New Cigar: De La Concha Selection Premium

by Tom Johansmeyer (RSS feed)
Mar 30th 2010 at 2:01PM

It's always risky to introduce a new cigar into the market. In addition to the normal new product launch challenges, there is no shortage of sticks out there today, to the point where Eddie Ortega decided not to bring anything new to shelves this year. In New York, however, the local shop where I cut and light has made space in the humidor for a new house cigar, the De La Concha Selection Premium.

This is the store's second house blend, following the Grand Reserve by Pepin Garcia, which was released in late 2003. Unlike the Nicaraguan cigar, the new blend is banded and sold in boxes (the Grand Reserve is bundled). But, that's just the beginning of the difference. The Selection Premium is a fundamentally different cigar. It's made by Davidoff, which owns De La Concha – and it tastes very much like a Davidoff product. There are some clear similarities to the Millennium, with which the Selection Premium shares a wrapper, and it is more complex than the Grand Reserve, which tends to be a tad more linear and emphasizes boldness over complexity.

It's exciting to see this new stick finally make it to market, especially since I witnessed the process first-hand, sampling many of the attempts along the way. The Selection Premium's development took nearly two years, with the store's general manager, Ron Melendi, going through what seemed at the time to be endless batches before finally deciding on the cigar that he would carry.

Disclosure: I did receive three cigars to sample before writing this story, which I intended to write anyway. The development cigars that I sampled were free, as well, but I was not the only regular customer of the store to participate in the process.

Tags: cigar, cigar review, cigars, davidoff, new york, new york city, smoking