Ortega & El Primer Mundo Collaborate on Larceny at La Zona

If you thought Eddie Ortega and Sean Williams working together might be a bit unexpected, who knows what to make of Eddie Ortega, Sean Williams and Erik Espinosa working together.

The three are all involved in Larceny, a collaboration between Ortega and Williams’ El Primer Mundo brand that will be made at Espinosa’s La Zona Cigar Factory in Estelí, Nicaragua.

“We both wanted to do something different and we’d kicked around doing something together before,” said Williams in an email to halfwheel. “We figured instead of working together on a single cigar why not each do a cigar that we think the other would like and give the consumer two profiles in one box. The Larceny tag is simply a play on how much as an industry we tend to copy each other.”

Each box will contain 10 cigars blended by Ortega and 10 by Williams. It’s scheduled to be released in “late spring” and will be distributed by Ortega Premium Cigars.

This is the first time Espinosa and Ortega have worked together since the pair dissolved EO Brands in 2012, the company they founded together in 2003.

Patrick Lagreid contributed to this story.

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.