The Fourth Eiroa Generation Blends His Own Cigar

Santi Eiroa, youngest son of CLE founder Christian Eiroa, developed the blend for 1916 Tabacalera Eiroa -- a new line named for the year his great-grandfather Generoso first planted tobacco in Cuba. The tobacco itself is all-Honduran: a five-year-old habano wrapper and binder, with a filler that pairs corojo against pinareño, a Cuban-origin seed brought to Honduras by Tino Agurdin in 1960. Pinareño is notably difficult to grow -- lower yields, more disease-prone than corojo -- but the CLE and JRE families have been quietly revisiting it for several years, and it appears in a growing number of their releases. The line comes out of the CLE factory in Honduras in five vitolas from $16 to $19, and while it carries a regular production designation, distribution is limited to 100 retail accounts in the U.S. The quote from Santi is worth noting: his father prefers full body, his grandfather runs milder, and this blend is positioned as the bridge. Four generations of one family in one cigar is a rare proposition anywhere in this industry.