halfwheel

Review: La Aurora Preferidos Maduro Lancero (2012)

The La Aurora Preferidos Maduro Lancero up for review traces its roots back to a similar cigar made for W. Curtis Draper’s 123rd anniversary back in May 2010. That cigar caught the attention of David Mogilner, vice-president of Racine & Laramie in San Diego, who wanted to have some made for his store. According to [...]

Review: Arturo Fuente W. Curtis Draper 125th Anniversary

In early October, Washington, D.C. retailer W. Curtis Draper released the Arturo Fuente W. Curtis Draper 125th Anniversary, the third cigar in a four part series celebrating their 125th anniversary, joining the Cabaiguan WCD 120 REDUX from Pete Johnson’s Havana Cellars and the La Aurora 100 Años. The quartet will be rounded out by a 6 x [...]

Review: Iconic Leaf Recluse Toro (Prerelease)

Prior to IPCPR, William Cooper of Cigar Coop proclaimed, “(Iconic Leaf) is a company and a cigar you are going to hear a lot more of in 2012.” And he was right, for a few reasons. First and foremost, Iconic Leaf was a company that was relatively unheard of up until Coop’s post. Iconic Leaf [...]

Redux: Para Japón by La Aurora

Shortly after a massive 8.9–magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck Japan in March 2011, a group of online cigar media were visiting La Aurora’s facilities in the Dominican Republic. In that group was Mario Takeyama of Cigar Explorer, who was born in Japan and felt the call to do something as an industry member to [...]

Review: La Gloria Cubana Gorda Gorda

With so many new cigars coming out in super sized ring gauges, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we see this new one coming from the General Cigar camp. While many cigar smokers I’ve talked to have expressed their love for smaller ring gauges and have said they think large ring gauge cigars are getting borderline [...]

Review: Quesada Q d’etat Daga

In December of 2011, Quesada announced the Q d’etat line, a series of limited editions meant to bring attention to unfair taxation and overall mistreatment of the cigar industry by the government. Says the original press release: The brand is intended to create awareness of the dangers increased government regulation and taxation will produce, specifically [...]

Review: La Flor Dominicana Oro Natural No. 6 (Prerelease)

Among a handful of new releases from La Flor Dominicana at this summer’s IPCPR trade show was the Oro line, a trio of cigars with a new blend and packed in gold tubes, which in turn come in five-count boxes. According to Litto Gomez, the line is said to be “an amped up Coronado blend,” a reference to [...]

Review: OpusX Angel’s Share Robusto (Prerelease)

Last year at the IPCPR show in Las Vegas, we started hearing rumors that the Fuentes were working on a large number of different cigar releases to coincide with the company’s 100th anniversary this year. The first released example of this, came in December of 2011 with the launch of the extremely limited Fuente Fuente OpusX ForbiddenX [...]

Review: Gurkha 125th Anniversary Rothchild

Since late 2011, shortly after Gary Hyams began his tenure at Gurkha, there were murmurs of an anniversary cigar for Gurkha. While Kaizad Hansotia has only owned the brand since 1989, the brand has used the 1887 date for a while, which is the claimed birthdate of the brand. In July, short before IPCPR, Gurkha [...]

Review: Davidoff Golden Band Awards 2012

In mid-July, just a few short weeks before the 2012 IPCPR convention and trade show kicked off in Orlando, Davidoff announced a new addition to the festivities: the inaugural Golden Band Awards. From the website dedicated to the awards: The inaugural Davidoff Golden Band Award Show will honor those Appointed Merchants that truly embody the [...]