RoMa Craft Tobac Announces Limited Edition CRAFT Series for IPCPR 2013

Earlier today, Skip Martin of RoMa Craft Tobac announced the company’s newest project, CRAFT 2013 La Campaña de Panamá Soberana. The announcement was made on halfwheel’s forum. Martin described CRAFT as a new line of annual limited releases, the first of which will debut at IPCPR.

La Campaña de Panamá Soberana is the first of these annual series, a roughly five-inch cigar that uses ten different types of tobacco, virtually every component RoMa Craft Tobac uses across its four regular lines.

The wrapper is comprised of the best Ecuadorian Habano that the company uses for its Aquitaine line. In addition, lighter Ecuadorian Connecticut wrapper and darker Brazilian arapiraca, from the Intemperance BA, adorn the front. Martin told halfwheel the wrapper used its top five percent Ecuadorian wrapper for the CRAFT release.

RoMa Craft Tobac uses the CroMagnon’s U.S. Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper as the binder for the La Campaña de Panamá Soberana while two secos, two visos and two ligeros make up the filler combination. It’s described as mainly Nicaraguan, but Martin acknowledged there’s a small amount of Cameroon in the filler. The only tobacco RoMa Craft uses elsewhere that isn’t in the CRAFT release is the Indonesian binder the company uses for its Intemperance line.

RoMa Craft Tobac has been saving the tobacco for the past few months. Martin explained that sometimes the company receives higher or lower grade tobacco than it needs for its core lines, that tobacco is what is being used for CRAFT 2013.

Only 1,000 boxes of 10 La Campaña de Panamá Soberanas will be released with pricing set at $150.00 per box or $15.00 per cigar. The company will show the cigar off at the annual International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association Convention & Trade Show in July and ship the initial CRAFT release in November.

Martin’s full post reads as follows:

Mike and I are very proud to announce the launch of our new cigar brand here, on the halfwheel forum, where we have gotten so much love from our fellow brother’s of the leaf.

When we flew to Managua in September of 2010, almost two years to-the-date after Hurricane Ike devastated my retail shop in Galveston, we had no idea that the blend we were working on would become the foundation of a new cigar company. Our partner, Esteban Disla, who spent that week at a small table in his garage had no idea that his life-long dream of owning and operating his own factory would be realized less than a year later. The truth is, if these activities hadn’t taken place simultaneous to the emergence of social media, the twilight of new media in the cigar industry and at the dawn of a golden age for quality tobacco neither would have ever developed.

We have never viewed ourselves as a boutique cigar company. We chose the name of our company to connote our dedication to the artisanal craft of making cigars by hand. We launched with the commitment to produce and deliver a differentiated product, in a differentiated manner without compromising any of the time honored traditions of our craft.

From the beginning, we have committed ourselves to making four continuously produced blends. The production has always been dictated by two factors: availability of the specific tobaccos we selected for the initial blends and the volume our team could consistently produce without sacrificing quality in any way. While our production remains small, less than 25,000 cigars each month, we have amassed enough tobacco and finished cigar inventory to ensure that our cigars are consistently available for at least 24 months beyond our current month’s import.

Our process for selecting and allocating our retail tobacconist partners ensures that their inventory of RoMa Craft Tobac is available to their customers month in and month out without exception. In short, with the exception of special projects, event only sizes and retailer exclusives, we have strived to ensure that or retailers and customers never viewed us as a ‘one-hit wonder’ lacking staying power or as a ‘gimmicky’ boutique releasing a patch work of artificially limited ‘hit-or-miss’ blends with hyped up brand names, art work and packaging.

Last month, while I was in Esteli, Esteban Disla and I completed a year-long effort to produce what we felt was manifestation of this commitment. La Campaña de Panamá Soberana is made completely by hand, without molds. In fact the only tool used in its production is a chaveta. This blend and Vitolla is our 2013 selection for CRAFT, the first in an ongoing series of annual limited edition cigars produced in this manner.

CRAFT is what a limited edition cigar should be. Something exceptional, limited by the rare nature of the tobacco and the time-consuming nature of the process used to produce it.

CRAFT 2013 will consist of approximately 1000 10-Count boxes of unbanded La Campaña de Panamá Soberana. Each RoMa Craft Tobac retailer will be allocated a minimum of 10 boxes. The MSRP will be $15.00 per cigar, or $150.00 per box.

CRAFT will be made available to order annually to RoMa Craft Tobac select retailers at the IPCPR Trade Show and Convention. This year’s production is expected to ship in November 2013.

It has taken us almost three years, and a lifetime of experience prior to that, to get to where we are today. Thank you for your support. We hope you receive our new effort in the spirit it is intended, our love song to you, our brother’s of the leaf.

Update (April 22, 2013) — Skip Martin announced via his Facebook page that the Craft would be going to a closed foot “to protect the filler leaf after rolling.” He included the following picture:

Martin then followed up this picture with the following Tweet further explaining plans for the CRAFT:

@phxcigarguy yes. The tobaquiado method leaves the bunch very loose and we were seeing damage. Each 10ct box will have 9+1 closed-normal

— Chief Hava (@ChiefHava) April 23, 2013

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.