January 4, 2022 Charlie Minato News

RoMa Craft Tobac Outlines 2022 Release Calendar

While most cigar companies like to announce each new project one at a time, RoMa Craft Tobac takes an approach quite familiar in the craft beer world. Instead of singular announcements throughout the year, for the second year in a row RoMa Craft has outlined its entire schedule for the year, all at once.

Its calendar includes both new items, but also a long list of cigars that RoMa Craft sells on a limited basis, oftentimes just once per year or at select events. With the exception of CRAFT 2022, all of the cigars listed below are either specific vitolas of regular production lines or special versions of existing cigars. In total, the company says that these cigars will account for roughly 13 percent of the company’s production in 2022.

January

RoMa Craft Tobac says these cigars are at the company’s headquarters in Austin and already shipping. None of them are new for 2022. The three Gran Perfecto sizes debuted in 2020 as part of a sampler for the company’s 10th anniversary party, though the event ultimately took place in 2021 due to COVID-19. Last year, RoMa Craft Tobac offered the Grand Perfecto blends in standalone boxes, though on a limited basis.

Revenge and Goodness are two 5 x 56 box-pressed parejos. Revenge debuted in 2014, while Goodness was released in 2016.

February

Black Irish is a special version of the CroMagnon EMH, a 5 x 56 parejo, that features a thin strip of Ecuadorian candela tobacco alongside the normal broadleaf wrapper. It’s been released annually since 2018.

Image via Instagram/chiefhava

March

The El Catador de Las Gran Coronas is a 16-count sampler that contains eight different cigars, all measuring 5 3/4 x 46:

  • Intemperance BA XXI Contempt
  • Intemperance EC XVIII Reverence
  • Intemperance WR 1794 Lee III
  • CroMagnon Anthropology
  • CroMagnon Aquitaine Anthropology
  • Baka Jengi
  • Neanderthal HS
  • Wunder|Lust Fiorella

The three Intemperance cigars are new for 2022 and the Wunder|Lust size is a European exclusive. The MSRP for each sampler is $165. There will be some standalone boxes of the three Intemperance sizes available in March and then a larger quantity of those boxes will go on sale in November.

Beyond that, the rest of the March cigars are not new. War, Peace and Husband were included in last year’s El Catador de los Petite Gordos, which contained six different 4 1/2 x 60 cigars. Habana House North, an Austin retailer located down the road from RoMa Craft’s headquarters, sold boxes of the War, Peace and Husband last year, now the cigars are available to stores nationwide.

April

  • CRAFT 2022 (2,750)
  • CroMagnon Fomorian (250)

Skip Martin, co-founder of RoMa Craft, has posted pictures of the upcoming CRAFT 2022 but has largely declined to talk about the details, saying they would come at a later date. This is the newest in the company’s CRAFT series, which is a collection of cigars that typically use multiple different types of tobacco for the wrapper and show off the skills of the NicaSueño’s factory employees, particularly when it comes to the designs used on the wrappers. This year’s release will be a robusto.

Fomorian is not new for 2022, it debuted in 2013 and has returned in a limited capacity seemingly every year. It’s also based on the CroMagnon EMH, though this 5 x 56 cigar uses a candela wrapper.

May

The Saber Tooth is yet another cigar based on the 5 x 56 EMH size, though this time it’s an Aquitaine. That means the binder and fillers are the same as CroMagnon, though the wrappers are the typical Ecuadorian habano ligero varietal used for Aquitaine along with a special strip of Ecuadorian Connecticut shade tobacco. It debuted in 2018.

May (Europe Only)

The May releases are only available in Europe. The five Wunder|Lust vitolas are not new, though the Casa Torres 20 Años is. If you aren’t familiar with Casa Torres, it’s owned by August Schuster GmbH & Co. KG, who also happens to distribute RoMa Craft Tobac in Germany.

June (Virtual Tradeshow)

The June releases can be divided into three categories. The 6 x 54 box-pressed Blockhead vitolas are not new, they’ve been in the RoMa Craft portfolio as limited items for quite some time.

Next up are three Neanderthal vitolas that debuted in 2017 as European exclusives, though they’ve been sold in the U.S., most recently as limited items last year. As of June 2022, the cigars will be offered to U.S. retailers as a regular item for purchase throughout the year.

The final cigar is new. It’s the Baka Yelli, a 6 x 54 “gran toro prensado” that is being produced for The Humidour Cigar Shoppe in Maryland.

July (Virtual Tradeshow)

  • Baka Acephalous (250)
  • Baka Bantu (250)
  • Baka Hunter Gatherer (250)
  • Baka Jengi (250)
  • Baka Ota Benga (250)
  • Baka Poki (250)
  • Baka Pygmy (250)
  • Weaselitos African Cameroon (50)
  • Weaselitos Ecuador Habano Ligero (50)
  • Weaselitos Mexican San Andrés (50)
  • Weaselitos US Connecticut Broadleaf (50)

The big news for July is that the Weaselitos are coming stateside. These are actually 3 1/2 x 38 half lanceros that were created following some oral surgery done on the mouth of Esteban Disla, a partner in the NicaSueño factory in Estelí. Years ago, Disla had surgery and wasn’t able to smoke larger ring gauge cigars while recovering so he took some of the company’s lanceros, cut them in half and started smoking them. One thing led to another and the cigars were eventually sold in Europe, but not in the U.S. These cigars are unique not only because they are rolled as lanceros and then cut and half—meaning there’s a top and bottom portion that smoke a bit differently than one another—but also because they are one of the few cigars that is pre-cut from the factory.

This summer, RoMa Craft is offering 50 boxes of four different varietals to its top 25 U.S. accounts. How they are distributed beyond that is still undecided, from what I’ve been told it probably won’t be a strict two boxes of each per store. The good news, the cigars come in 100-count boxes. The bad news is, it’s still not very many cigars.

None of the Baka sizes are new and the line is considered a regular line, though it’s been quite limited since it debuted a few years ago.

August

All but the Mastodon are the 5 x 56 box-pressed size that RoMa Craft Tobac uses on a variety of cigars, most notably CroMagnon EMH. The Mastodon is a box-pressed 4 1/2 x 60 vitola. None of the cigars are new for 2022.

September (Europe Only, InterTabac)

If you missed out on the earlier shipment of Wunder|Lust, it’s back for September’s annual InterTabac trade fair in Dortmund, Germany.

October

  • Aquitaine Slobberknocker (300)
  • CroMagnon Slobberknocker (300)

The Slobberknocker, a massive 7 1/2 x 56 double capped parejo, is one of the company’s first limited editions, dating back to 2012.

November/Holiday

  • Intemperance BA XXI Contempt (300)
  • Intemperance BA EC XVIII Reverence (300)
  • Intemperance Whiskey Rebellion 1794 Lee III (300)

These are the three new Intemperance vitolas from the El Catador de Las Gran Coronas, but in standalone boxes.

Overall Score

Aquitaine Blockhead Aquitaine EMH Saber Tooth Aquitaine Gran Perfecto Aquitaine Slobberknocker Baka Acephalous Baka Bantu Baka Gran Perfecto Baka Hunter Gatherer Baka Jengi Baka Ota Benga Baka Poki Baka Pygmy Baka Yelli Casa Torres 20 Años Gran Robusto CRAFT 2022 CroMagnon Anthropology CroMagnon Aquitaine Anthropology CroMagnon Black Irish CroMagnon Blockhead CroMagnon Fomorian CroMagnon Mandible Mastodon CroMagnon Slobberknocker El Catador de Las Gran Coronas Fábrica de Tabacos Nica Sueño S.A. Intemperance BA EC XVIII Goodness Intemperance BA XXI Contempt Intemperance BA XXI Gran Perfecto Intemperance BA XXI Revenge Intemperance EC XVIII Goodness Intemperance EC XVIII Gran Perfecto Intemperance EC XVIII Reverence Intemperance Whiskey Rebellion 1794 Gran Perfecto Intemperance Whiskey Rebellion 1794 Tarred & Feathered Intemperance WR 1794 Lee III Neanderthal HS Neanderthal JCF Neanderthal KFG Neanderthal LH RoMa Craft Tobac The Humidour Cigar Shoppe Weaselitos African Cameroon Weaselitos Brasil Mata Fina Weaselitos Ecuador Habano Ligero Weaselitos Mexican San Andrés Weaselitos US Connecticut Broadleaf Wunder|Lust Fiorella Wunder|Lust Gran Corona Wunder|Lust Petite Belicoso Wunder|Lust Petite Gordo Wunder|Lust Robusto Wunder|Lust Toro
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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.

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