Out of the Humidor

La Palina 1896 Limited Edition

Bill Paley is the grandson of Samuel Paley, who arrived in the U.S. from the Ukraine in the late 1800s and began working as a lector in a cigar factory. Eventually, Sam traded his books and newspapers for a chaveta (a semi-circular blade) and tobacco leaves and began working as a roller and then a blender. In 1896, Sam opened his own cigar shop in Chicago and named it Congress Cigar Company.  The shop had an adjoining factory that made cigars daily to sell in the shop.  Its house brand was “La Palina” (a Spanish take on his surname) and honored Sam’s wife Goldie Drell Paley, whose beautiful likeness adorned the cigar’s label.

In 1910, The Congress Cigar Company moved to Philadelphia and welcomed Sam’s son William S. Paley as VP of advertising. To help drive awareness for the cigars, William created the “La Palina Hour,” a local radio show.  He enjoyed the experience so much that he decided to purchase a few stations of his own and formed The Tiffany Network.  Later, the Tiffany Network became the initiation for a much larger company called Columbia Broadcasting System.

The “La Palina” brand changed hands over the years after Congress Cigar closed in 1926. Today, Bill Paley has brought the brand back. Bill’s love of cigars, particularly Cubans, led him to the great Avelino Lara, a famous Cuban master blender who left Cuba to work as the head of the Graycliff Cigar Factory in Nassau, Bahamas.  Together, Bill and Avelino worked to create the ideal blend, and as a result, the La Palina brand is alive again.

The first release of the La Palina 1896 Limited Edition will be a limited production cigar—one size, one blend.  The 5.75-inch x 52 robustos will be packed in boxes of 10 cigars ($190 for a box), each one adorned with an updated band embossed with gold but featuring the same likeness of Bill’s grandmother, Goldie. A blend of tobaccos from Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Ecuador, the cigar smokes with wonderful finesse offering a rich, balanced taste that would make Bill’s forefathers proud.

La Vérité

While there are many parallels between the premium cigar industry and the wine industry, there are some glaring differences. A substantial difference is that the cigar industry does not generally utilize the idea of a vintage. While wine connoisseurs understand and embrace the idea that every year a particular house’s product will be different than the year before, cigar enthusiasts come to expect the same flavor and same experience from a cigar year after year.  In order to do this, cigars are manufactured in a non-vintage style similar to the way many whiskies and Napa Valley champagnes are; in the case of cigars, using tobacco from various regions, years, and leaf positions maintains a consistent experience over time.

Occasionally however, cigar manufacturers will flirt with the vintage concept for small-run projects. Davidoff of Geneva released a Vintage 2000 limited edition in 2003, and Litto Gomez of La Flor Dominicana now releases the “LG” series as an annual vintage. But Pete Johnson has taken the concept to a whole new level, paying homage to the wine industry with his new La Vérité line of cigars. These beautiful puros are made entirely of tobacco from a single farm and a single harvest year— specifically the 2008 harvest from a farm in Esteli, Nicaragua by Jose “Pepin” Garcia,  the star cigar maker who’s responsible for Johnson’s Tatuaje and Cabaiguan lines.

The finest of the tobaccos (a Habano seed Criollo) were rolled into Churchill-sized cigars bearing the name La Vérité. The one-size, one-blend special release was made in 2009 and has been aging ever since. The total production of La Vérité is 20,000 cigars packed in four styles of boxes: boxes of 10 and 25 cigars, and cabinets of 50 cigars and a full collector’s cabinet of 100 cigars. Only 100 boxes of 50 and 30 boxes of 100 were made, making these particular packaging options even more rare and collectible. The cigars retail for $20 each.

Like many great houses, he also launched a second line, L’Esprit de Vérité, in a robusto format.  These smokes (20,000 in all) are from the 2008 harvest and available in either boxes of 10 or 25 cigars, priced at $16 each.

La Flor Dominicana “Air Bender”

Since 1994, Litto and Ines Gomez have worked tirelessly in the Dominican Republic to produce consistently great cigars. Though arguably among the mildest cigars available in the late 1990s, today La Flor Dominicana boasts an impressive portfolio of premium cigars that span the entire spectrum of strength, from the classic La Flor Dominicana line, to the medium-bodied Ligero brand, up to the award winning LG Diez, a Dominican puro created to celebrate the La Flor Dominicana’s 10th anniversary in 2004.  But, what remains consistent, despite their aggressive and innovative new product launches, is the highest level of quality.

Their newest launch, the Air Bender, is a great example of this creativity. Credited to Litto’s love for Kung Fu movies, this line-up of four sizes (with two more on the way) is a wonderful addition to the La Flor Dominicana portfolio. Made with Dominican filler and binder tobaccos grown on Litto’s own farm in the La Canela region of Dominican Republic, and finished with a reddish/brown Habano seed wrapper grown in Ecuador, the Air Bender delivers some balanced spiciness, which, despite its rich body, showcases its finesse.

The Matatan (5-inch x 50), a classic robusto format, smokes with ease, emitting some of the familiar spiciness that exists throughout the line with some notes of cured meats and wet earth.  This particular cigar sells for $7 in boxes of 20.