Casa Carrillo’s Pledge Purple Launching Next Month
Casa Carrillo, two-time Cigar of the Year winner and maker of celebrated brands such as Pledge, La Historia and Encore, is releasing a limited-edition cigar in honor of the 98-point-rated Pledge Prequel, Cigar Aficionado’s No. 1 Cigar of 2020. Called Pledge Purple, the commemorative smoke is expected to ship to retailers in early March.
Pledge Purple shares more than its name with the original Pledge. According to Casa Carrillo, brand owner and master blender Ernesto Perez-Carrillo set aside some of the wrapper tobacco that he used to create the original Pledge and continued to age it in his factory. The same inky-hued leaf that enshrouds Pledge Purple is the very same Havana-seed Connecticut wrapper featured on the first run of Pledge cigars in 2020. The company says that the leaf, sourced from Connecticut tobacco grower Dunn & Foster, is now nearly a decade old.
Aside from the wrapper, Pledge Purple’s tobacco blend is different from its predecessor. The cigar is rolled with a Mexican binder and a blend of Nicaraguan fillers from Estelí, Condega and Ometepe. It comes in one size, called Toro, measuring 6 inches by 54 ring gauge.
Priced at $18 per cigar, Pledge Purple will ship in 10-count boxes and is expected to arrive in multiple installments throughout the year, starting next month. Only 3,500 boxes will be released.
The cigar is rolled at the Casa Carrillo factory in the Dominican Republic.
