Fine Ash Cigars in Glendale, Ariz. is getting a variant of Espinosa’s Crema line that it has dubbed Crema con Chocolate due to the addition of a Mexican San Andrés wrapper to the Crema’s Ecuadorian Connecticut leaf to create a barber pole design.

Underneath those wrappers is a Ecuadorian Sumatra binder and Nicaraguan fillers, with the finished cigar offered in a 6 x 52 box pressed toro. It is priced at $10 per cigar and offered in five-pack bundles, with 500 of those bundles produced at A.J. Fernandez’s San Lotano factory. Fine Ash will be releasing the first 250 of those bundles to its cigar club members on Oct. 1, with 200 bundles offered to the public at an event on Oct. 9 with Erik Espinosa scheduled to be in attendance. Fine Ash’s owner, Sam Lopez, told halfwheel that he is hanging onto the remaining 50 bundles, but didn’t go into specifics about what his plans are for them.

He added that he will consider making any bundles remaining after the event available for purchase via the store’s website, as well as that there might be more produced in the future, including a change in packaging to 20-count boxes.

This is the second offshoot of the Crema line and this one also uses a barber pole design. In September 2020, the company added the Crema de Laranja, which uses the wrappers from the company’s Crema and Laranja lines, an Ecuadorian Connecticut shade leaf and a Brazilian-grown leaf, respectively. Underneath that is a mix of the Nicaraguan fillers found in each cigar and a Nicaraguan binder.

The original Espinosa Crema line debuted in 2016.

Image courtesy of Sam Lopez/Fine Ash Cigars.

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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.