Juan López Gran Patagón Edición Regional Cono Sur Debuting Next Month

Cigar stores in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay are slated to receive a new Edición Regional release next month.

That cigar is the Juan López Gran Patagón, a robusto extra measuring 5 3/8 inches (135mm) long with a ring gauge of 52. This will be only the second Edición Regional for the Cono Sur countries—which translates to Southern Cone from Spanish— after the Ramon Allones Patagón was released in 2016. While the two cigars share the same name, the Ramón Allones Patagón was a different size, measuring just 4 1/3 inches long.

In addition to the typical Edición Regional secondary band, the main Juan López band itself has been modified and will include the words “Gran Patagón” in the center. The name Patagón is a reference to Patagonia, which is the region that encompasses the southern end of South America.

Habanos S.A. offers the Edición Regional program to its various distributors around the world. Each year, distributors can select one cigar to be commissioned for their region, though there have been exceptions when some distributors have been able to select more than one. Those cigars must come from a brand that was not part of the company’s former “Global Brands” and must be a size that is currently not offered in that specific brand.

Edición Regional cigars are signified by a secondary red and silver band that reads Edición Regional followed typically by the name of the region represented by that specific distributor. Oftentimes the cigars do not arrive at stores during the year they are selected for, sometimes they ship multiple years later.

In an email, Favio Palazzi, general manager at Puro Tabaco S.A., told halfwheel that the Gran Patagón is scheduled to be launched simultaneously in the countries of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay next month. The Gran Patagón is limited to 6,000 individually numbered boxes of 10 cigars. While pricing has not been finalized, Palazzi said that each cigar will likely be priced “between 30 and 40 dollars.”