Today, Casa Cuevas began shipping its latest limited edition, La Mandarria, to retailers across the country.

La Mandarria is a 6 x 52 toro that uses an Ecuadorian habano wrapper, Nicaraguan binder and Colombian, Dominican and Nicaraguan fillers, while also sporting a pig tail cap and shaggy foot. It’s being billed as the first full bodied and full-strength cigars in the Casa Cuevas line-up. Gabriel Alvarez, the company’s director of sales, told halfwheel that the red-banded Casa Cuevas Habano’s blend ratios were adjusted for more strength in flavor and body.

The cigar gets its name from the Spanish word for sledgehammer, though it truly comes from a February break-in to the company’s Miami headquarters during which significant amounts of inventory were stolen. The burglars used sledgehammers to break through a warehouse wall en route to getting away with over 25,000 cigars, including half the inventory of the company’s limited edition Flacos; which were unable to be replaced as the numbered boxes were shipped from the factory out of sequence and there was no way of knowing which particular boxes were stolen, according to a company statement.

The company is limited production to 500 boxes of 20 cigars, with MSRPs set at $12 per cigar and $240 per box, before taxes. Production is handled at the Las Lavas Cigar Factory in the Dominican Republic.

Featured images courtesy of Casa Cuevas.

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Patrick Lagreid

I strive to capture the essence of a cigar and the people behind them in my work – every cigar you light up is the culmination of the work of countless people and often represents generations of struggle and stories. For me, it’s about so much more than the cigar – it’s about the story behind it, the experience of enjoying the work of artisans and the way that a good cigar can bring people together. In addition to my work with halfwheel, I’m the public address announcer for the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks during spring training, as well as for the Salt River Rafters of the Arizona Fall League, the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury and previously the Arizona Rattlers of the Indoor Football League. I also work in a number of roles for Major League Baseball, plus I'm a voice over artist. Prior to joining halfwheel, I covered the Phoenix and national cigar scene for Examiner.com, and was an editor for Cigar Snob magazine.