PDR Cigars Turns Surplus Tobacco Into A Crop Brand
If you've ever made a casserole out of last night's perfectly good leftovers, then you'll probably appreciate what Abe Flores, owner of PDR Cigars, has done with his new cigar brand. Flores found himself with so much leftover tobacco from previous production runs that he's made an entire brand out of it. It's called A Crop, and it's a value-priced bundle cigar that uses the surplus tobacco from some of his more expensive lines.
"A lot of times we have to commit to buying more tobacco than we actually need in order to get exactly what we want," Flores said.
This sometimes means purchasing an entire crop's worth of leaf, which can often cause a surplus. Now, his surplus has taken a new life as the A Crop. It consists of an Ecuadoran Habano wrapper (Claro or Oscuro), Dominican binder and filler tobacco from Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.
So is it possible that a smoker might take a puff of A Crop and taste hints of, say, the A. Flores 1975 Serie Privada Capa Habano, Cigar Aficionado's No. 10 cigar for 2014? Or maybe touches of the Flores y Rodriguez Reserva Limitada? Perhaps. Flores isn't saying which tobaccos left from which brands have gone into A Crop. But he did tell Cigar Aficionado that about 80 percent of the leaf in A Crop is from leftover bales and assures that this is not a Cuban sandwich-style cigar but contains only long-filler tobacco.
A Crop will be offered in three sizes: Robusto, measuring 5 inches by 50 ring gauge; Toro, 6 by 52; and Gordo, 6 by 58. Though sold in bundles of 19 cigars, the suggested retail price for each breaks down to $2.76 to $3.08 each.
A Crop is handmade at the PDR Cigars factory in the Dominican Republic.
