Casdagli to Distribute KBF’s Smoking Jacket Brand

Hendrik Kelner Jr.’s Smoking Jacket brand will now be distributed in the U.S. by Casdagli.

Since the brand was founded nearly a decade ago, Davidoff of Geneva USA has handled the distribution in the U.S. That will come to an end this month. Kelner Jr. is probably best known for his Kelner Boutique Factory, a cigar factory located in the Dominican Republic that counts Casdagli among its clients. He also has his own cigar company, Smoking Jacket, which produces a variety of cigars using tobacco from the Kelner family’s many Dominican farms as well as tobacco from other countries.

The company will continue to sell three different lines of cigars, led by the eponymous Smoking Jacket Clássic Line, which features a red band. While the cigars are under the same line and use the same packaging, they are not the same blend. The Favoritos and Short Robusto use aged Dominican wrappers, while the other two sizes use Cuban-seed Brazilian wrappers. The filler blends are not consistent from size to size, though all cigars use Dominican and Nicaraguan tobaccos, with tobaccos from Peru and the U.S. being used for some of the vitolas.

• Smoking Jacket Clásico Robusto Imperial (5 x 51)
• Smoking Jacket Clásico Favorito (6 x 46)
• Smoking Jacket Clásico Short Robusto (4 1/2 x 56)
• Smoking Jacket Clásico Toro Magno (7 x 50)

There is also the Henkie, a 6 x 52 toro that was blended for Kelner Jr.’s father, Hendrik “Henke” Kelner, who founded Davidoff’s Dominican operations and worked with the company for nearly three decades. Kelner Jr. described the cigar as the most successful in his portfolio.

“It was more a nostalgia project, using mostly family farmed tobaccos and other tobaccos that we felt very closed to since those were our favorite tobaccos from the 20 years we worked together,” said Kelner Jr. to halfwheel in a text.

It uses an Ecuadorian corojo wrapper over a Dominican Monteplata binder and four fillers: corojo, criollo 98 and pelo de oro from the Dominican Republic along with tobacco from Condega, Nicaragua.

Finally, there is the Smoking Jacket Limited Edition II Gran Toro. This cigar debuted in 2016, initially as a limited edition item, but was later reclassified as a regular production addition about two years later. It uses an Ecuadorian corojo wrapper over dual binders—criollo 98 from Cotuí, Dominican Republic and Nicaragua—along with four filler tobaccos: criollo 98 from Quino, Dominican Republic; habano from Bonao, Dominican Republic; habano from Monteplata and pelo de oro from Peru. It is offered in a lone 6 x 55 toro extra size.

Kelner Jr. told halfwheel that he hopes the move to a smaller distributor will allow for the brand to receive more attention. The two companies are still figuring out pricing, but Kelner says that Casdagli already has inventory of the Smoking Jacket Limited Edition II Gran Toro ready to be sold.