In this interview at the Premium Cigar Association Trade Show, Shane Ireland sat down for his annual chat with Steve Saka of Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust. This time, we got their conversation on film.

Catching Up With Steve Saka

[Shane Ireland]: What's up, man?

[Steve Saka]: How are you doing, bro?

[SI]: I'm doing good. Shane Ireland from Smokingpipes here with the man, the myth, the legend, Mr. Steve Saka, doing our annual catch up.

[SS]: I paid him for that.

[SI]: We have an annual catch up on the last day of the trade show when it's nice and calm around here. How have you been?

[SS]: Busy.

[SI]: Yeah. As usual.

[SS]: Yeah, I'm behind. I got grumpy down to a science.

[SI]: But what would you be without those three qualities?

[SS]: It's my lifeblood. Misery I embrace like a warm hug from my mother. Talk about if you knew my mother, you would know how true that is. Sorry, mom. God, rest your soul. My mom was hard. I had a hard mom.

[SI]: So now you're hard on yourself. That's how it goes.

Solita Red & Sobremesa Brûlée Blue

[SI]: Are you smoking the Solita Red right now?

[SS]: I actually am.

[SI]: This is actually my first taste because I was unfortunately out of town when our shipment arrived and I'm super excited to finally get to try it. The Cervantes Fino was my number one smoke in your line, for many years, and my stash will only last me so long. I'm happy to see this back.

[SS]: Yeah, me too.

[SI]: It's killer.

[SS]: It's a nice cigar.

[SI]: Great size. So far I'm really digging the tweaks that you made to it, which I understand is basically a little more oomph and a little more strength.

[SS]: A little more but then I basically beat it out of it with an extra year of age, so I don't even know what I'm doing.

[SI]: With the extra year of age, the richness does come through. It smokes pretty close to the original Cervantes Fino that I bought years ago.

[SS]: The Cervantes Fino was a great cigar that just nobody bought. It got lost in the line. Lonsdales aren't popular. Even if the cigar's great, retailers aren't gonna stock it. It's a little bit of a slower move.

[SI]: It's a cigar nerd size.

[SS]: I saw the success I had with Sobremesa Brûlée Blue. Having it as a standalone, with a different color band, made it more identifiable. If Brûlée Blue just had this standard band on it that all the other Brûlées have on them, it would maybe be at the bottom. This cigar gets a consumer to go, what is that? Let me try that. So it gets a fair shake and it gets a try.

Oftentimes that's what makes the difference: you get somebody to try something and they can then decide if they like it or not. But if they don't try it, they don't even know whether they like it or not.

By doing the Solita Red, it gives that cigar the shot that it deserves. I can't tell you that it's gonna be as wildly successful as the Blue. There's no way to know that but it's definitely worthy. In this way, it'll hopefully get a fair test.

[SI]: For me, I could do those two back to back: a Blue in the morning and a Red in the evening and have that be my rotation.

[SS]: You say that bullshit to everybody that you get on this camera.

[SI]: That is absolutely not true, we have the receipts.

[SS]: I saw my sales numbers. It's the same thing. I have Coronas for all my blends. I can't get retailers to buy 'em and I can't get 'em to stock 'em. They won't do it. Somewhere in the future I'm gonna do a Corona collection like I did last year with the Lanceros.

[SI]: Oh my God. I would love that.

[SS]: Yeah. I have all the work done. People were willing to buy the Lanceros like that. I think I actually may be able to get people to buy a Corona collection.

[SI]: A Corona collection would be amazing. All 12 of us Corona fans out there are gonna go crazy.

[SS]: When we had a Corona in Sobremesa, it died before the Cervantes Fino died because the retailers wouldn't put it on the shelf. There's just not enough Corona consumers, but I think if you do a Corona collection for the people that like Corona, then it's like a potpourri of joy in one little box.

[SI]: Absolutely. So as for other new stuff, there's so much to talk about.

StillWell Star Holiday 2025 & Deep Cuts Sampler

[SI]: I am particularly excited about StillWell Star Holiday 2025 because the format has changed this year.

[SS]: Yeah, it'll be 5" by 48.

[SI]: That's amazing.

[SS]: It's a smaller format and the blend is a bit different. I think it smokes really well and the initial reaction from our customers, not the patrons, seems to be positive. Who knows what the people out there are gonna think. They're not gonna get to smoke it until the holidays. But yeah, oddly enough, the retailers seem to be on board with it. It's a change of pace and it's unique, so we'll see.

[SI]: That's great. I'm excited.

We've got the Deep Cuts sampler also, which is gorgeous. I love the peep window here. Do you wanna give us a quick walkthrough of what's going on here?

[SS]: I made this sampler for people who maybe have never smoked a Dunbarton, or are newer to cigars. Here are our seven cores with the essentials. It gives you a way to experience Dunbarton all in one little place.

The Deep Cut is actually my 10 personal favorite cigars that I smoke. It's the weirdest sampler ever because you've got the brand new Red Meat Lover's Fritanga in there. This has become the number one Red Meat Lover's that I smoke personally. The sampler has an Umbagog Bronzeback, a Mi Querida Black PapaSaka, a Mi Querida Triqui Traca No. 648, a Muestra de Saka Nacatamale, a Sobremesa Solita Red, a Sobremesa Brûlée Blue, a Todos Las Dias Thick Lonsdale, a Mi Querida Black SakaKhan, and a Sin Compromiso Word of Saka, which is actually a cigar for next year.

Typically it can feel like most samplers are actually three cigars that aren't selling, one okay cigar, and then like one carrot. In this sampler, every single cigar in the box is in my personal rotation. If you wanna know what Steve Saka smokes, this is it. In three years, however, a couple of cigars might change. It really depends on what I'm currently vibing on. It's a very interesting collection. I don't know that I've ever seen anything like this.

Well, Fuente does high-end SinOpus X samplers, right? Padron does some high samplers, but I don't think they've ever had something where this is actually A, their favorites, and B, there's a $8 cigar and there's a $29 cigar in the same sampler. It's a pretty weird thing.

[SI]: I dig it though. It's a cool concept. It looks great. I'm excited to try the ones I haven't tried yet.

[SS]: I would also say if you're a hardcore guy, I wouldn't start with the essentials. If you have been smoking for 10, 15 years, the essentials are great, of course. But honestly, if I were that guy and I was curious about Dunbarton, I would actually go this way with the Red Meat Lover's Fritanga.

Red Meat Lover's Fritanga

[SS]: This is the next generation consumer's cigar right here.

[SI]: Absolutely. Tell us about the Fritanga.

[SS]: It's pretty simple. It's Red Meat Lover's just made spicier and stronger. There's a little bit more oomph. If you like Red Meat Lover's but you wish there was a little bit more pepper and pop, Fritanga will be the way to go.

[SI]: Was Fritanga the conception based on that feedback or is that based on your personal taste?

[SS]: Well, it's based on me. I just wanted to do it. I liked it. I'll tell you, Red Meat Lover's is good, but I would almost always rather smoke a Mi Querida, personally. I always find myself going back to a Mi Querida Ancho Largo or a Triqui Traca No. 648, which is one of the ones in this box, or a lot of Mi Querida Black. I wanted to give a little more pizzazz to the Red Meat Lover's blend. It won't be for everybody. For some people, they might think I screwed it up. But for that person that wants a little bit more bite, more pepper forward, and a little less smoothness, Fritanga will be a good one to try.

[SI]: Excellent. Now for the bell of the ball.

Jubilee 10th Anniversary Cigar

[SI]: I am super curious about the 10th Anniversary cigar. Tell us about it. I don't know if you're being as transparent on that as you otherwise probably would be.

[SS]: I will be when it's time to actually ship it and sell it.

[SI]: Cool. It is a first in the sense of the wrapper use, though, right?

[SS]: It's a first in everything.

[SI]: Oh, great.

[SS]: Let me tell you how anniversary cigars are done. You take one of your fan favorites that you're really well known for and you do a variation on that with a custom base. The second thing you do is you always make it a sexy shape, like Diadema, Salomon, or Perfecto. You put it in a beautiful box that you know you're marking the celebratory nature of the cigar with, and that's the anniversary cigar.

That's the basic formula for all anniversary cigars. When I started thinking about doing a Dunbarton anniversary cigar, that was what I was gonna do originally. Then, I started dwelling on it a bit.

When I started Dunbarton 10 years ago, I did something that I wanted to do but wasn't very smart. So when I came to the first trade show, everybody that came to Dunbarton was expecting Liga Privada 2.0. That's what I was known for. What I gave them was Sobremesa, a medium-bodied, nuanced, elegant, and refined kind of cigar.

Dollar wise, I think I hurt myself. I think had I released Mi Querida at first, my life would've been a hell of a lot easier. But I wanted to say, hey, I'm not a one-trick pony. I can do these other things. So I thought, you know what? Everybody expects me to do one of my fan favorites. Instead, I'm going to make a cigar out of six tobaccos I don't currently use in any cigar. Something that doesn't taste like anything I have made in any way in the last 10 years. It's more balanced and nuanced, and it's really creamy, rich, and intricate. It's got like a toffee and graham cracker thing going on.

I did a lot of tests for the size. The 48 ring gauge between 5.5 inches and 6 inches is what tasted the best. That's what I liked the most. I made all the fancy sizes and they were good but I kept going back to the 5.625" x 48. I went out on a limb on both the blend and the vitola on this one. It comes in a beautiful package but it's very modest.

[SI]: It's very you. I think it's gorgeous.

[SS]: I agree. But does this look like an anniversary cigar?

[SI]: No, but I find that refreshing. It sounds like a lot of these details picked you, more or less. It happened naturally that way. I gotta say, as a consumer, I appreciate the beautiful packaging that other people do but where the hell am I gonna put this? Most of us don't have a walk-in humidor to store this kind of stuff in.

[SS]: Even though I messed up the blend and I messed up the size and I didn't really have a super elaborate package, I knew I could still get away with this being a $40 cigar.

It's the 10th anniversary, right? But I decided that, if I'm doing it this way, let me just price it exactly the same way we price everything. 40% gross margin. This is what it costs for me to make, I add 40 points that nets the company at the end of the year, hopefully if I do my job right, seven or eight points in profit. It's priced exactly the way every other cigar that we have is priced, which ends up making it not cheap, but around an $18, $18.50 cigar.

[SI]: Very accessible.

[SS]: It's very unusual when our core cigars, like the Muestros, cost more. Some of the Sin Compromisos cost more, and SakaKhan. I basically did everything I shouldn't do for an anniversary cigar. So we'll see. Either the market will punish me or they'll reward me, but it seems right because when I started the company 10 years ago, I went in a way that nobody expected me to. What better way to mark the 10th anniversary than to do the exact same thing again?

This is a good reflection of who we are. I'm very excited by it.

[SI]: I'm excited by it too. We're not gonna be alone. I'm sure about that.

[SS]: We've got Fritanga coming out later in the year. The Word of Saka will be a barn burner if you wanna melt your face. I got plenty of those. We got the Bronzeback Robusto, which is Bronzeback, just a little bigger. All of those are for those who want stronger smokes.

[SI]: The anniversary is a celebration for you. We're gonna take part in it as consumers, for sure, but I like that you went with your gut and your instincts and skewed the expectations. What can you tell us about the tobaccos? You said it's five tobaccos you've never worked with.

[SS]: It has an Ecuadorian Sumatra dark wrapper. It's very interesting. I've only used it on that Fiddlehead I did. I'm using a Mexican San Andrés ligero, which is a real thin grain on the binder. I normally use my standard "Cultivo Tonto" crop on Sin Compromiso, which this isn't. Then it's four Nicaraguan fillers, one from each of the primary drilling regions: Jalapa, Estelí, Condega, and Ometepe. I use all those tobaccos all the time, but these are from four farmers that I have never used tobacco from.

[SI]: Was the blending process more tedious for you, or did it come together pretty easily?

[SS]: It was more fun. I can whip together a new cigar in an hour. I've done so many of them over the years. It's kinda like the chef that makes this particular dish all the time. This is muscle memory at a certain point. It was more of a sense of discovery for me, just like the original Sobremesa was. It was a deviation from so many of the blends I had done before so this was going back down that road.

Maybe more than it being an anniversary, it's a testimony. Man, that would have been a good name. Why didn't I use Testimony? I decided to call it the Jubilee instead of the Anniversary because everybody calls it Anniversary.

[SI]: I think that Jubilee is usually the 50th.

[SS]: Well, we had the 10th Jubilee, damn it.

[SI]: Yeah, why not? Steve, thank you so much for the time. Congratulations on 10 years and thank you for making stuff that we all enjoy smoking so much and that I can't wait to get my hands on.

[SS]: Thank you for your support. We really appreciate it.

[SI]: Always.