150 Texas Edition

Fonseca’s biggest cigar is headed to Texas. The Fonseca 150 measures a whopping 9 x 60 making it the largest in the SAG Imports-distributed brand’s history. Only 500 boxes of 10 are being made with pricing set at $8.95 per cigar or $89.50 per box and the company expects it to begin arriving in the Lone Star State later this month. A Nicaraguan Criollo 98 wrapper sits on top a Dominican Criollo 98 binder and Dominican and Nicaraguan fillers. While the size is the largest current for the Dominican-based MATASA factory, big cigars are nothing new. The old factory made a variety of large cigars including the Half Jeroboam, the cigar Robert DeNiro made famous in Cape Fear. In conversations with Texas retailers and consumers we kept hearing that the bigger the cigar, the better it sold. We checked this against how our larger vitolas in Texas have sold (the Ubers, Casa Magna Gigantors, etc) and confirmed the really large sizes consistently do well throughout the entire state. Although these massive sizes are growing in popularity, in many regions of the country they are still hit and miss. When you limit a release to a single state, you want whatever cigar you are releasing to appeal to the majority of consumers and we felt this size has been embraced most in Texas. Depending how it does in Texas, we might look to make other cigars in that size for national distribution.