Late last week, My Father Cigars, Inc. began shipping the newest cigar under the Jaime Garcia Reserva Especial name, a 6 x 46 vitola the company is calling its Lancero made solely for the Hawaiian market.  While the cigar features the same Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper as the regular Jaime Garcia Reserva Especial, the blend has been made stronger.

MSRP is set at $7.50 per cigar, but given Hawaii’s high state taxes on premium cigars, consumers will likely be paying around $11.25 in the islands. There are 350 boxes of 10 Jaime Garcia Reserva Especial Lanceros, each of which feature a fantail cap, a first for any Jaime Garcia product. In addition, the traditionally plain boxes have been painted red with gold due to the colors importance in Hawaii.

The boxes look like this:

Jaime Garcia Reserva Especial Lancero 1

Jaime Garcia Reserva Especial Lancero 2

Jon Fia, the Hawaiian sales representative for My Father and a host of other brands, had this to say about the project:

Jaime Garcia blend but had the strength turned up more since guys in Hawaii like full bodied cigars. It was made for Hawaii retailers only instead of a singe store, kind of like a regional release. I took (the prototypes) back to Hawaii and got feedback from the retailers. We all concurred it was full bodied enough to satisfy seasoned smokers but didn’t want to make it any stronger or we might turn off the less seasoned smokers.

Boxes are red with gold lettering due to the large Asian population. Red is often associated with good luck. I also chose the red and gold colors for the box because they are the colors for of the Hawaiian Royalty.

Hawaii is the third region to receive a Jaime Garcia-branded regional cigar. Last year, New England received the first regional in the form of the Jaime Garcia Reserva Especial Connecticut, while the Jaime Garcia Sur Oeste arrived in Texas and its surrounding states in late September.

The name is somewhat confusing, as the Lancero vitola is traditionally 7 1/2 x 38, although commonly seen in the U.S. at seven inches long and as thick as 40 ring gauge. The cigar actually measures close to the Corona Gorda (5 5/8 x 46).

According to Fia, the cigars should begin arriving in shops next week. The Jaime Garcia Reserva Especial line was introduced in 2009, its an eponymous line for the company’s president Jaime García.

(Images via Jon Fia.)

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Brooks Whittington

I have been smoking cigars for over eight years. A documentary wedding photographer by trade, I spent seven years as a photojournalist for the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star Telegram. I started the cigar blog SmokingStogie in 2008 after realizing that there was a need for a cigar blog with better photographs and more in-depth information about each release. SmokingStogie quickly became one of the more influential cigar blogs on the internet, known for reviewing preproduction, prerelease, rare, extremely hard-to-find and expensive cigars. I am a co-founder of halfwheel and now serve as an editor for halfwheel.