CigarCraig's Blog

Yesterday I attended the 8th annual Wooden Indian Drew Estate Charity event, and I think it was the most successful so far, at least it was the one I personally enjoyed the most. The setting is the Wooden Indian Tobacconist in Havertown, PA, in the shop, in a tent on the front lawn of the shop, and on the driveway along the side of the building (which, conveniently, maybe, is next door to the local fire department…how often do we see cigar stores near firehouses? hmm…). Dave and his staff always do a great job with this event. I’m not quite sure how $20 pre-event registration which includes a $20 store credit

toward Drew Estate purchase the day of the event and the pig roast works out, but I bought in and re-supplied some favorites th

at I like to have around. Pedro Gomez, the Factory Spokesperson for Drew Estate, and my longtime friend, was there, and I like to catch up with him when he’s around. You may remember that I talked to him on the Barnsmoker episode of the CigarCraig Podcast, if not, go back and give it a listen!  The Pig was delicious, the fellowship with the attendees was excellent, and the cigars, of course, were great. I started with a MUWAT Swamp Thang Toro, because I like that cigar, hadn’t had one in a while and had a hankerin’ for one! It’s almost become a tradition for me to smoke a Nica Rustica El Brujito with Pedro when I see him because we have a mutual connection to that cigar, so I had one of those as well.  The main event at this, er, event, was the auction of unique and interesting Drew Estate goodies, including several pieces of original artwork by Jessi Flores of Subculture Studios. There were several serious bidders in the crowd, and a couple bidding by proxy on the phone (who had deep pockets and won the majority of the big-ticket items). In an interesting turn of events, an item came up that had been auctioned off at this same event in 2012, and is documented on my site here, and would be hanging on my own wall if not for the persistence of the person who had to have the piece, and ended up selling it later. It took a circuitous route, but through the generosity of the gentlemen who ended up with it, it generated several hundred more dollars for charity. I’m told that over $11,000 was raised for Operation: Cigars for Warriors at this event, which is quite impressive.  The event was well attended, although many of the people I have seen at the event in the past were absent, however there seem to have been a ton of events happening around the northeast yesterday, Buffalo, New York, New Hampshire, all had some big events going on. I would recommend keeping an eye open for 2019’s Wooden Indian Annual Charity Pig Roast, considering what I saw yesterday, I can’t imagine it won’t be even more spectacular. Once again, kudos’ to Dave Mayer and his staff, Ray, Alex and Pedro from Drew Estate, and all the supporting cast members who made this all possible, and to those who attended and supported the excellent cause!

Editorial

This week it was announced that Ezra Zion Cigars acquired Nomad Cigar Company from Fred Rewey (for an undisclosed amount of bacon, but that not important to my editorial on this). This was reported on Cigar Coop, Halfwheel and Cigar Federation (which is owned by the owners of Ezra Zion Cigars, by the way), and I would probably have published a news item if Gmail hadn’t sorted the e-mail into a lesser viewed folder for me, I would have been late to the party anyway. This transaction left me with some questions, so I figured I’d throw them out here and see if  it generates any discussion. To understand what I find interesting about this we have to go back a few years. I first met Chris and Kyle at the 2012 IPCPR show when they had a booth debuting both Cigar Federation and Ezra Zion Cigars together, at the time neither was selling cigars direct to consumer, Cigar Federation was a start-up cigar community and blog site, Ezra Zion was a new cigar line. I developed a good relationship with these guys, one I hope, continues to this day. Eventually, Ezra Zion came to be one of the brands distributed by the House of Emilio, distribution company which had its roots with Gary Griffith and Delaware Cigars, and LJ Zucca Co., which had as many as nine boutique brands under its umbrella at one point. for a few years, maybe 2014, 2015, the House of Emilio was huge, they had a national sales force, Nate McEntire (now with Miami Cigar & Co) was once leading it, and Kyle and Chris of Ezra Zion were heading it at one point too (which may seem like a bit of a conflict of interest, when the sales force s reporting to one of several brand owners?). Over a relatively short period of time, Gary Griffith retires (deservedly so, some say he was close to 900 years old!), several brands either take their distribution elsewhere, or, in the case of Ezra Zion, direct to consumer. I may have the timeline a little off, but somewhere in here House of Emilio changes the name to Boutiques United (which Dave Garafalo, I assume, challenged), then Boutiques Unified. The last couple of years Boutiques Unified has represented the Emilio brand, Black Label Trading Co/Black Works Studio, and Nomad. Running Parallel to the above timeline, Chris and Kyle sold Cigar Federation, which eventually became the online storefront for Delaware Cigars, which I mentioned above was owned by LJ Zucca, and associated closely with what’s now Boutiques Unified. Last year Chris and Kyle bought back Cigar Federation, so now they own the online storefront for, what we’ll call for simplicity’s sake, the company they used to be the sales managers for, but left. Now, they have bought one of the last brands in the Boutiques Unified stable and intend to distribute it themselves. My question/confusion in this is does this leave BU (I’m tired if typing Boutiques Unified) as basically the sales organization for Black Label/Black Works?  Granted, Oveja Negra is a hot factory, and seems to be worthy of its own representation, is it big enough? Is the Emilio brand have enough legs any more?  I honestly don’t know if the AF1 and AF2 are in production any more or not, the new Grimalkin is exceptional, but is made at Oveja Negra. Where does Ezra Zion and Nomad fit in, not to mention all the Cigar Federation cigars, are they still a thing?  I’ll admit I lost track of a lot of the small batch crazy stuff EZ did after they left wider distribution (I live in an area that had pretty good BU representation). I have to assume that things are good between the EZ guys and the Delaware Cigars guys and there’s no animosity, right? I find it all very interesting, I’m probably the only one, and I apologize for boring you all with this rambling nonsense, I’m just trying to make sense of all this. I certainly get why Fred sold Nomad so he could concentrate on his social media joke telling, obviously cigars were getting in the way of the quality in that department!

**note: I just saw an email from a retailer saying they were discontinuing the Nomad line because the only reason they kept it on was the relationship they had with Fred, the sales weren’t enough to sustain it in their shop.  – edit 9/17 **

That’s way more than enough for today, until the next time,

CigarCraig