Ferio Tego’s Timeless Collection To Ship Next Week
Disgruntled fans of the old Timeless Collection brand who thought it was gone forever will be getting it back by the end of next week. Now under the ownership of Ferio Tego, Timeless cigars are boxed, warehoused and ready to occupy humidor shelf space once again.
Ferio Tego co-owner Michael Herklots tells Cigar Aficionado that Davidoff of Geneva USA, which distributes the brand, is taking orders for Timeless today and anticipates the cigars to go out in less than two weeks.
Originally owned by Nat Sherman International Inc., the Timeless brand faced an uncertain future after tobacco giant Altria Inc. shut down the Nat Sherman Townhouse last year, one of New York City’s most iconic tobacconists, and the cigar division built around it. Altria, which had acquired Nat Sherman in 2017 from the founding Sherman family, had no interest in continuing Nat Sherman’s premium cigar division.
But a glimmer of hope came when Herklots and Brendon Scott, both former Nat Sherman employees, formed Ferio Tego earlier this year and announced that they had purchased the rights to Timeless and other cigar brands once owned by Nat Sherman. Terms of the agreement required Ferio Tego to drop the Nat Sherman name from the cigars (Altria continues to own and sell Nat Sherman cigarettes), but they were allowed to keep the word Timeless, and continue using the logos, fonts, designs and tobacco blends that the smokers had become familiar with.
Now that the brand is in the hands of Ferio Tego, Herklots assures Timeless fans that the blends are identical to the original and nothing has changed in the production process.
“The Timeless Collection blends are the same, and what matters more, the experience of the blends are exactly as they were, and the manufacturers who have been carefully crafting these blends since their inception remain unchanged,” Herklots says, referring to Quesada Cigars, the Dominican cigar factory that’s been making these smokes since they debuted in 2012.
The Timeless Collection is being released in two lines: Presitige and Sterling. Timeless Prestige is composed of a Honduran wrapper, Dominican binder and filler from Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. It comes in five sizes: Churchill, measuring 7 inches by 48 ring gauge ($11); Hermoso, 5 1/2 by 54 (10.50); Robusto, 4 3/4 by 50 ($9.50); a 6 by 60 Gordo ($12); and the No. 2 ($11.50), a 6 1/4-by-52 torpedo that was also Cigar Aficionado’s No. 10 cigar of 2012. They come in boxes of 20.
The tobacco in Timeless Sterling is all Dominican save for its light, Connecticut-seed wrapper grown in Ecuador. Presented in boxes of 10 cigars, Sterling is offered in five sizes: Churchill, at 7 by 48 ($14.50); Corona Gorda, 5 3/4 by 46 ($13.50), Robusto, 4 3/4 by 50 ($13), Dalias, 6 1/2 by 43 ($12.75) and Marevas, 5 1/2 by 42 ($11.50).
With Ferio Tego’s namesake brand not coming until October, The Timeless Collection will be the company’s first product line to ship. Two more brands from the original Timeless Collection are coming back as well—Timeless Supreme and Panamericana, which are both made by the Plasencias in Nicaragua and expected to ship next month.
