Next Friday, RoMa Craft Tobac retailers and fans will get their first chance to smoke something long on the horizon.

RoMa Craf Tobac will begin shipping Neanderthal, the company’s first new line since 2012. It will debut nationally  in a single size, 5 x 52/56 with a flat cap and a rounded, but opened, foot. That size is known HN and will retail for $12 and come in boxes of 50.

Neanderthal uses a Mexican San Andrés wrapper, Connecticut broadleaf binder and filler tobaccos including Condega, Estelí, Jalapa and Pueblo Nuevo from Nicaragua; Dominican olor ligero and Pennsylvania “Green River Sucker One” double ligero. That lattermost filler is particularly important to helping to make this blend the strongest RoMa Craft Tobac has offered to date. Skip Martin of RoMa Craft Tobac told halfwheel that the Pennsylvania ligero possesses two to three times the nicotine as any other leaf used by Fabrica de Tabacos NicaSueño S.A., the Estelí-based factory responsible for producing RoMa Craft’s cigars.

While Neanderthal is debuting in a single size, others will follow shortly. The first is expected to be Neanderthal SGP, a 4 1/2 x 52 robusto that will be and exclusive for Riverside Cigar Shop and Lounge of Jeffersonville, Ind. and Serious Cigar of Houston, Texas.

SGP, which is expected to begin shipping around the end of this month, has a suggested retail price of $9 per cigar. The stores will each receive 125 boxes of 15. Production is said to be limited to 250 boxes per year.

Avatar photo

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.