Chazz Palminteri’s ‘A Bronx Tale’ Gets Sonny Cigar
When actor Chazz Palminteri came onto the cigar scene in 2023, he started slowly. First came a single-sized cigar called Chazz Palminteri’s A Bronx Tale. It was named after the eponymous coming-of-age Mob movie, which stars Palminteri. A full-fledged line followed the next year called A Bronx Tale Calogero. This April, a third brand is coming and it’s named after the brooding mafioso Palminteri portrayed in the film.
Called Chazz Palminteri’s A Bronx Tale Sonny by Epic Cigars, the cigar is available in one size, a box-pressed toro measuring 6 inches by 54 ring gauge. The blend for Sonny is intended to be full-bodied and bolder than the Calogero line, featuring a dark, Mexican San Andrés maduro wrapper atop a Dominican binder and mix of Nicaraguan and Dominican filler.
Obviously Palminteri isn’t doing this project alone. It’s produced in collaboration with Dean Parsons of Epic, and Paul DiSilvio of La Casa Grande Cigars, a small rolling operation in New York City’s borough of the Bronx. But the cigars aren’t made in New York: instead they are rolled at the Charles Fairmorn factory in the Dominican Republic and distributed by Zander-Greg Inc.
Shipping in scarlet 12-count boxes, Sonny has a suggested retail price of $25 each, or $300 per box. Production is limited to 1,000 numbered boxes but there are plans to eventually expand Sonny into a regular-production line.
A Bronx Tale Sonny will appear at this year’s PCA trade show in April and is expected to ship shortly afterward.
Palminteri wrote the original one-man show of A Bronx Tale and the subsequent film’s screenplay based on his own childhood. Inside the box is a paper insert which reads “Dedicated to My Friend Sonny” with a blurb at the bottom that ends with the movie’s most famous line: “Smoke it once, and like Sonny said, ‘Now yous can’t leave.’ ”
