J.C. Newman Cigar Co. is shipping its first 2026 release of Yagua Toro.
Yagua is based on a cigar style that Lazaro Lopez, general manager of J.C. Newman PENSA in Nicaragua, remembers his grandfather making on a Cuban tobacco farm in the 1940s. Each cigar is bundled and bound while still wet in a palm leaf, with boxes containing 20 cigars that measure approximately 6 x 54.
“It continues to shock me that Yagua has developed a cult-like following,” fourth‑generation owner Drew Newman said in a press release. “I didn’t make Yagua to sell. In fact, I didn’t think that cigar enthusiasts would like Yagua because it breaks all of the cigar-making rules. We use an underfermented Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper, blend the filler tobaccos differently, and do not use the usual tools and techniques of a cigar factory. As the wrapper is not fully fermented, we age the cigars for a full year after they are rolled.”
