Rocky Patel Conviction, a $100 Cigar, Heads to Stores

Over the years, Rocky Patel has released many different cigars using tobacco from all over the Americas. They’ve come in all different shapes and sizes, packaged in boxes ranging from crates of 100 to bedazzled boxes with crystals. But there’s never been a Rocky Patel cigar packaged like Conviction, and there’s never been a Rocky Patel cigar as expensive as Conviction.

Conviction is a 6 1/2 x 52 box-pressed toro extra that uses a Mexican San Andrés wrapper over a Nicaraguan binder and fillers from farms in Condega and Estelí, Nicaragua. Four of the five different filler tobaccos came from Rocky Patel’s own farms, though one leaf was from a supplier. Most of the filler tobacco is from the 2014 harvest.

Patel says the wrappers were aged for four years in tercios, a bundle of tobacco wrapped inside of royal palm leaves. The end result looks like a crudely wrapped present with the plan leaves tightly bound against the tobacco leaves.

Each Conviction cigar is packaged in a rectangular tubo. Boxes contain 10 cigars and are designed to serve as humidors, with upgraded hardware and a nearly airtight seal.

Conviction is produced at the company’s Tabacalera Villa Cuba S.A. factory in Estelí, Nicaragua. Just two pairs were selected to roll the cigar, capped at making 250 cigars per pair per day, and total production was limited to 50,000 cigars.

And the price: it’s $100 per cigar.

Update (Dec. 6, 2023) — As noted below, the tubes the cigars come in are not metal.