Arturo Fuente, Padrón Legends Collaboration Delayed Until 2024

Fuente y Padrón Legends, the collaborative project between Arturo Fuente and Padrón, will not be heading to stores this year.

In late November, Arturo Fuente shipped the first 750 boxes out of the roughly 2,000 that were made to the U.S. Carlos “Carlito” Fuente Jr. announced the shipment on social media. In the two weeks since, it became apparent that there was an issue that prevented the first batch of cigars—which are expected to be distributed by Padrón—from being released.

As it turns out, some of the boxes in one of the two shipping containers arrived to Tampa damaged. The two companies say that they will delay the release and inspect each box individually, which necessitates the delay.

“Unfortunately, after years of planning and work we have had a setback in our Legends project. I am extremely disappointed we will have to delay its release,” said Jorge Padrón in a press release. “While these adverse situations are nothing new for either of our companies, I will look at this as a learning experience for the younger generations in our families. Our families are responding the way we were taught, working together to ensure that we see this project through to its completion being nothing short of what the two men being honored deserve.”

The two companies have not provided an updated timeline as to when the first batch of Legends will ship to stores, only that it won’t be this month. There also remains no new information about pricing, blends, how many cigars will be made or how many boxes a retailer might be able to order.

Legends honors the two men who built the respective cigar companies into what they are today. Perhaps more importantly, the cigars made by the current head of one family in honor of the late patriarch of the other. José Orlando Padrón (1926-2017) left Cuba in 1961, first heading to Spain before landing in America in 1962. A friend asked if he had any carpentry skills and then gave him a little hammer. After two years, he saved enough money to start Padrón Cigars, which began with one roller in Miami. The company still pays tribute to that little hammer, using it as a logo on various boxes.

Carlos Fuente Sr. (1935-2016) was born into a cigar family. His father, Arturo Fuente, started a cigar company, but the factory burned down a decade before Fuente Jr. was born. Fuente continued to work in the cigar business but didn’t restart his own factory until 1946. That operation wasn’t as successful as the first factory. By the 1950s, Carlos Fuente Sr. was working both at his father’s cigar factory and, in order to provide for his young family, also as a baker. In 1954, he bought the company—which had more than $1,000 in debt—for $1.

The two men led their companies through embargoes—Fuente Jr. navigated the Cuban embargo while Padrón dealt with Nicaragua’s embargo—natural disasters, wars, economic upheaval, the cigar boom and more. Sometimes their experiences were remarkably similar. For example, both companies lost a factory in Nicaragua due to violence.

Today, Arturo Fuente and Padrón are not only two of the most prominent names in the cigar business but also two of the largest cigar companies still owned by their founding families.

They are also two of the most protective and secretive cigar companies, which made the collaboration seem all the more unlikely and also has contributed to the general lack of information about the project. For example, even as the cigars neared being a week or two away, pricing was still never announced. It’s unclear if it has ever been finalized.

While the companies have still not disclosed the blends of the cigars, Carlos “Carlito” Fuente Jr. told halfwheel what he thought about when making the cigar for this project.

“I made a cigar that I thought, if I ever run into (José O. Padrón) ever, the cigar in my pocket, that’s the cigar I’d like to hand him and say, ‘this cigar, let me know what you think, this is for you,'” said Fuente Jr. “And knowing (José) Orlando Padrón, he probably wouldn’t have said anything. He would have said, ‘Gracias amigo.’ (Thank you friend.) He would have got the cigar, and maybe a year later, when I ran into him, he would have said, ‘by the way, that cigar wasn’t bad,’ and that would have meant an incredible, great cigar and that’s all I ever wanted from someone like him.”

The much-talked-about project dates back to a 2020 Cigar Rights of America (CRA) meeting at the Padrón offices in Miami. After the meeting, Fuente Jr. and Padrón sat down and shared Scotch whisky. Jorge Padrón drank Haig Pinch whisky, his father’s preferred Scotch, and Fuente Jr. drank Chivas Regal, his father’s preferred whisky. During that meeting, the two agreed to work on a project that would honor each other’s fathers.

While a collaboration was announced in October 2020, it wouldn’t be until July 2022 that it emerged. During the 2022 PCA Convention & Trade Show, the two companies showed off Fuente y Padrón Legends, a 40-count box that contained 20 cigars made by Padrón in honor of Carlos Fuente Sr. and 20 cigars made by Arturo Fuente in honor of José O. Padrón. Both cigars were 7 x 50 Churchills; the cigar made by Fuente is round, the cigar made by Padrón is box-pressed.

No details—blend, price, release date, availability—were given at that time.

A year later, both companies had boxes of the Legends in their respective booths at the 2023 PCA Convention & Trade Show. By that point, some details had started to emerge. Padrón would distribute the first round of boxes and the joint Arturo Fuente/J.C. Newman sales team would handle the next round of boxes. Pricing, blend and release date were still not finalized, though there was some hope that it could have shipped in October.