A month after shipping the TAA 2017 to California retailers, Tatuaje is shipping the cigars to stores nationwide.

The company sent this year’s exclusive for the Tobacconists Association of America (TAA) retailers to California stores a bit early, in order to beat a more than doubling of the state’s tax on cigars which went into effect on July 1.

As for the cigar, it’s the same as the Tatuaje TAA 2014, a 6 x 52 parejo with a covered foot. Like most of the rest of Tatuaje’s TAA releases, it’s based on the Tatuaje Pork Tenderloin and Barclay Rex, meaning a Connecticut broadleaf wrapper over a Nicaraguan binder and filler.

The bands and boxes actually read 2014, though there’s at least two ways to tell the cigars apart. First, the boxes will have date stamps from 2017, secondly, there’s a small 17 located in one of the feathers on the left side of the headdress of the TAA logo.

MSRP is $11.95, up from the $11 per cigar for the 2014 version.

The TAA is a fairly small group of some of the country’s top tobacconists, about 80 retailers as well as 40 or so manufacturers. The association gathers annually to discuss issues facing the industry and retailers, as well as to have its annual trade show, a unique event that works on a group buying format in order to secure exclusive deals for these generally high-volume merchants.

In recent years, many of those manufacturers have made exclusive cigars for the organization.

Alec BradleyAsylumCrowned Heads, La Flor DominicanaLa PalinaMy Father and Rocky Patel Premium Cigars have already shipped their TAA releases for 2017.

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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.