My Father Cigars And Tatuaje Celebrate 20 Years With La Union
Relationships are a precious thing, whether it is family, friends, business partners or a combination of all of the above. Tatuaje are celebrating two decades of a fruitful relationship with a quartet of limited-edition and considerably expensive cigars called La Union, Spanish for “the union.”
Their working relationship began in 2003 when the Cuban-born Garcia emigrated to the United States in 2003 and established his first cigar factory, El Rey de los Habanos, in Miami’s Little Havana district. That same year, Garcia met Johnson at an event and from there became Garcia’s first private-label client. From that union have sprung many popular cigar brands, many of which have even found themselves in Cigar Aficionado’s Top 25.
For La Union, four blends were created, two by each cigarmaker. Each is available in only one vitola, which the cigarmakers call Prominente Especial. It measures 7 1/4 inches long by 50 ring gauge and is topped with a 109-style belicoso head.
La Union is split in two different box sets that are distinguished by their red or black exteriors. Inside each box is one blend by Johnson and one by Garcia, and each blend has its own distinctive wrapper. The La Union Prominente Especial Black box contains a Johnson-blended cigar clad in a Connecticut broadleaf.
The inside of each cigar is made with all-Nicaraguan binder and fillers, leaves that were all grown by the Garcias, including some Pelo d’Oro leaf.
The cigars blended by Johnson will have a closed foot, whereas Garcia’s will have a traditional, open foot.
These special cigars are considerably expensive: each has a suggested retail price of $60. They are produced at the My Father Cigars S.A factory in Estelí, Nicaragua.
The outer and inner lid and the cigar ribbons all feature the La Union logo which is a rendering of the shaking hands of Pete Johnson and Pepin’s son Jaime, who runs My Father Cigars with his father, with Pepin’s hand coming from above to bless the union. The boxes come 40 cigars in total, 20 of each blend.
Production is limited to 1,500 boxes each of the red and black boxes, with 1,200 allocated for the U.S. market and 300 for international markets. Each individually-numbered box includes a Xikar cutter.
Jose Ortega of My Father Cigars said shipping would begin “in about three weeks.”
