Brand Ambassador for Camacho Cigars: George Rami
The Camacho Factory Unleashed, with its shaggy foot, looks unlike any cigar we can remember from Camacho. What is the thinking behind this?
The Camacho Factory Unleashed was a way of us reflecting and manifesting what we call “where bold is born,” which is our factory in Honduras. And the idea behind it was to kind of showcase a little bit of what the factory can do, and also incorporate a little bit of what you taste.
The shaggy foot gives you the experience, which allows you to try the binder and the filler before you get to the wrapper, which is basically what we do at Camp Camacho when you sit down in the first seminar upon your arrival. At the camp we roll these cylinders – because they’re not full blended cigars we don’t call them cigars, we call them cylinders. So you try a cylinder with only the binder and then you try the cylinder with the different components of the filler. Once you get to the end, you then try your final cigar, which is the full cigar with the full blend, and you get to see the fusion of all these different tobaccos into one cigar. So just for a brief, I would say probably five minutes or so, we are attempting to give smokers that experience with the shaggy foot on the Factory Unleashed. There’s a purpose why it’s made like that, it’s not a novelty. We didn’t reinvent the wheel. But I think it’s important for consumers to understand once you light the foot and begin to taste the binder and the filler, the flavor begins to change as soon as the burn gets to the wrapper portion and it starts combusting. And I think this cigar gives you that as best as we could have possibly showcased, which is exactly what happens at Camp Camacho in Honduras.
Camacho has always been known for bold, intense cigars; where would you categorize this blend?
Under the hood of the cigar you won’t find a lot of mild tobacco. It has a combination of Honduran, Nicaraguan and Dominican tobaccos. In the filler you have that Honduran corojo binder that has strength as well. As far as the wrapper, we decided to use something different this time. We are using an Ecuadorian corojo, when normally we would use our Honduran corojo. We went with Ecuadorian corojo instead which changes the flavor profile a little bit while keeping the same strain but it’s grown in Ecuador. So we wanted to make it as cool and as impactful as possible. So it’s definitely not a mild cigar. Once you light it up, and you begin to try the binder and the filler, it’s not mild, but it only gets better after that as soon as you get into the wrapper. And that is the full 360 of the experience that we wanted to showcase.
The packaging on the Camacho Factory Unleashed is a bit of a departure from the core Camacho products. Were you purposely trying to be different?
Yes, we wanted to make it a little bit different than our traditional four lines with the Factory Unleashed branding and the size of the label as well. What’s also a first for us are the 100 count crates the cigars come in. That’s the other thing that we wanted. We are known for our impactful packaging. We have boxes that have 14 coats of lacquer on them – basically a piano finish. And for us to come out with 100 count rustic wooden crates really stands out. We wanted to create an identity of what it would be like to buy cigars in bulk. How would those cigars be moved around in the factory? So that was the idea behind the packaging. And I think the box came out super cool. It’s impactful in a very Camacho-esque way, but we are able to make it different. This project has been extremely successful and luckily the cigars have gotten a lot of traction.
