halfwheel

IPCPR 2011: Viaje

Andre Farkas was joking around Sunday night before the show wondering why he was in Vegas. Viaje, unlike any manufacturer, was sold out before the show started, so the feel of the Viaje booth was quite different, a bit more, hangout-like. There were a few extensions, a new line, but the 2011 IPCPR show seemed [...]

IPCPR 2011: P.G. Cigars

Over the past few months Paul Garmirian Cigars has become a fairly covered branded on TheCigarFeed, so it should come as no surprise that they are one of the features of our IPCPR coverage. There was only a single new line, one which was announced far before the show, but it was nice to stop [...]

IPCPR 2011: EloGio

One of the busiest booths of the show? EloGio. The boutique’s tiny booth was jammed pack with retailers making it near impossible to get the pictures needed. Who is EloGio? A true boutique. The cigars are blended by Carlos Pereda Robaina, grandson of the late Alejandro Robaina. Their coveted secret is the LSV wrapper that [...]

IPCPR 2011: Rocky Patel

And the most buzzed about cigar on the trade show floor…? The Rocky Patel 50th. It’s a bit shocking even to me given what else was released, but the combination of relative secrecy prior to the show, a high price tag and the Rocky factor seemed to combine into what was a barrage of people [...]

IPCPR 2011: E.P. Carrillo

Top to bottom, there’s no competition, it’s E.P. Carrillo. Simply put, there is not a cigar brand that puts out a better portfolio than E.P. Carrillo. There’s no simple way to define what Ernesto Perez-Carrillo Jr. and his children have done. Sometimes, it’s a spin on a classic concept, hence the wildly-popular New Wave Connecticut; [...]

IPCPR 2011: La Aurora and Miami Cigar & Co.

Too much. In a year were many manufacturers made it very clear they were aware of the amount of new releases collectively, Miami Cigar & Co. and La Aurora seemed to have missed the meeting. Jason Wood explained that it was the first time where La Aurora had offered a plethora of new releases, but [...]

IPCPR 2011: Toraño & Graycliff

I suspect there shall be a lot more grouping of these two companies together in the future, and as far as the trade show was concerned, they were in two separate booths. The obvious large topic of discussion was the gigantic distraction that is known as Sam Leccia and Sam Leccia Cigar Co., but he [...]

IPCPR 2011: Cigar Family

Where was Casa Cuba? I apologize to all of the Fuente/Newman employees that had to answer that question. There was more in the Cigar Family booth than the notably absent Casa Cuba, but there was a large, and sometimes even public sense that next year, Fuente’s 100th anniversary, may have played into a calmer 2011. [...]

IPCPR 2011: Quesada

I saw Terence Reilly pretty early into my stay into Vegas. I had a good conversation with one of the key players at Quesada/MATASA/SAG Imports, about a variety of things, but particularly about the present and future of the company his uncle, Manuel “Manolo” Quesada, sits at the helm of. The IPCPR show was relatively [...]

IPCPR 2011: Oliva Cigar Co.

Publicly, the biggest news regarding Oliva and the 2011 IPCPR was the court order that prevented former employee Sam Leccia from attending the trade show. Despite a fairly one-sided discussion on various online format, numbers don’t lie and Oliva wasn’t really worrying about a Miami courtroom. An Oliva employee was trying to explain just how [...]