Viaje’s latest shipment has begun arriving at at least one retailer and includes a pair of new releases along with a new size for two of the company’s long-standing lines.
The newest installment of the Friends and Family series headlines the shipment, a 6 x 50 box-pressed toro called Bel Air. The Bel Air comes with a price of $230 per box of 15 or $15.33 per single cigar. While Atlantic Cigar Co. is already selling the new release, other Viaje accounts contacted by halfwheel indicated they had not yet been invoiced. It remains to be seen if the one to two box per limit per store will remain for this release. It’s a new size for the line, joining the previously released 5 x 52 Le Joueur and 7 x 48 Le Cadeau.
That is followed up by a new White Label Project, a 6 x 40 corona called the Viaje WLP PL TB#7, which stands for petit lancero test blend #7. It comes in bundles of 25, wrapped in newspaper and cellophane with a slip attached to the front indicating some basic information about the cigar, including that 300 bundles were produced with a Nicaraguan Corojo wrapper. MSRP is $205 per bundle and $8.32 per cigar.
Rounding out the shipment is a new 7 x 50 churchill vitola called Aficionado for the Viaje Oro Reserva (V.O.R.) and Viaje Platino Reserva (V.P.R.) lines. Both come in 25-count boxes with an MSRP of $280 per box and $11.20 per cigar. Both cigars use Nicaraguan Corojo ’99 wrappers and Nicaraguan binder and filler.
All of the cigars in this shipment were made at Raíces Cubanas in Honduras, per a company spokesperson. Owner Andre Farkas posted a picture of a box earlier this week that indicated it came from TABSA, the Estelí, Nicaragua factory tasked with the most recent production of Viaje, which has traditionally been made at Raíces Cubanas in Danlí, Honduras. The company has not released production numbers on any of the releases.
Update (Aug. 28, 2014)–After this story was published, a representative from Viaje confirmed that the cigars are being made at Raíces Cubanas, as well as provided the background of the name for the WLP PL TB#7 project.
(Images courtesy of Atlantic Cigar)