Cigar of the month – Paris Smoke Easy
May always brings us some pretty good days such as “May the Fourth Be With You”, “Cinco de Mayo”, and “Mother’s Day”. Coinciding with our Cigar Night it was “National Sea Monkey Day” which makes a lot of sense with our club if you know some of the members.
For May we welcomed Brian McGee, who is the Regional Sales Manager for Crowned Head Cigars. Before we get into the stick we smoked, let’s talk about Crowned Heads and why I think they are such a cool company. For starters, they call Nashville home. Crowned Heads was started in 2011 by Jon Huber and Mike Condor. They had both worked for CAO for years, but with an acquisition of the company, they decided not to relocate to stay with CAO and their new owners. There are some pretty good articles and interviews online that give a lot of background on the company and the owners.
While reading them, it brought some clarity and focus for me on how some of the smaller companies survive in the cigar world when so much tobacco inventory is taken by the big named producers. I have often heard of cigar manufacturers called “Boutique Cigars” and I always thought that meant a small number of cigars produced annually to be put in that category. Turns out in one of the interviews with the National Sales Manager at Crowned Heads, when asked about the term boutique, he said “For a long time a lot of people said – Well if you make less than a million cigars, you’re probably more boutique.” His reply was they were way past that already.
What I did learn about Crown Heads is they consider themselves to be Artisanal. They don’t have to go through a corporate structure to approve a blend for production. They select every aspect of their cigar lines with a theme or purpose behind them. Many annual cigar crops produce some amazing tobacco, but sometimes not enough inventory of that great tobacco for the big companies to use in their lines. This is where Crowned Heads have found their calling with the cigars they have produced so far: Four Kicks, La Imperiosa, La Coalicio, Juarez, and Mil Dias. The Serie E box if you ever see it in a humidor, you will spot it right away as the box is themed like the Van Halen red, white, and black striped guitar. They are also known for their limited edition and ultra-limited edition runs like the Yellow Rose which just happens to be the Highest Rated Cigar in the Paris Smokeasy Cigar Club history with a whopping Redneck Ratin’ of 97/100.
On their website under the About tab, it states “Crowned Heads is a premium cigar company committed to producing cigars of artisanal quality that are defined by a combination of excellent flavor, balance, and consistency.
We believe in continuous improvement, and in a marriage of tradition with innovation. We feel that tobacco lives breathes, and speaks to us; it leads the blend and it names the brand. As Michelangelo once said, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”
Crowned Heads is influenced by a time when quality, pride, and integrity mattered. We strive to bring our vision to reality and invite you to live in our world. We are not here to do it like everyone else. When the rules don’t make sense to us, we carve our own path.
Their cigars are made between factories in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. They have teamed up with famed master blender E.P. Carrillo, Drew Estates, My Father Cigar Company, and Don Pepin Garcia to produce their lines. Crowned Heads was named Halfwheel’s “Company of the Year” in 2018. In July 2020, they announced the Mil Dias, which means 1,000 days in Spanish, as that’s the time frame it took the Tabacalera Pichardo factory and Crowned Heads to come to the final of this blend.
The original Mil Dias has an Ecuadorian Habano Wrapper. The new release for 2023 is the Mil Dias Marranitos and there have been some changes since the 2020 start. Apparently, there was a split between Crowned Heads and Luciano Cigars (formerly ACE Prime) in September 2022 when the companies announced a distribution agreement had ended. The factory is now called the TacaNicsa and is located in the same building that was previously Tabacalera Pichardo. Jon Huber had said that the Marranitos E648 is a nod to the man behind Mil Dias, Eradio Pichardo, as this was his favorite vitola. Officially, the Mil Días Marranitos E648 LE2023 is a 6 1/8’ x 48-gauge Limited Edition. This one has an Ecuadorian Sumatra Wrapper over a Nicaraguan Binder and Fillers from Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Peru. Only 2,500 boxes of 12 cigars per box are to be made. They just started shipping in April, so we were some of the first people to get to smoke and rate this new Limited Edition. With 48 people present for the night it came in with a Redneck Ratin’ of 88/100!
The one thing I can tell you about May’s night is a member rated his cigar at an 86 and then bought a box of them. His 86 may be the same as someone else’s 93 rating is to them. So far this year this has been one of our smaller turnouts and Brian sold more cigars and boxes than at any of our previous events this year. Just goes to tell you how good they really are!
Our sponsor for the night was Gary Holtman with Holtman Land. They are a land service company that does research for oil, gas, and renewable projects.
Written by JD Marrs
Hosted by Rigby’s
Photo Cred: Rigby’s Humidor
#TheCrownedHeads