At last week’s annual Tobacconists’ Association of America (TAA) Meeting & Convention, Alec Bradley offered its first exclusive for retailers since 2013.

It’s the Alec Bradley Black Market Illicit, a new version of the company’s popular Black Market blend. The Black Market Illicit uses a Nicaraguan wrapper, dual Honduran and Nicaraguan binders and fillers from Nicaragua. For context, the regular Black Market blend uses a Nicaraguan, Sumatra binder, and fillers Honduras and Panama.

The Illicit will debut in a  6 x 50 size, priced at $8.75 per cigar. It will head to TAA retailers nationally beginning in July.

“This is the first exclusive series cigar Alec Bradley has developed for TAA retailers since we introduced the Prensado Figurado in 2013,” said Alan Rubin, owner of Alec Bradley, in a press release. “We like to describe this iteration of our number one-selling cigar as Black Market ‘on steroids.’ True to its name, Black Market Illicit embodies the characteristics that have earned its namesake consistent ratings of 90 among cigar enthusiasts around the world. This iteration was specially designed to cater to TAA’s exclusive network of retailers.”

The TAA is a fairly small group of some of the country’s top tobacconists, about 80 retailers as well as 40 or so manufacturers. The association gathers annually to discuss issues facing the industry and retailers, as well as to have its annual trade show, a unique event that works on a group buying format in order to secure exclusive deals for these generally high-volume merchants.

In recent years, many of those manufacturers have made exclusive cigars for the organization.

Crowned Heads, La Flor Dominicana and Tatuaje have also announced their 2017 TAA releases.

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Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. I previously co-founded and published TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry for more than a decade, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. In addition, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here at halfwheel. I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.