Cigars Daily

Hey everybody, I'm Tim. They say there's no such thing as a dumb question. But is that really true? Tonight we're putting it to the test, and I think I know just who can help me with that. Everyone at home. That's right, the Cigars Daily Nation is on the hook tonight. Drop ALL your cigar comments and questions, and we'll see if we can find a dumb one.

And I'm not doing this alone. Eric from Cigar Dojo is joining me, and he's spent years building one of the most passionate, welcoming communities in the cigar world. Between the two of us, we've heard just about everything. So whether you're cigar curious and have never had one, you're a few months in and still figuring out what you like, or you've been at this for twenty years and want to settle a debate once and for all, bring it. Big questions, small questions, weird questions. Hell, especially the weird ones. Here's the thing though. I've got a sneaking suspicion the Nation is too smart to give us a dumb one. Prove me wrong.

And then there's the secret. Cigar Dojo is coming to Cigartopia this November, and they're not just showing up. They're coming in on something big, and we're revealing the surprise live, right here on the show. I'll tell you, keeping my mouth shut about this one has been damn near impossible. Stick around, because you're going to want to be in the chat when it drops.

For about 60 years, Cuba has been the undisputed king of the cigar world. And right now, the king is in a really weird spot. Habanos is pulling in record money while the actual cigars keep getting harder to find. China keeps getting more involved every year. And here’s the part that blows my mind: half of the most famous cigar company on the planet belongs to somebody nobody can publicly name. By God, you can’t make this stuff up.

So tonight, we’re turning the whole cigar world into a board game night. Cuba, China, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and the good old US of A each get a spot on the map, a strength rating, and a real storyline pulled straight out of this year’s news. We’ll flip event cards, shift the board, argue about who’s teaming up with who, and yes, we’re rolling the El Niño chaos die. Because the truth is, nobody controls the weather. Not even Cuba.

Here’s the thing that makes this so good. So many of the families who built the cigars we love today started in Cuba and had to rebuild somewhere else. So this isn’t just a game about who’s winning. It’s the story of Cuba’s heirs, rivals, and challengers all circling the same throne.

A few weeks back on this show, I went on the record. I said the Knuckle Sandwich Saguaro is easily the best one of the bunch. Not "one of the best." Not "up there." The best. And the Nation does not forget when I say things like that. So tonight, the Saguaro is here, I'm lighting it live, and you're holding me to every word.

Here's what we're working with. The Saguaro is a 6x54 box-pressed Toro out of AJ Fernandez in Esteli, same house that builds every Knuckle Sandwich. Broadleaf wrapper, full strength, pepper and spice up front. But the story of this blend is the binder: a Nicaraguan Seco Corojo leaf from Jalapa that keeps the whole thing bright and balanced when by all rights it should be a freight train. Erik Espinosa called it another fresh perspective on the Knuckle Sandwich and said it was strong enough to have been a core line cigar. And the name? That one's personal. The saguaro is the icon of the Sonoran Desert, the symbol of our hometown, and seeing it on a Knuckle Sandwich band means more to me than I can probably say on camera without getting made fun of by my own chat.

Some families run restaurants. Some families run farms. The Gomez family runs one of the most respected cigar operations on the planet, and tonight the youngest member of the house joins us LIVE. Litto Gomez Jr. of La Flor Dominicana is in the building, and the Nation gets to ask him anything.

If you don't know the House of Gomez, here's the short version. Litto Sr. was a jeweler who reinvented himself as a cigar maker in 1994, an outsider who taught himself the craft and built La Flor Dominicana into a powerhouse, growing his own tobacco on the La Canela farm and eventually becoming president of ProCigar. Ines Lorenzo-Gomez co-founded the company and runs the business side. Tony Gomez became the second-generation blender behind some of the most talked about cigars in the LFD portfolio. And Litto Jr. grew up inside all of it, blended his first cigar during college breaks at the family factory in Tamboril, and now serves as Vice President of Sales, carrying the family name into its next 30 years. Tonight we get his side of the story. What it's like growing up in a cigar dynasty, how a 22-year-old convinces his legendary father to put his blend into production, how two brothers divide an empire, and where LFD goes from here.

Tonight the Wrench takes the stage. My wife Allison joins me live, and we’re doing something we’ve probably needed for a while: cigar marriage counseling. And YOU are the counselor. Cigars are the glue of this marriage. We smoke them on dates, we’ve built a life around this hobby, and this whole thing runs on the leaf. But living with the cigar guy comes with grievances, and tonight they’re all coming out. The chat hears both sides, the chat rules on every dispute, and we’ve agreed to accept the Nation’s verdicts. This was possibly a mistake. We’re doing it anyway.

The docket is loaded. There’s the great bed cigar debate, where Allison maintains that smoking a cigar in bed sounds like a perfect evening and I maintain that it sounds disgusting, and roughly ninety percent of you have already told me I’m insane. There’s the matter of the humidor, where out of two thousand cigars’ worth of space, my wife has been allocated one small section of one shelf, a fact she would like entered into evidence. And then there’s the big one. I made a cigar for Billy. I made a cigar for Terrence. The Nation has noticed who I have NOT made a cigar for, and so has she. That conversation is happening tonight, live, with nowhere for me to hide.

Tonight is a celebration on Cigars Daily LIVE, and we've got more than one reason to raise a glass. The Sultan of the Sahara story has a new chapter. The project that honored one of our own, built around a rare Honduran-grown Cameroon-seed wrapper over a Mexican San Andres binder with fillers from Nicaragua, Honduras, and Brazil, now comes in a Robusto. And here's what makes this line extension worth talking about: same blend, smaller ring, completely different presentation. The Robusto concentrates everything the Toro does and turns up the vividness. The sweet earthiness, the stone fruit, the citrus zest, the pepper, all of it hits with more intensity in the tighter format. Tonight we're smoking it live and breaking down exactly what changes when a blend you know gets reframed in a new vitola.

We've also got some personal news. Your boy took home a YouTube Content Creator Award, and I'm going to be honest with you, that one hit different. Ten years of Monday nights, thousands of hours of the best damn cigar content online, and every bit of it belongs to the Cigars Daily Nation as much as it belongs to us. Tonight we celebrate that together, because this show doesn't exist without the people in the chat.

You've heard me talk about him for years. Tonight the other half of Cigars Daily takes the hot seat. Jim is my business partner, my co-founder, and my father-in-law, and for more than eight years we've built this whole thing together. The show, the content, the community, all of it. Tonight he's live on the show and the Nation gets to ask him anything. How we started. What almost broke us. What it's actually like being in business with family. What he really thinks about the cigars I rave about. Nothing is off the table.

We're also smoking through something special tonight. El Mago's new Limited Edition Tin Series has been one of the coolest concepts of the year, vintage-style collectible tins inspired by a thrifted R.J. Reynolds tin that founder Nick Fusco stumbled on, and we've got the lineup on deck: the Oyama Omen, Mr. Almond, Jug, and Cavalry. Four blends, four tins, all limited, all made at MGE in Esteli. Jim and I will be working through them as the night goes on and giving you our honest takes.

My name is Tim and I'm the host of this show, but YOU are the co-host. Your comments and questions drive the episode. Settle in, grab a drink, and let's get into it.

And because Jim spent a whole career in business before this industry got its hooks in him, we're playing a game tonight called Business vs. Cigar Business. Real business questions against real cigar industry questions, and we find out where the suit-and-tie world and the tobacco world collide. It gets weirder than you'd think.

Steve Saka is back on the show, and tonight he's spilling everything on the LecheBurra. If you were here for Episode 405, you saw the origin story. If you were here for Episode 436, you saw the whole crew revisit it together. Tonight is the deep dive. The man himself walks us through how this blend actually came to life, from the first conversation to the Cultivo Tonto wrapper to the decisions that made this one of the most talked about projects we've ever been a part of. 

If you've never watched a Saka interview before, buckle up. There is nobody in this industry who talks about tobacco the way Steve does. Thirty-plus years in the business, the mind behind Dunbarton Tobacco and Trust, the guy who helped build Drew Estate into a giant, and famously one of the most unfiltered voices in the entire cigar world. He does not do talking points. He does not do polish. He tells you exactly what he thinks about blending, about the industry, about his own work, and about the things most cigar makers won't say out loud. 

That's why we keep inviting him back and that's why tonight is going to be special. My name is Tim and I'm the host of this show, but YOU are the co-host. Your comments and questions drive the episode. Settle in, grab a drink, and let's get into it. We'll get into the LecheBurra story front to back, what makes the Mexican San Andres Cultivo Tonto wrapper so unusual, how Steve approaches a collaboration differently than his own lines, where this project sits in the Dunbarton universe next to the Sobremesa and Mi Querida and Muestra de Saka families, and what's coming next from the maddest scientist in premium tobacco. 

Tonight we're doing something special. The Espinosa Laranja Hybrid isn't out in the wild yet, and we're taking you inside the blend and the whole experience before it gets there. This is the fourth chapter of the Laranja story, a line that's been rocking the orange band for twelve years, and the Hybrid takes it somewhere new. An Ecuadorian Habano Oscuro wrapper over a Nicaraguan binder with Nicaraguan and Brazilian tobaccos in the filler, rolled at La Zona. The Brazilian DNA that made Laranja what it is stays in the blend, but the profile evolves. Citrus zest, earth, cocoa, spice, and that natural sweetness the line is known for. Tonight we find out what this thing is all about.

We'll also talk about where the Hybrid fits inside Espinosa's absolutely loaded lineup right now. This company is on a run. The Knuckle Sandwich Chef Special, the Warhead Independence Day 250, the Knuckle Sandwich Avant-Garde that retailers are fighting over, and the upcoming Knuckle Sandwich Saguaro, which I will personally vouch is easily the best of the bunch. There's a reason Espinosa announced eight releases this year and somehow made every single one feel earned. We're breaking down how Erik Espinosa and Hector Alfonso keep doing it.

Tonight we've got a special one. Nicholas Perdomo III joins us LIVE to talk about what it means to be the fourth generation of a cigar family and what it's like to blend side by side with your own father. Nicholas is the man behind the Perdomo Legacy line, he just picked up Up-and-Coming Person of the Year honors, and now he and his dad have taken the collaboration to a whole new level with the Legacy Father & Son project.

Here's what makes this story so good. This isn't a kid who got handed a title. Nicholas spent his summers in Nicaragua learning tobacco from the ground up. Growing, curing, fermentation, production, all of it, years before he ever touched the sales side of the business. And the Father & Son project reflects that same hands-on approach. He blended one of the cigars himself. His dad blended another, building around the Nicaraguan Shade Grown tobacco he pioneered. And the third one they built together. Same filler across all three, different wrappers, different blending philosophies, one family. We're getting into all of it tonight, including the story of how this project came to life and what it's like when your dad is also your blending partner.