Do You Enjoy New Cigars?
A week from today I’ll be landing in Orlando to join our editorial team from Cigar Aficionado at the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers trade show, which begins next Friday and runs through the weekend. Think of the show as the main event for new cigars in the premium cigar industry—this is when just about every company that makes a cigar by hand gathers to show off its new wares. We’ll be there to cover it all.
There was a time when new cigars weren’t a part of the cigar industry. If you smoked cigars during the 1970s or 1980s, you probably had a regular brand, even a regular size. Old school retailers who I’ve spoken to over my years of covering the cigar industry have explained that cigar smokers of yore didn’t even experiment from size-to-size. If they liked Punch Rothchilds, they didn’t reach for a Punch Lonsdale every now and then to mix it up. If they smoked Arturo Fuente Curly Heads, they didn’t occasionally reach for a Fuente 8-5-8.
That was then. The reality of today is that many cigar smokers look for what’s new.
“The most common question asked by our customers is ‘What’s new?’” John Anderson of W. Curtis Draper in Washington, D.C. told Cigar Insider for its annual poll of U.S. retailers.
If you’re into new cigars, like most cigar smokers of today are, this is an exciting time of year. The IPCPR show is the stage for most cigar companies to unveil new product. Here at the office, the new smokes are coming in already.
Our goal here is to get you information on all the new cigars on our website—our coverage will begin right after we touch down in Orlando—and to rate them once they debut in the market in Cigar Insider.
So my question to you: Do you look for what’s new to smoke? Or are you more of a throwback smoker, and you don’t change from your tried-and-true cigar?
I’d love your feedback.
