Auremio has opened pre-orders for La Corbata, a box-pressed Salomón the brand is capping at 50 boxes. Each box holds 15 cigars and sells for $600, which works out to $40 a cigar. Auremio lists the blend as an oscuro wrapper over a double Mexican San Andrés binder, with Nicaraguan filler from Jalapa and Estelí aged seven to eight years. The company hasn't named the factory that rolls it or the blender who built it.
- 50 boxes total, 15 cigars each, $600 a box, which works out to $40 per cigar.
- Box-pressed Salomón, roughly 7 inches, 52 to 54 ring gauge, oscuro wrapper over a double San Andrés binder.
- Founded by Eduardo and Adriana Carreño, who built the brand themselves without a cigar-industry background.
- Auremio hasn't named a factory, a blender, or a ship date, and nobody has published a review.
Here's what the brand has put on the record, and who's behind it.
THE BLEND
Auremio lists an oscuro wrapper, which is the darkest shade on the wrapper scale, over a double binder of Mexican San Andrés. A double binder means two leaves doing the job one usually does, and it tends to firm up the draw and slow the burn.
The filler is Nicaraguan, pulled from Jalapa and Estelí. Jalapa leaf generally runs sweeter and softer, Estelí is where the pepper and the power come from. Auremio says the tobacco is aged seven to eight years before it goes into the cigar, and that's a long time by any standard.
Nobody outside the company has smoked one on the record, so every flavor claim attached to this cigar is Auremio's, not ours.
THE FORMAT
La Corbata is a box-pressed Salomón, roughly 7 inches, with a ring gauge running 52 to 54. A Salomón tapers to a point at the head, swells through the middle, then closes again at the foot. Box-pressing squares off the sides, so this is a pressed version of a shape that's normally round.
The brand also calls out a triple cap and estrujado bunching. Estrujado translates roughly as squeezed, and Auremio says the method is there for an even burn. The name of the cigar is worth a beat too, corbata is Spanish for necktie, and the band carries a small gold tie beneath the wordmark.
THE BLC TAKE
50 boxes is genuinely small. That's 750 cigars in the world. Nicaraguan filler aged seven to eight years, sitting under a double San Andrés binder, sounds interesting to me.
$40 isn't out of line for a small run from a boutique brand, and I'm looking forward to trying the 7-inch pressed Salomón.
Plenty of good boutique brands start small exactly like this, and I know a lot of people who want to see a company like this get going. Nobody has smoked one on the record yet, so the flavour claims are still Auremio's. What I'd say is that 50 boxes isn't a run you can come back to later.
ABOUT THE OWNERS
I had a chance to catch up with Eduardo and Adriana Carreño, the two people behind Auremio. Eduardo also goes by the Wolf of Seventh Avenue, and the story is a good one.
Neither of them comes from a cigar family. They built this out of their own house, went shop to shop themselves, and kept at it until people started paying attention.
"Neither of them comes from a cigar family. They built this out of their own house, went shop to shop themselves, and kept at it until people started paying attention."NORM FARRAR, THE CIGAR FOSSIL
I like small business and I like boutique cigars, so an up-and-coming brand gets my attention. They still have hurdles in front of them, and they're still passionate about the work, which counts for a lot at this stage.
Getting the owners to answer my emails and walk me through where this came from was impressive on its own. Having heard the story, they've got my attention for whatever comes next.
AUREMIO LA CORBATA, SPECS
Every specification on this page is as published by Auremio. Blind Label Cigar hasn't smoked La Corbata and doesn't score cigars it hasn't smoked.
