Ferio Tego Elegancia

Ferio Tego

• Country of Origin: Dominican Republic
• Factory: Tabacos de Exportación
• Wrapper: Ecuador
• Binder: Dominican Republic
• Filler: Dominican Republic & Nicaragua
• Length: 6 Inches
• Ring Gauge: 50
• Vitola: Toro
• MSRP: $21 (Box of 10, $210)
• Release Date: October 2021
• Number of Cigars Released: Undisclosed
• Original Score: 91

Ever since I started talking to Michael Herklots about Ferio Tego, the new company he and Brendon Scott launched in 2021, he’s been quite clear: first there would be a Ferio Tego cigar, then the company would start to bring back the old Nat Sherman blends. Yes, Herklots and Scott—both former Nat Sherman employees—bought the rights to all of the Nat Sherman cigar, pipe, and cigar accessory brands, albeit, not the Nat Sherman name itself. And before it started to bring back those brands, the pair wanted to introduce the world to their new company. Or at least that was the plan.

While the company ended up shipping two Timeless lines before the eponymous Ferio Tego cigars, the new lines shipped shortly thereafter.

To create the Ferio Tego limited cigars, the company turned two factories most associated with the modern Nat Sherman cigar brand: Plasencia and Quesada. Each factory made a toro; Plasecnia’s Estelí factory made a cigar called Ferio Tego Generoso while Quesada’s Tabacos de Exportación factory made a cigar called Elegancia. These cigars are very different, just ask Patrick Lagreid who described the Generoso as one of the strongest cigars he had smoked in quite some time.

And while Patrick was struggling to function after the nicotine overload from the Generoso, I got to enjoy the nuttiness that was the Elegancia. I don’t mean nuttiness in a crazy way, I mean nuttiness as in tasting like lots of nuts. It’s a common profile amongst the modern cigars with a lightly-tanned wrapper that promises to be more than your father’s Connecticut cigar. The Elegancia is a lot more than that, it has a richness that few of those cigars ever possess, paired with some excellent construction. All of this came in one of the more forward-thinking box designs I’ve seen in quite some time. Not only is the box advertised as a humidor—and there are some features that would suggest it’s a bit more than just a cigar box—but it also incorporates an NFC chip that is supposed to pull up information on your smartphone.

Ferio Tego is a weird company in the sense that it is both very new and yet with has an extensive history. While I’m excited to see the old Nat Sherman brands come back to life, I’m more excited for cigars like this, i.e. the future. — Charlie Minato.