Weekly news week 38 2020. In our series on cigar charities, we focused on Cigar Family Charitable Foundation. This foundation is founded by Carlito Fuente and the Newman brothers Bobby & Eric. With that foundation, schools are built in the Dominican Republic. Roads are paved, water and electricity are provided to developing parts of the Dominican Republic. The program pays for sports competitions and more. It’s a beautiful organization that has done a lot of good over the years. And we published episode 25 of The Philip & Ferdy Cigar Show. The guys smoked a VegaFina 1998 in the office.

Reviews 

Every week, we publish two cigar reviews. The first cigar is a new cigar. The Rocky Patel CSWC Mareva. And CSWC stands for Cigar Smoking World Championship. The Mareva vitola is the original vitola for the competition. We are bummed that covid-19 caused almost all qualifiers to be canceled. The one in Malaysia we could not visit due to travel restrictions. But we still smoked the cigar thanks to the Malaysian organizer, Trinidad Cigar Company. Yesterday we published another new, yet to be released, cigar. Henk Maori Gaudi, the upcoming limited edition of the luxury brand Henk.

New cigars

This week a few new cigars are announced. Protocol is releasing a limited edition called 5 Families. It’s made for the members of 5 cigar groups that always support Protocol. It refers to the 5 Mafia families that controlled New York until the FBI put an end to it. Tatuaje released two new sizes of the Tatuaje Black Label. Plus the company announced a new cigar in the actor series, a spin-off from the Monster Series. Tatuaje Karloff is released around Halloween. PDR is releasing the El Criolitto Purito and the El Criollito Half Corona in tins. The new tins are released globally.

There was also international news. Drew Estate and the young Lebanese cigar distributor Hand Rolled partner up. Karen Berger and Bert Cigars agreed on distribution in Israel. K by Karen and Don Kiki cigars are now available in the holy land. The German Habanos distributor is 5th Avenue. And 5th Avenue introduced the Montecristo Short on the German market. That’s not the only news involving Habanos. Because soon Vietnam will get its first La Casa del Habano. In Ho Chi Minh City.

Other news

Let’s hope for an Indian summer. The reason for that is not so that we can enjoy cigars in our gardens. The reason is so that we can try some of the pairings in Camacho’s new cookbook. In collaboration with a BBQ pitmaster, Camacho created this e-book that can be downloaded for free. Whiff Industries, a company that focuses on odor elimination is going international. The American company signed a distribution deal with Quality Importers. Quality Importers owns Xikar, Stinky, Palio, and more. They have a global network of distributors. And each year around this time, we are in Dortmund. At Intertabac. And on Friday evening, we are always at the Cigar Trophy Award Show. Cigar Journal is hosting this annual show. This year, it was a virtual event. You can read who won awards in our article here.