New Nicaraguan H. Upmann Hitting Retail In January
Altadis U.S.A. will be kicking off 2022 with a new H. Upmann, and the company has once again turned to cigarmaker A.J. Fernandez in Nicaragua. Called H. Upmann Nicaragua AJ Fernandez Heritage, the brand is scheduled to debut at the Tobacco Plus Expo convention in Las Vegas, which takes place at the end of January. The new cigars will ship to retailers on January 26.
The H. Upmann Nicaragua AJ Fernandez Heritage is composed of Nicaraguan tobacco grown on Fernandez’s farms, save for the wrapper, a Brazilian Mata Fina leaf that Altadis says has been “triple fermented.” The cigar was blended to be medium-to-full bodied and comes in five sizes: Corona, measuring 5 1/2 inches by 44 ring gauge; Robusto at 5 by 52; a 6-by-54 Toro; Torpedo, 6 1/8 by 52; and a large 7-by-54 Churchill. Packaged in boxes of 20, the cigars will range in retail price from $9.75 to $10.75.
This isn’t the first time that Fernandez has worked with the H. Upmann brand. In 2017, he made the H. Upmann by AJ Fernandez featuring an Ecuadoran Sumatra-seed wrapper, and in 2019 he made the H. Upmann 175 Anniversary, a single-size Churchill that showcased a Nicaraguan medio tiempo wrapper. It was also Cigar Aficionado’s No. 10 cigar of 2019. Like the other Nicaraguan H. Upmann brands, the new H. Upmann Nicaragua AJ Fernandez Heritage is a collaboration between Fernandez and Rafael Nodal, head of product capability for Altadis U.S.A.
For a vertical brand tasting of the new H. Upmann Nicaragua AJ Fernandez Heritage, see a future issue of Cigar Insider.
