Tatuaje La Vérité Returning This Spring

Don’t call it a comeback. After a three year hiatus, Tatuaje’s La Vérité series is back.

Tatuaje’s founder Pete Johnson is known for his love of wine and as such, wine oftentimes inspires the cigars of the company, no more so than La Vérité. The project, which means the truth, debuted in 2010 with two cigars and a concept steeped in the world of wine: a single farm vintage cigar with futures pricing.

Two vitolas were made, La Vérité (7 x 47) and L’Espirit de Vérité (5 x 50). The larger cigars were offered in four packaging amounts ranging from 10- to 100-count boxes whereas the more limited L’Espirit de Vérité were sold in 10- or 25-count boxes. The plan, like wine, was for consumers to be able to collect and store them.

A total of four cigars were offered: two in 2010 and two in 2011, though the cigars wear bands stating 2008 and 2009, the dates from their crop harvests.

As for the futures, retailers were offered savings of either 10, 20 or 40 percent for purchasing the cigar in advance. The expectation was that pricing would be passed onto consumers, but it never really happened.

In Late 2014, Johnson teased a new La Vérité 2013 and said it could be released in the latter half of 2015. The “as late as December 2015” date has come and gone, but the new release is only a few months away.

This year, there will be the same two sizes: La Vérité 2013 (7 x 47, $20) and L’Espirit de Vérité 2013 (5 x 50, $16). Production of the larger one is limited to 21,600 divided between: 1,910 boxes of 10, 72 boxes of 25, six boxes of 50 and four boxes of 100. The smaller L’Espirit de Vérité 2013 will be limited to 24,400 cigars split between 2,230 boxes of 10 and 76 boxes of 25.

Future pricing is no longer being offered. Johnson confirmed to halfwheel this was because the pricing was not regularly passed down to consumers as he intended.

La Vérité is a single-farm vintage cigar with all tobacco coming from the García family’s La Estrella farm in Estelí, Nicaragua. It uses tobacco from the 2013 vintage with the seed breakdown listed as: 55 percent criollo 98, 23 percent habano and 22 percent corojo 99. Production is also being handled by the Garcías at their My Father Cigars S.A. factory in Estelí.

Production took place between Feb. 2 and May 29 of last year and the cigars have been resting since then. Johnson said the cigars will hopefully ship in “early spring.”

Whether or not La Vérité continues remains to be seen; Johnson said he thought this crop was special, and as such worth of a single farm vintage release, adding that another La Vérité release will depend on future crops.

Update — The original version of this story incorrectly stated the cigars had not been rolled, they have.