January 22, 2024 Brooks Whittington Weekly News

Weekly News (Jan. 22, 2024)

Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust Plans to Sell Guillotina de Saka Cutter This Spring

After quietly showing off the single guillotine cutter at last year’s TPE and handing out a limited number for people to give feedback on during the 2023 PCA Convention and Trade Show, Steve Saka has confirmed that the Guillotina de Saka is scheduled to begin shipping to a limited number of retailers in the spring.

On paper, there is quite a bit to like about it: the cutter is designed with different-sized openings on each side of the case—one side is designed to cut for cigars up to 48 ring gauge, while the other is designed for cigars of 50 ring gauge and thicker—and the blade can be replaced by the user without having to use any special tools.

With all of that said, these will not be easy to get ahold of, nor will they be cheap: Saka said the first production run will include only 1,250 cutters and indicated that he expects the price of each cutter to range between $300-350.

Warped Sending La Colmena ‘8’ to China

Over the past decade or so, China has become an enormous influence on the world of cigars. There are a number of different reasons for this, including the sheer number of potential customers—an astounding 1.409 billion people in 2023 according to The National Bureau of Statistics—quite a few of whom have more and more expendable income to spend.

Throw in the increasing prices of Cuban cigars, and there has never been a better time for non-Cuban brands to make a dent in Habanos S.A.’s market share.

So it is no surprise that there is an increasing number of manufacturers who are sending exclusive releases to China, including Drew Estate, Oliva and the Warped La Colmena ‘8’. Eight is considered a lucky number in China because the number eight—pronounced ba—sounds close to fa, a word used to describe prosperity. In addition, many products—including cigars from other companies like Davidoff and Oliva—incorporate a red and gold color palette due to the perceived good fortune those colors represent.

 

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Brooks Whittington

I have been smoking cigars for over eight years. A documentary wedding photographer by trade, I spent seven years as a photojournalist for the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star Telegram. I started the cigar blog SmokingStogie in 2008 after realizing that there was a need for a cigar blog with better photographs and more in-depth information about each release. SmokingStogie quickly became one of the more influential cigar blogs on the internet, known for reviewing preproduction, prerelease, rare, extremely hard-to-find and expensive cigars. I am a co-founder of halfwheel and now serve as an editor for halfwheel.

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