Casa Carrillo's Pledge Rockets Fire Both Wrapper Colors

Ernesto Perez-Carrillo's Pledge of Allegiance series, built around the US 250th anniversary, gets its most ambitious installment yet, and it ships Monday. The Rockets are two 6 3/8 x 58 figurados sold together in a 20-count humidor: ten red-banded cigars using Connecticut broadleaf over Pennsylvania binder and filler, ten blue-banded cigars flipping the formula with Pennsylvania broadleaf over Connecticut Havana-seed. Same tobacco states, inverted roles, full strength, rolled at Casa Carrillo in the Dominican Republic. Just 250 humidors at $1,000, or $50 a cigar - more than double the June toro that opened the series at $22. The same day brought Pledge Purple, a box-pressed toro headed to international markets first, and Ascend, a medium three-size line. Carrillo is building Pledge into a franchise the way he once built La Gloria Cubana: one patriotic theme, many price tiers.