Gurkha Announces Year of the Dragon Series With Cigars from AJ Fernandez, Oliva & Others (Update)

Gurkha Cigar Group, Inc. has announced that it has four more Year of the Dragon cigars, each made by a different factory.

They are part of what the company is describing as a five-part series. The first of the cigars was released last December, a 6 3/4 x 52 figurado made by El Artista.

At the time, the company made no mention of any subsequent releases, but there will be four more.

• Gurkha Year of the Dragon 2024 (AJ Fernandez) (6 5/8 x 52) — February 2024
• Gurkha Year of the Dragon 2024 (Tabacalera La Alianza S.A.) (6 5/8 x 54) — April 2024
• Gurkha Year of the Dragon 2024 (Oliva) (6 1/2 x 60) — June 2024
• Gurkha Year of the Dragon 2024 (Oscar Valladares) (6 x 52) — TBA

Gurkha says blend and pricing info about each cigar will be announced once they are shipping.

Each blend will come in a 10-count box of a different color that the company says can also be used as a humidor. The AJ Fernandez release is box-pressed and comes in green boxes, the Tabacalera La Alianza S.A.-made cigar comes in a black box, the Oliva-made cigar comes in an orange box, and the Oscar Valladares-made cigar comes in a yellow box. Each is limited to 2,000 boxes.

“We are extremely excited about this project,” says Juan Lopez, VP of Sales for Gurkha Cigars.  “It truly feels like a one-of-a-kind opportunity to release and work with these modern-day legends of the industry.  My team and I are excited to share this with the cigar-smoking community and can’t wait to show everyone the finished product.”

In addition, Gurkha says the four aforementioned cigars will come in a special limited edition humidor. Those will contain 20 of each of the four new releases; it does not appear that the El Artista-made cigar will be included in the humidor, which is designed to hold 200 cigars. Pricing and production numbers for the humidor have not been announced, it will be shown off at the 2024 PCA Convention & Trade Show next month.

“We have owned the Dragon trademark since 2009,” said Jim Colucci, president of Gurkha, in a press release. “We thought it only fitting to do something huge in commemoration of the Year of the Dragon, especially since we’ve always had big dragon releases over the years.”

In December, Gurkha sued Davidoff over the latter’s Year of the Dragon cigar, claiming trademark infringement. It does not appear that Gurkha has sued any other company. Oliva, Maya Selva and VegaFina have announced Year of the Dragon cigars for international markets, but not the U.S. Gurkha appears to only hold dragon trademark(s) in the U.S.

J.C. Newman has created the Brick House Dragon Fire as an exclusive for Smoke Inn, a South Florida retailer.

Update (March 14, 2024) — Gurkha has announced that it created 100 samplers containing five cigars, one each of the five cigars, that are being sold exclusively through Smoke Inn.

Charlie Minato

I am an editor and co-founder of halfwheel.com/Rueda Media, LLC. I previously co-founded and published TheCigarFeed, one of the two predecessors of halfwheel. I have written about the cigar industry for more than a decade, covering everything from product launches to regulation to M&A. In addition, I handle a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff here at halfwheel. I enjoy playing tennis, watching boxing, falling asleep to the Le Mans 24, wearing sweatshirts year-round and eating gyros. echte liebe.