Klin Tobacco Releasing Peat Fire-Cured Cigar

There have been whiskey-infused cigars, cigars aged in whiskey barrels, cigars made to pair with whiskey, cigars with whiskey branding and cigars with tobacco aged in whiskey barrels.

Now there’s a whisky cigar.

Klin Tobacco Co., the parent of the Hammer + Sickle line of cigars, has announced its new brand, The Caleanoch, a cigar using tobacco fire-cured with Scottish peat.

Most tobacco is air-cured, where the tobacco naturally processes—usually in barns—turning leaves from a vibrant green color to the various shades of brown you see on your cigars. Fire-curing is used commonly in the pipe and plug (smokeless) tobacco worlds, although there have been a few recent examples of cigars using fire-cured tobacco. As the name implies, fire-curing introduces a fire to the process by burning woods inside a barn where tobacco is curing. This adds various smoky flavors to the tobacco ad changes other characteristics, including aroma.

Instead of wood, Klin is using peat, a mixture of earth and other organic material that is found in many places across Europe, but is most known for its use in Scotland. Peat—or turf—is cut into rectangular blocks and then left out to dry for one to two weeks which makes it combustible. For the Scottish whisky industry, peat is roasted below the floor in which barley is placed. The peat prevents the barley from germinating, but also adds a unique smokiness to the grain, which carries over to the whisky itself.

Now Klin is trying to bring the unique flavor to cigars.

The cigar is The Caleanoch, 12 cigars packaged in a cylindrical tube similar to how many whiskys come. The company says it tested fire-curing a variety of tobaccos by burning the peat in the curing burns in place of traditional woods. It settled on a blend that uses 25 percent fire-cured corojo and 75 percent air-cured corojo underneath an Ecuadorian Connecticut wrapper.

The Caleanoch is offered in one size, 6 x 50, with pricing set at $12.50 per cigar.

https://instagram.com/p/44B5fECKps/?taken-by=thecaleanoch

Kliin Tobacco will debut the cigar at next week’s IPCPR Convention & Trade Show in New Orleans, La.

Erik Wentworth, national sales manager for Klin Tobacco, declined to comment on where the cigars were being made.