrapped in paper and then packaged inside a shaped palm husk that looked like a tamale and was closed at both ends with string.
These husks were known as “Catauros” meaning baskets, made from yagua (palm tree bark and leaves). The individual Catauros were six to nine inches long, depending on the length of the cigars inside and groups of two were tied together and slung over the shoulder. The vendor would then sell the Catauros on the street.
This form of cigar packaging has all but disappeared today, but has been revived by Maxoly, a cigar sales company from the Little Havana section of Miami, Florida. Their brand, called Colba 1492, uses the name by which the Taino Indians referred to their island home which we know today as Cuba.
The Colba line comprises eight sizes, which are made by Santiago Cabana in Miami, and are offered in conventional boxes of 10, 20 or 25. But each of those sizes and three additional shapes are offered in a protective plastic cylinder inside Catauro baskets with anywhere from five to 10 cigars in the package. There are wide choices in the line, with Dominican, Ecuadorian and Mexican maduro wrappers available and an interior blend of five nations which changes by shape!
No wild enough for you? Maxoly also has a special line called the Colba Gem Collection, offering the same cigars, but with bands that have a tiny embedded gemstone! Six different sizes are available with a wide choice of colors of the stone!
Those weren’t the only highlights from a bevy of new products introduced at the show:
• Camacho Cigars has created a unique carrying case for 20 cigars presented in two trays that looks like a train satchel from the 1930s. Elegantly made from a leathery material that is water and scratch-resistant, it closes with two straps that have individual buckles, and there are dual carrying handles. The “Camacho Executive Travel Case” won’t be available until October or later and only 5,000 will be made. It will retail for $299.95 and is planned to include a variety of Camacho’s hardest-to-find cigars, including the new Triple Maduro, striped-wrapper Liberty 2007 and the Camacho 10th Anniversary cigar not yet on the market.
Also whispered about on the show floor was a new Camacho “CLE” representing the initials of Christian Eiroa, to be made in four or five sizes with all-Honduran-grown tobacco near the end of the year. It will be, as expected, a very full-bodied blend.
• Looking for an American-made, hand-rolled cigar? There aren’t that many out there, but the Kentucky Gentleman Cigar Company of Lawrenceberg, Kentucky can help you. They make four different lines, primarily with Dominican binder and fillers and Connecticut Shade or Connecticut Broadleaf wrappers, in four sizes. Two of the lines incorporate a cap made of Kentucky-grown, fire-cured tobacco!
Moreover, the tobaccos for the fire-tipped lines are aged in old bourbon barrels prior to rolling to give the finished cigars a completely unique taste. A special line called Blanton’s Single Barrel Bourbon Whiskey Cigar uses Blanton Bourbon barrels to create a familiar flavor accent and is offered in glass tubes with a decorative horse on top!
• Altadis U.S.A. has had a Playboy by Don Diego cigar since 1996 that uses a specially-designed logo and does not emphasize the iconic Playboy bunny mark. Now there is a cigar that does.
Altadis U.S.A. debuted its Playboy cigar at the show, with a simple, blank band on which is emblazoned the famous bow-tied bunny. Featuring an Ecuadorian-grown, Sumatra-seed wrapper, the blend has a full body and will be available in four sizes, each packaged in elegantly-lacquered black clamshell boxes with a locking closure. The cigars are reasonably priced at $7.50 to $10.00 each (before local tobacco taxes) and the boxes will be kept long after the cigars are gone.
• Altadis didn’t stop with cigars, however. It also introduced a Montecristo-branded pen with a rollerball tip and a striking black barrel with silver accents. But do you really need another pen?
You might be interested in this one because the base of the pen unscrews to reveal a Japanese steel cigar punch large enough to make a suitable opening in cigars of up to about 56 ring! The pen and punch cutter will retail for $75 and be available in October. Now if they could introduce one that also incorporates a lighter in the pen cap!
Combination Montecristo pen and cigar sets will also be available, with five cigars in robusto or toro sizes plus the Montecristo pen in any of five Montecristo blends: standard, Classic, Serie C, Platinum or White, or in an assortment pack with one of each. A great gift item, and $10 from the sale of any combination pack will be donated to the Montecristo Relief Foundation, which raises funds for victims of natural disasters in the Caribbean and the United States.
• The folks at Blazer, famous for torch lighters, have also been busy trying to make the cigar smoker’s life more convenient. Their new Optimus line now only includes their well-known torch lighter, but also a single-blade guillotine cutter made of Japanese steel that locks into the body of the lighter! Now, as long as you remember your lighter, you’ll always have a cutter with you!
• The makers of the popular Cigar Oasis humidifier have introduced a new model, the Ultra, which is small enough to fit into the top of most large humidor lids either by magnet or tape.
The Ultra features microprocessor technology that reads the humidity inside the humidor every five minutes and then either stays quiet, or manages the conditions until the desired level is reached. This model can work on battery power, or can be connected by a thin-ribbon cable to an electric power supply outside the humidor. It featured an LED read-out of the humidity and will retail or $99.00.
The RTDA show (or International Premium Cigar and Pipe Retailers Association show, as it will be known next year) will continue through mid-day on Wednesday.
~ Rich Perelman
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