Weekly News (July 26, 2010)

It was a pretty quiet week for new cigars with the only major announcement being the La Flor Dominicana Air Bender Chisel, which the world will see in a couple weeks at IPCPR.

However, the cigar industry has made plenty of rounds in political circles in the past week. First, the Huffington Post penned a piece criticizing the Congressional Cigar Association as a front for (Conservative) lobbyist. Rocky Patel somehow got involved in it. Turns out, the group is one of many odd groups Congress has – and is probably a front for lobbyist. The San Diego Union-Tribune believes that there were numerous ethics violations – no word as to what if anything is going to result, but the industry’s name wasn’t helped. The industry did get a rare moment of good mainstream press when the Wall Street Journal had an article about the activity we all love.

In actual legislation, Belmont, CA banned smoking in…. apartments. Cigar Rights of America issued a call to action in Savannah, GA as new proposals will ban smoking pretty much everywhere, including clubs and cigar shops. The IPCPR also decided that wasn’t logical.

Imperial Tobacco, the parent company of Altadis – the company who owns half of Habanos S.A. and produces other non-Cuban cigars, had a rough quarter as smoking declined in Russia, Spain and America. Carnival Cruise Lines is experiment with logic: banning cigar smoking in cigar lounges. Shockingly, Cuba is not so happy about “The Havana Blend.”

Stogie Guys sort of ruined the fun I was having of announcing one new cigar each week – fortunately, they missed a few. One of the ones they missed: The EP Carrillo Elencos, which I presume will be part of his much talked about “core” line that will be debuting in August.

By far the coolest story of the week: Castro’s Back Room is collecting baseball gloves to send to children who work in tobacco farms in Nicaragua. Finally, I tweeted about this earlier, but City Cigars’ Hero Cigar program was featured again, this time on my local Fox affiliate.

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.