PCA 2022: Wildfire Cigar Co.

Before you go any further, I need you to understand that Wildfire Cigar Co. is an actual, serious cigar company. Its first release, The Single, scored 89 points on this website, a rare accomplishment for a company’s first cigar. Jeremy McDonald is no joke. He’s an incredibly thoughtful and smart mind within the cigar business. But he’s also not above putting on a bear suit.

Wildfire Cigar Co.’s booth has no cigars on display, McDonald has no new cigars to talk about—there will be new cigars later this year—and yet, this is my favorite booth I’ve seen at the 2022 PCA Convention & Trade Show. It’s a campsite, complete with a faux campfire, real pans, faux treestumps made of florists’ foam, real sticks, and a bear suit.

If there was an on brand trade show booth, it looks like this.

On Monday afternoon, McDonald told me he had planned to have another person wear the bear suit but that person dropped out at the last minute. So he found some PVC pipe and affixed the bear suit to the booth, though he said he’d wear it on Tuesday.