Emilio Cigars is being brought in as a full part of the Black Label Trading Company (BLTC) family. BLTC will take over branding and marketing for Emilio Cigars. All cigar production will move to Fabrica Oveja Negra in Esteli, Nicaragua, this being the factory and headquarters for BLTC and Black Works Studio (BLK WKS). Cigars like Cavatina, LJZ, Papa Joe and Grimalkin cigar lines are already produced at BLTC.
The New World by AJ Fernandez was first released in 2015, and very well received. AJ followed up with a Connecticut (CT) shade wrapped New World, and the New World Puro Especial. Most recently, AJ shipped the New World Cameroon. Announced in September of 2018, and shipped in December of the same year, this marks the first time that a cigar under the AJ Fernandez brand name has been wrapped with Cameroon tobacco. As with the previous iterations of New World, it is a box-pressed cigar available in multiple vitolas.
Downton Abbey was a very popular television series that ran from 2010-2015, and even after going off the air still maintains a dedicated following. One of the main shooting locations for the series was a castle in Hampshire, England called Highclere. The opulent and beautiful castle was the inspiration for Nick Melillo to create the Highclere Castle line of cigars for Foundation Cigar Company.
Back in the mid-late 2000s, Pete Johnson had a cigar made at Tabacalera Tropical called the Nuevitas. This happens to be the name of a port city in Cuba, and also claimed by many historians to be the place where Christopher Columbus landed in 1492. Legend has it, the native people shared the act of puffing on burning rolled up leaves with Columbus and his crew. I suppose the rest, as they say, is history.
In 2018, the Granada based Mombacho Cigars, announced the soon-to-come introduction of a revolutionary wrapper leaf. A Broadleaf grown in Nicaragua. To the Broadleaf purist, this idea seemed about as likely to succeed as Scotch Whiskey distilled and aged in Detroit, but Claudio Sgroi had a dream to do something truly unique. Never before in the marketplace of premium cigars had a Broadleaf wrapper been grown in Nicaragua and used as a wrapper leaf on a regular release cigar.
