The Cigar Built Around a Box, and the Number Eleven

Carlito Fuente began planning the OpusX ReXilient years before the release date, driven by the approach of the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11. The cigar is not a single blend but a 20-count box holding two shapes: 16 Churchill-sized cigars and four box-pressed cigars wrapped entirely in American flag leaf. The flag-wrapped cigars are pressed square at both head and foot with a completely flat cap, a format Fuente says the company has never produced before.

The box layout is intentional. The four flag-wrapped cigars sit in two central trays, flanked by eight Churchill cigars, a composition designed to recall the Twin Towers. The paper insert inside the lid carries badge numbers of first responders who died in the attacks, developed with input from the FDNY, NYPD, and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Fuente told halfwheel that, apart from cigars made for family members, this is the most meaningful project he has worked on.

Fuente is pricing each box at $535 and donating $11 per box to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, a nonprofit that provides housing assistance, including free homes, to disabled veterans, Gold Star families, and families of fallen first responders. The release timing is pegged to the anniversary rather than a seasonal sales window. Two boxes were auctioned in Los Angeles the week before shipment for $20,000 each.

The ReXilient also carries a small piece of company history. After the 2001 attacks, Arturo Fuente redesigned its American Way magazine advertisement, the one found on every American Airlines flight, with a red, white, and blue version of the OpusX band. Some of that packaging lineage reappears in this release, which Fuente displayed as a prototype at the 2026 PCA Convention and Trade Show in April.