IPCPR 2014: L’Atelier Imports

While a number of manufacturers kept their IPCPR releases to a relative minimum, L’Atelier Imports had a steady stream of new projects to show off to retailers and the cigar industry that ranged from limited editions to small cigars to a new regular line. Once again, L’Atelier shared booth space with My Father Cigars and Tatuaje.

Satin Glove is the latest addition to the Surrogates line,  a 7 x 47 box-pressed churchill that features a Mexican San Andrés wrapper.

Four new small cigar five-packs were unveiled: Cracker Crumbs, El Suelo Vuelos, L’Atelier Travailleurs and Trocadéro Ruelles. All of the cigars measure 4 1/2 x 38, will cost $14.50 per pack and are long-filler cigars. There was some concern that Cracker Crumbs might lead people to think the cigars are mixed-filler, but that is not the case.

As for Selection Spéciale, which uses a higher-priming of the Sancti Spiritus wrapper, it is getting a pair of new sizes: the 6 1/8 x 52 LAT Selection Spéciale Torpedo ($9.50), and the 7 1/2 x 38 LAT 38 Selection Spéciale ($9.75) Both cigars come in 20-count boxes and are limited, but ongoing production.

The trade-show exclusive L’Atelier Extension de la Racine ER14 was on the order sheets; it’s a cigar that can only be ordered at the trade show. It’s the same blend as last year but now in a 6 1/8 x 52 torpedo vitola. It comes in 20-count boxes, with pricing at $9.50 per cigar.

Finally, L’Atelier has already begun teasing a 2015 release called Cote d’Or. It is tentatively scheduled for March 2015, though that might change. It is a blend that is based on the famed Pelo d’Oro tobacco and will be fairly limited, with production estimated to be approximately in the low four-digits. The size has not been finalized, but as of now the leading candidate is a soft pressed churchill which will come in ten-count boxes.

Brooks Whittington

I have worn many hats in my life up to this point: I started out as a photojournalist for the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, then transitioned to photographing weddings—both internationally and in the U.S.—for more than a decade. After realizing that there was a need for a cigar website containing better photographs and more in-depth information about each release, I founded my first cigar blog, SmokingStogie, in 2008. SmokingStogie quickly became one of the more influential cigar blogs on the internet, known for reviewing preproduction, prerelease, rare, extremely hard-to-find and expensive cigars, and it was one of the predecessors to halfwheel, which I co-founded.