TAA Cancels April 2021 Annual Meeting
The Tobacconist Association of America has canceled their April Meeting scheduled to take place in the Dominican Republic. The Organization sent out the following message to their members.
As we (TAA) have stated before, the health and safety of our membership is our top consideration. Unfortunately, anticipated improvements with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic have not occurred. With these circumstances, the Board of Directors has decided to cancel the TAA Annual Meeting and Convention on April 11-15, 2021. However, we will be working with
Casa de Campo for possible dates in the Fall of 2021. We understand that there will be a lot of questions regarding this difficult decision, but please be patient with us as we work on solutions for TAA 2021.
New World Double Corona (7 1/2 x 55)
The new vitola is priced at $8.50 per cigar and packaged in 21-count boxes. Its addition builds on a year in which the company released the Tins vitola in April 2020 and made the Redondo vitola a regular production size in November. It had previously been offered only to members of the Tobacconists’ Association of America, and is the only round vitola among the full size options.
When it debuted, the New World by AJ Fernandez line was a notable addition for the company. Its blend was developed by Abdel Fernandez and his father, Isamel, who had just joined his son’s company after working with the Plasencia family for 17 years. The blend, a Nicaraguan puro with a dark oscuro wrapper, Jalapa-grown binder and fillers from Ometepe, Condega and Estelí, was designed to deliver the flavor of a cigar with a $10 price tag but would sell for approximately half that price.
86.5
These ratings indicate a high level of quality throughout the cigar market, as 109 of the 267 cigars we rated (41 percent) scored 90 points or higher. And 66 cigars scored 91 points or higher, earning our accolade of Humidor Selection. Every major cigar-producing country contributed cigars to that list, though 30 of the cigars in this segment hail from Nicaragua. Currently, Nicaragua exports more premium cigars to the U.S. than any other country, and its proliferation of high ratings speaks to both the high quality of tobacco on the agricultural end as well as meticulous cigar production on the industrial side.
If you’re looking for a 90 pointer, you’re more likely to find it from Cuba than any other country. We rated 24 Cuban cigars this year, and 16 of them (66.7 percent) scored 90 points or higher, a larger percentage of 90s than any other major cigar-producing country. (Though 80 percent of the Mexican cigars rated this year scored more than 90 points, we only tested f