halfwheel

News: Cain F Lancero Shipping This Week

The scheduled late 2012 batch of Cain F Lancero Tubos is shipping to retailers this week. It’s the third formal shipment of the cigar, following the January and July 2012 shipments, which were actually one large batch. Once again, packaging delays with the tubes are listed as the culprit for the delay, but Oliva says [...]

Winner: The Newsletter (January 7, 2013)

Today we will publish the second issue of The Newsletter and as is the case every month, one of our subscribers will win a box of cigars. The box for January was the Herrera Esteli Toro Especials, Drew Estate’s newest release that still hasn’t shipped nationally yet. The winner was subscriber number 23, which according [...]

Icons of Cigars™ — Edgar “One Shot One Kill” Hoill

Edgar “One Shot One Kill” Hoill is a Los Angeles-based photographer that broke into the cigar industry in late 2011 through Room101′s Matt Booth. The duo launched the Room101 OSOK, three perfecto-shaped cigars that shipped in the early portions of 2012. Since then Hoill has moved to Christian Eiroa’s new Fabricas Unidas to launch EH Cigars. It’s [...]

2012 Awards: The Consensus

And the top cigar of 2012 is. First, a bit of what this is and what it is not. This is a compilation of 53 published lists, both traditional publications and online organizations, in an effort to find any trends, and most importantly, a consensus. The written content is all mine; it is not endorsed [...]

2012 Awards: The halfwheel 25

Before this goes any further. Take time to remember what halfwheel is when it comes to reviews. We represent a minuscule piece of the pie that in the cigar world. We review rare, hard-to-find, limited edition, prerelease, preproduction or otherwise unavailable cigars. It’s a niche, one that we stick to with a strictness that at [...]

2012 Awards: The halfwheel Packaging Top 10

After somewhat of an absence last year, a tradition Brooks started at SmokingStogie is back, packaging awards. As the amount of releases continues to increase annually, the diversity in packaging continues to increase. Not all of it is great, but in general, it seems fair to suggest the innovation within the concept of packaging a [...]

Blog: Some Programming Notes

First, Happy New Year! Like last year, the first week of the year will be kind of special. We’ve long held the belief that no cigar in anyone’s humidor should be sacred. They are made to be smoked after all. There’s no better time to smoke those special cigars than holidays. Like last year, we are [...]

Introducing the halfwheel Newsletter

Next Monday, we will release the first edition of our newest offering, the halfwheel Newsletter. The product will be emailed the first Monday of each month and will feature a combination of new articles and a series of our favorite reviews and news stories from the prior month. It’s a clean product, and one that [...]

Editorial: The Ten Questions for 2013

I think this might be my favorite article to write and publish. It takes a lot of time, but despite what my Twitter account might hint at, I do love the industry proper. There were a lot of things that happened in 2012, many of which aren’t so relevant as far as looking at things [...]

Announcement: Holiday Party at Elite Cigar Cafe

On Friday December 21, halfwheel’s editors (Brooks Whittington and Charlie Minato) and writer Brian Burt will be at Elite Cigar Cafe in Addison, TX for a get together we are commonly referring to as halfwheel’s Holiday Party Pt. II. The event will run from 7-11 PM and there will be some out of town guests [...]