Factory Cigar Blends: A Head Start for Your Brand

Factory blends

What Is a Factory Blend?

A factory blend is a cigar blend our own team has developed, tested, and approved in The Lab, our blending room in Estelí, Nicaragua. Instead of starting your brand from a blank page, you start from a blend that already works, then launch it as it is, adjust it, or build a line around it.

It all starts and ends with a love of tobacco and cigars. Our passion is the leaf itself, and presenting it as well as we can, out of respect for the plant, for the artisanal craft, and for what you want your brand to achieve.

That care is also why our factory blends offer the best value. We won’t trade down on tobacco or ease off on quality control, not on your first order and not on your tenth. Our team keeps the bands, boxes, and every deadline around your cigars on track.

How a Blend Earns Its Place

Every week, we set aside blocks of time in The Lab. That time goes to three jobs:

• New blends. Building blends from scratch, leaf by leaf.
• Rested blends. Smoking new blends again, usually two weeks after the first roll we liked.
• Aged blends. Smoking cigars that have rested a full 90 days, the truest picture of how a blend will smoke.

It is not a quick process. Weeks can go by, sometimes a month or two, without a blend we like. Then we hit on something, and one good blend can lead to several good variations.

Even when we like a blend on the first day, we smoke it again at two weeks and again at 90 days before we approve it. Only blends that pass every round, and our quality control, become factory blends.

How to Choose a Factory Blend

We group our factory blends by wrapper: Connecticut, Habano, Maduro, Sumatra, and Candela. The wrapper sets the look of a cigar and much of its taste, so it is the quickest way to narrow the field. Our page on cigar tobacco explains the main wrapper shades.

Clients can read about each blend and order samples on our client portal (we can grant access after the initial call). We usually keep 10 to 15 approved blends in stock in the United States, ready to ship as sample packs of four cigars per blend.

Smoke them, share them with your partners, and tell us which blend comes closest to the cigar you want to sell.

Three Ways to Use a Factory Blend

1. Launch it as it is

If a blend hits the nail on the head, we can move straight to production.

A factory blend can also be made exclusive to your brand at certain production levels. We agree those terms client by client.

2. Tweak it

Maybe the blend is close, but you want more strength, more sweetness, or a darker wrapper. Tell us what to change, and we roll new samples. This is usually faster than developing a new blend, and to save more time, we send the tweaked samples before they have had their full 90 days of rest.

Smoking a young cigar is an art. Right after rolling, the wrapper, binder, and filler are still settling, and their flavors haven’t married yet. A fresh sample still gives a very close picture of the finished blend, and we’ll explain what to expect as it ages.

3. Build a line

Launching with two or more blends? Start from one, as it is or tweaked, and we can try it under different wrappers, such as a Connecticut and a Maduro version, to give your line its range.

Keeping Every Blend Consistent

Approval is not the end of the testing. We keep checking current production, with cigars pulled straight off the rolling tables and out of the aging room, against our blending notes and the reference cigars of each blend that we keep in the aging room.

That matters because no two harvests are the same. The weather changes from year to year, and so does the tobacco. So each season, we adjust the recipe to keep the blend tasting the way you approved it, much as a Champagne house blends wines from different harvests to keep its non-vintage cuvée tasting the same.

Who Factory Blends Are For

Factory blends work best for new brands that want a proven starting point, and for established brands adding a new line. If you already have a cigar in mind as a model, a homage blend may suit you better.

If none of our factory blends feels right, we go back into The Lab and build a fully custom blend with you from the ground up. That takes more time and costs more, but every part of the blend is built around you.

New to the cigar business? Our step-by-step guide covers how to start a cigar brand.

Factory Blend Questions

Are factory blends long filler or short filler?

Both. We have factory blends in each of the two main construction types: long filler and short filler.

How long does a factory blend take to launch?

Less time than a blend built from scratch, because the development is already done. Your cigars still need to be rolled, aged for at least 90 days, and packed with your bands and boxes, so plan around those steps. Our private label page covers timelines and first orders.