Lost&Found—a collaborative project best known for taking orphaned cigars and repackaging them—is pivoting to a new model where it commissions factories to make cigars, ages those cigars for longer than the industry standard, and then releases them. The first time the company released a cigar it commissioned was in 2020 with a release called Instant Classic. Now, Instant Classic is back with three different blends.

The plan is to have two versions of Instant Classic—Habano Ecuador and San Andrés—that will be available for retailers to order regularly throughout the year. Somewhat confusingly, the sizes for the two blends are not in their final form.

Heading to retailers later this month will be four SKUs, two each per blend.

  • Instant Classic Habano Ecuador Robusto (5 x 50) — $12 (Box of 20, $240)
  • Instant Classic Habano Ecuador Toro (6 3/4 x 50) — $13 (Box of 20, $260)
  • Instant Classic San Andrés Toro Fino (5 3/4 x 48) — $12 (Box of 20, $240)
  • Instant Classic San Andrés Torpedo (6 x 52) — $13 (Box of 20, $260)

Blend-wise, the Habano uses an Ecuadorian habano wrapper over a Dominican binder and Dominican mejorado fillers. The San Andrés uses a Mexican wrapper over fillers from the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. Neither of these blends is the same as the 2020 version of Instant Classic.

Eventually, the plan is to have a Robusto (5 x 50), Corona Gorda (6 x 46) and Toro (6 x 52) for the lines.

There is also a special one-off Instant Classic that will be included with this shipment. The Instant Classic Limited Production 2018 is offered in a single 6 x 52 box-pressed toro size. It uses a habano hybrid wrapper over an Ecuadorian binder and Dominican fillers including criollo and San Vicente.

It has an MSRP of $16 per cigar and will be limited to 7,000 boxes of 10 cigars, 2,000 of which are going to accounts in Europe.

All three releases have been aged for many years after rolling. For example, the Instant Classic Habano and San Andrés were rolled at the original William Ventura factory when it was known as El Maestro. The Instant Classic Limited Production was rolled at Tabacalera William Ventura. These cigars should begin shipping to stores next week.

Overall Score

Avatar photo

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.