Casa Cuevas Connecticut
Owner: Luรญs Cuevas
Letโs give people who donโt know a sense of where the brand comes from, where you come from and where you sit in the market.
The brand comes from a long family history in the tobacco trade. My great grandfather and grandfather were both tobacco growers in Pinar del Rรญo, Cuba. My grandfather was able to take it to a very successful level. Then 1959 comes, everything stops, things get confiscated, we leave and go to the States. My dad and my uncle opened up shop in the Dominican Republic, with my dad working from the States. This was in the late โ80s. In 1997, during the boom, my father makes a full move to the Dominican Republic. They started Cuevas y Hermanos and that factory was going well. They started making stuff for Toraรฑo and Dunhill and Peterson and Gurkhaโs first cigars came from there actually.
My father and my uncle had a falling out. So my dadโs alone and heโs waiting for an investment to return and then I jumped into the fray and I bought 50 percent of the company. Tiny at that point. Through the Toraรฑos, who had gone and opened their own factories, we were able to get Gurkha to jump on board with us and that helped us gain some resources financially.
All that time, we hadnโt launched a brand other than Cuevas Habanos because I hadnโt found a way to get the cigars into the market without a salesperson. Thereโs just no way. We launched Casa Cuevas and right when Iโm launching that, Gabriel รlvarez becomes available.
Now that we had everything we needed to get going, we launched Casa Cuevas with three sizes. I did market research on the three most popular size in the United States. I didnโt come up with four or five or six because I thought that would overwhelm consumers. It was simpler to keep it this way.
How would you describe the Connecticut to the person whoโs never tried it?
Itโs going to fit the bill of a Connecticut in the sense that itโs not going to knock you on your chest, and we wanted that. By the same token, I didnโt want a bland Connecticut, so if you are a smoker and you pick up that Connecticut, youโre still going to get enough hints of the spice and the strength so itโs worth your while. If youโre a novice smoker, itโs a good cigar to start with because itโs not so strong or spicy that it turns you off. It sort of straddles both those sides.
Itโs heavier than a lot of Connecticuts on those notes of earth and nut.
Itโs a lot heavier on Nicaraguan tobacco than Dominican. I added the Colombian for a little bit of sweetness. The idea was that we would just use the Dominican tobacco for combustion, so itโs seco. All the ligero is Nicaraguan. Itโs about a 50/50 blend. Some people have opted to go 60/40, 40 being the ligero for the spice. We went the opposite direction and interestingly enough, the idea behind it really was influenced a lot by Gabriel; when I first blended it, I wanted a really strong Connecticut and heโs the one that goes, โLook, people arenโt looking for that in a Connecticut.โ But itโs still not a mild Connecticut by any stretch.
Where does this sit among the three in terms of preference for you and your dad?
My dadโs palate and mine are different. He really enjoys the Connecticut a lot more than I would. Heโll smoke the Connecticut all day long and heโs fine with that. Heโs fallen in love with the Maduro now, but he likes the classic cigar. The Connecticut is his go-to of the three.
