Aladino Cigars are crafted in Honduras, on the JRE Tobacco Farm owned by the legendary Eiroa family.  All of the cigars in their 7 collections are Honduran puros, with some sporting Cameroon and Connecticut wrappers.  Each stick uses wonderful Corojo tobacco for filler and binder, grown in Honduras and blended to give today’s cigar lovers the tastes enjoyed by Cuban cigar smokers way back in the 1960s.  Keeping those flavours alive in the world of cigars is the dream and mission of family patriarch Julio R. Eiroa.

Aladino Cigars are proudly presented to the smoking public as “Crop to Shop”.  This means that each and every step of the production process is undertaken and managed by the family themselves – beginning with the Corojo seed and ending with the premium cigar lit by the aficionado, Aladino cigars are Eiroa family products.  Located in Honduras’ Jamastrán Valley, the JRE Tobacco farm is a world-leader in tobacco cultivation, and Julio R. Eiroa – the family patriarch, and legend of the tobacco industry with over 60 years’ experience – was the first to adopt the Bayer standards for his farms.

Bayer CropScience AG procedures are designed to guarantee that farms are safe for the workers, the crops and the environment, eliminating the use of harmful substances and resulting in the highest-quality tobacco available.  They ensure that pest levels stay low enough to make the farms profitable, while simultaneously safeguarding local biodiversity and preventing the exposure of farm workers to dangerous chemicals.  Eiroa family farms have worked with Bayer for over a decade to apply these standards to everything grown under the family name.

After harvest, the tobacco undergoes a slow oxidation process to make certain each leaf is properly cured.  This takes between 18 and 24 months to complete, leaving perfectly-aged, consistently flavoured leaves to be sorted into filler, binder and wrapper.  These are then transferred to the factory where an elite team of torcedores will transform them into the seven collections of the Aladino Cigars lineup.

Aladino cigars have been blended and designed to recreate the flavour profiles enjoyed during the “Golden Age” of Cuban cigars, from 1947-1961.  This signifies the love Julio Eiroa has for his homeland – having been forced out of Cuba after the Cuban Revolution – and allows him to share a little of his memories of Cuba with his vast customer base.  Eiroa has long been known in the tobacco world as the master of the Corojo crop, and today remains the head blender for Aladino Cigars, keeping a watchful eye over the flavours and styles to ensure they stay true to his vision.  Since release, Aladino cigars have regularly been scored over 90 points by the most trusted cigar publications in the world, including Cigar Aficionado and Cigar Snob.

Aladino Corojo

The ‘classic’ Aladino Corojo blend is presented in many different vitolas, offering the maximum smoking pleasure no matter how much time you have to spare.  Medium-to-full in strength, and with notes of cedar, oak and cream.

Aladino Corojo Reserva

The tobacco used in Aladino Corojo Reserva cigars is aged to perfection, and derived from higher primings of the tobacco plant.  Vitolas include a wonderful figurado – one of the most difficult for the rollers to produce, demonstrating their skill – and every cigar is decorated with a fine tissue wrap.  This old Cuban practice is almost entirely lost in the modern industry, but provides protection to the delicate wrapper leaf as well as a wonderful vintage touch to the presentation.

Aladino Connecticut

The quality and gorgeous aesthetic of Connecticut wrappers is well-known in the cigar community, so it is no surprise that Aladino cigars decided to release a collection of sticks which use it to dress their Corojo binder and filler.  A wonderful light colour belies the power these cigars pack, and the wrapper lends a different sweetness to the overall flavour of each cigar.

Aladino Cameroon

Cameroon wrapper cigars are increasingly popular in the modern market thanks to the added sweetness the leaves bring to the smoke.  Aladino Cameroon cigars range in ring gauge from 38 all the way up to 60, meaning the relative percentage of flavour derived from the wrapper changes and the resulting effect on the overall taste changes with it.  These cigars are a masterclass in how to use unusual versions of tobacco to help created a truly exceptional blend of flavours.

Unusually for a cigar box, opening a box of Aladino Cigars will display a colourful and cheerful image on the inside of the lid.  A scene from a Cuban bar in the Golden Era is depicted, full of well-dressed smokers enjoying their cigars and rum.  This is just one more nod to the era so well celebrated by this range of excellent smokes, and one more sign that the family who brought us the range are not averse to a break from tradition in order to create the product they want.  For most brands the inside of the lid is merely dead space – not so for the Eiroa clan.

Honduras may be yet to match the reputation of Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua for cigar production, but it is rapidly gaining ground.  When the Eiroas took over the Camacho brand in 1995, they transferred production from Nicaragua to Honduras and subsequently managed to build it into one of the biggest names in luxury tobacco – so much so that Davidoff bought the business from them only 13 years later.  This is a glowing testament to the quality of Honduran cigars, and just one more reason for aficionados to add Aladino cigars to their regular smoking humidors.