C.L.E. To Enter New Price Point With $60 Asylum Cigar
Seeing how there’s no shortage of expensive cigars from Cuba, Nicaragua or the Dominican Republic these days, C.L.E. Cigar Co. has decided to tap into that spendy market and release a pair of high-priced Hondurans. The new Asylum Sensorium will ship to retailers next week and it comes in two sizes: one retailing for $50 each and the other for $60. Both are made in Honduras by C.L.E. and composed entirely of Honduran tobacco.
According to Christian Eiroa, founder and president of C.L.E. (and part of a tobacco-growing family), one of the main reasons for the high cost is the incorporation of Pinareño, a Cuban-seed tobacco that his family doesn't normally grow. Eiroa says that Pinareño is a delicate tobacco that’s highly susceptible to disease and very difficult to cultivate. The Asylum Sensorium is also made with Honduran Corojo, a varietal grown for decades by the Eiroa family in the Jamastran Valley.
The Asylum Sensorium Asen 18 is made in the 11/18 size, a bulging figurado made popular by the Eiroas when they owned the Camacho brand. It measures 6 inches by 52 ring gauge at its fattest point, with a $50 price tag. At 6 by 60, the Asen 60 has a suggested retail price of $60. Both come in individual coffins and are packaged in boxes of 20. Production will be limited to an annual run of 10,000 cigars per size.
C.L.E. describes the Asylum brand as the “alter ego” of the company, allowing Eiroa to “experiment with out-of-the-box ideas that break tradition.”
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