PCA 2023: Raching

The concept of converting wine coolers into cigar humidors was popular on cigar forums more than a decade ago, but in the last 10 years many companies have started to sell wine coolers that have already been converted. As someone that struggled to get my Wineador to hold temperature and relative humidity consistently, I know it’s not always as easy as it sounds on the internet.

Then came the next generation of these products: cooled humidor cabinets that were never intended for storage. Raching is certainly one of the leaders in this growing space. Earlier this year, the company reached out to see if we would stop by its PCA 2023 booth, something I already intended on doing. That said, it was even better to see its latest model in person.

As for the booth, the company more or less set up its humidors along the perimeter, and had some meeting areas inside the edges of the booth. I didn’t see any signage, but the space was difficult to miss.

Raching MON5800A

We typically do not cover products that debut after June 1, but if I don’t talk about this, I’m not sure what there is to talk about. This is the company’s newest model. You can read more about this humidor in this post, but in short: it measures 72.8 inches tall by 27 inches wide and 27.5 inches deep, which the company says can hold 3,000-4,000 cigars. Raching says the unit has two evaporators, two cooling units, two water pumps, two heating systems, and two air ducts. The evaporators provide humidification, while eight sensors measure conditions in various places inside the humidor.

There are also a bunch of features beyond temperature and humidity control that I’m not sure I understand, such as Raching’s ammonia removal technology, which the company says works by charging water ions. As a sign of its local market in China, the company says the humidor can connect to and be controlled by WeChat, an app I’m guessing fewer than 5 percent of PCA 2023 attendees have ever used.

MSRP: $4,100-5,100

Release Date: May 2023

No company was more enthusiastic about getting covered on halfwheel‘s YouTube channel than Raching. However, when action time arrived, there was a bit of an issue. My Chinese is whatever the Mandarin word for “non-existent” is, and the company’s employees seemed very self-conscious about their English. I actually thought their English was more than fine, but it was clear they really wanted to do this in another language.

While we never discussed it, I decided for a compromise: one segment in English, one segment in Chinese.