Montecristo White Vintage Connecticut Launching In July
Cigar fans with a taste for Connecticut shade wrappers have a new, vintage-dated brand to look forward to. Altadis U.S.A. Inc., one of the world's largest cigarmakers, is preparing to unveil a new Montecristo cigar next month, just slightly before the International Cigar & Pipe Retailers trade show on July 17. The cigar is called Montecristo White Vintage Connecticut, and it features a Connecticut shade wrapper from a 2008 tobacco harvest, grown under mesh screens in the sandy loam of the Connecticut River Valley.
"We will start selling [Montecristo White Vintage Connecticut] right before IPR, and showcase it again during the show," Yasemin Ozoncul, marketing manager for Altadis said in a conversation with Cigar Insider.
As the brand name suggests, the new cigar has original familial roots in the Montecristo White line of cigars, with a similar blend profile, albeit with a few significant tweaks. The wrapper for instance, is more akin to the Montecristo Classic line (Montecristo White uses an Ecuadoran Connecticut seed wrapper, while Montecristo Classic has a Connecticut shade wrapper grown in the United States—but without a specific vintage year). Along with Vintage Connecticut's 2008 shade-grown wrapper, the cigar consists of a Nicaraguan binder with fillers from the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Peru. It's made at the Tabacalera de Garcia factory in La Romana, the Dominican Republic, where most Montcristo cigars are produced.
The cigar comes in three sizes: No. 2 Belicoso, a 6 inch by 50 ring gauge figurado; No. 3, a 5 1/2 inch by 44 ring corona size; and Double Corona, at a hefty 6 1/4 by 50. Montecristo White Vintage Connecticut is priced between $10.50 and $14.50 per cigar. The cigars ship in decorative boxes of 20 that depict images of traditional red tobacco barns found in the Connecticut River Valley.
This story first appeared in the June 2, 2015 issue of Cigar Insider.
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