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ello everyone, I'm Tyler Caldwell with Smokingpipes. I recently had the opportunity to talk to Mr. Ian Reith of Dapper Cigars about the brand, cigars, and Ian's beginnings as a cigar smoker.

[Tyler Caldwell]: I'm here with Mr. Ian Reith of Dapper Cigars. Ian, why don't you give us a little bit of a background of how you got into this industry?

[Ian Reith]: Yeah, I started about 10 years ago — this is our 10th year in business, so I started a little bit before that — but I started as a consumer. Just like a lot of folks, I enjoyed smoking cigars and was very interested in how they were made and what I could do to make a cigar too. And that inspired my cigar business.

[TC]: Very cool.

[IR]: This is our 10th year of official business, so it's a bit of a milestone.

[TC]: Do you remember the cigar that got you into cigars?

[IR]: Ooh, you know what, as cheesy as it sounds, it wasn't the cigar that got me into it, but the first Liga Privada T52s. I don't know if you remember those. I was really blown away by that cigar because it was much toothier and much more flavorful than I experienced. But cigars before that, you know, CAO made a huge impression on me during the 2000s, or whenever they were out. I think that those companies at that time — Tatuaje, CAO, even Drew Estate's early days — made a big impression on me in terms of getting into the cigar business.

[TC]: Very cool. Let's jump into a little bit of brand introduction with the La Madrina cigar.

[IR]: So, I'm smoking your new special edition here. That cigar, I think, is our most recognizable cigar, and that's the one that people correlate with being our most successful brand. Both in the U.S. and outside of it.

[TC]: Definitely, the artwork on it just makes it pop so well and it's eye catching.

[IR]: Yeah, so that cigar came out at the same time as our El Borracho cigar, which is comprised with an Ecuadorian Rosado wrapper, Mexican binder, and Dominican, Nicaraguan, and U.S. fillers. It's a very interesting, complex smoke, and it's medium to full, maybe more on the full side with the Habano wrapper.

[TC]: Very cool. Next let's get into the La Madrina Shade, here in a Belicoso size.

[IR]: The very first cigar that we had was the Cubo Claro, which is what basically got me into the business. I started with that Shade cigar. After we released La Madrina, El Borracho, Cubo Sumatra, and Siempre, we noticed that the sales of that Cubo Claro brand were really low and we discontinued that line. Years later, we had all these cigars, but we didn't have a Shade cigar. And I was actually meeting with Nick Perdomo and he politely indicated that I was an idiot for not having a Shade cigar. And he was right. So when we went back to do a Shade cigar, we thought, well, I mean, it just makes sense to take our most popular line and make that a Shade cigar. So we tweaked it a bit. The wrapper is an Ecuadorian Connecticut Shade, which is now our best-selling cigar, by far.

[TC]: Very cool and it's a very delicious cigar.

[IR]: Yeah. Thank you. I think it's a little bit different. I mean, everybody says their Connecticuts are different, right? That's like the common thing. But I think that cigar is uniquely different for a Shade cigar. It has elements of strength, but it's also very creamy and it's very adaptable. You can smoke it in the morning, you can smoke it in the evening, and it kind of works no matter where.

[TC]: It's easily enjoyable with any type of beverage. So, since you mentioned Cubo, let's go ahead and talk about the Cubo a little bit.

[IR]: Yeah, that's the Cubo Sumatra. We used to have a Maduro and we had a Connecticut Shade. The Maduro was the Mexican San Andrés. And when we moved our factory to NACSA, we reblended our Cubo Claro and used a Sumatra Claro wrapper instead. We actually tweaked the fillers a little bit and it's got some Broadleaf in the filler, which I think is a nice combination. Sumatra and Broadleaf gives you a really interesting, sweet, kind of woodsy profile, with a little bit of smoke production from the Broadleaf. I'm very happy about that cigar. We sell that cigar pretty well. I think it's maybe our most overlooked cigar.

[TC]: I would attest to that.

[IR]: It's a cigar that people that love our brand kind of forget about. And then when they try it, they're like, "Oh my God, that's a really great cigar, I forgot how good that was."

[TC]: I do that with a number of cigars all the time.

[IR]: Right?

[TC]: Cool, let's get into what I would consider your most unique cigar, the Cubata Cru.

[IR]: Yeah,Cigars LTD in Fresno, California, — which was one of the shops I started smoking cigars in — had a sweet-tip Dominican cigar, which used to be made by La Aurora when they were making it. This was during the FDA cigar process when they were coming up with all the regulations that didn't end up happening but could have, so we needed something with a sweetened tip. Cubata Cru was a brand that Micah, the owner of Cigars LTD, had with sweet tips and happened to be searching for a new home for it. So we said, "Hey, what can we do to work together on it?"

[TC]: You scratch my back, I scratch yours.

[IR]: Yeah, absolutely. We actually made a couple different versions of it and it's going to continue, but the Shade version you see is a very mild cigar. Blending a sweet-tip, mild cigar is not really in my wheelhouse because it's not something I do a lot. So blending that cigar was challenging because I was trying to get it to taste like I used to remember a Baccarat tasting back in the day; a little elegant breakfast cigar. I had to use a lot of tobacco I wasn't used to, particularly a lot of Dominican tobacco in the filler. There's a little bit of Nicaraguan in there as well and it's got an Ecuadorian Shade wrapper. It's very mellow, smooth, and it's great with a cup of coffee in the morning. It's just a little bit sweetened on the tip. I like that cigar a lot and I think a lot of people don't know we make it.

[TC]: Next up we have this guy here, the Siempre.

[IR]: Yeah, that's our Siempre Dark Rosado. That cigar started with the small-batch exclusive. We did an exclusive for them, and we basically said, "Hey, you tell us what cigar you want us to play off of." And they chose the Siempre Sun Grown, but a stronger one. I thought we would just have to tweak it a little, but we tweaked it a lot. And we basically ended up using Ecuadorian wrapper that's extremely high-priming wrapper. And everything in the fillers got changed: the Siempre Sun Grown is a Connecticut Broadleaf Ecuadorian Sumatra Sun Grown cigar. Again, Sumatra Broadleaf is sweet, woodsy, and earthy; to get that to turn into something strengthened, we basically had to change everything. Thus, we called that our Siempre Dark Rosado because it's a very dark Rosado wrapper, very heavy, and packed with lots of nicotine. I would say it's probably our highest nicotine cigar we make.

[TC]: Okay, good to know. Cool. So next up, we have a personal favorite of mine, which is the Desvalido, preferably in the Lonsdale size.

[IR]: Yeah, I love that cigar because it's the first cigar that I felt like I could blend something that I wanted exactly for me. And it took a number of years to do it. It took a lot of different tobaccos before I was really happy with it. And the branding came before the cigar on that one. So we had the brand, we had the bands, and they were sitting there. But I just couldn't find the right blend for that cigar. And what ended up turning it around was some tobacco that Oliva had that was from the U.S. and the U.S. tobacco combined with some hybrid tobacco really made the filler work. And it's interesting to me because in the nose of that cigar, it's so clean, but it's so interesting and it's got flavor, it's not overly strong, but it feels like it is sometimes. I particularly love it in the Lonsdale. But yeah, I'm proud of that cigar, and it meant a lot to me, personally, to make it.

[TC]: Awesome. And next up is the Desvalido Disla.

[IR]: Yeah. The Disla is after Raul Disla, who's a factory manager at NACSA, and that is a cigar I didn't blend. And so I thought, what would be polar opposite with Desvalido? Raul's our factory manager, he's basically the guy in charge of making sure that all of our cigars are using the right tobacco and that they're blended and constructed the right way. I had been smoking a lot of his own cigars and he has a special blend that he makes for himself, he smokes in a Robusto, and, one day, out of guilt, I said, "Hey man, I'm tired of taking all your own cigars. You think I could just use that as a new Desvalido?" And he was gracious enough to allow us to do that and so we thought it would be fitting to call it the Disla after him.

[TC]: Sure.

[IR]: And hopefully people can give some attention to his skillset, even though it's in the Desvalido line. It's not as crazy in terms of the different countries of origin and stuff. It's very Nicaraguan. It is entirely Nicaraguan in the binder and fillers. And the wrapper is an Ecuadorian Habano Rosado wrapper. It's a strong Nicaraguan-forward cigar, but it's perfectly fitting to his personality and blending style. It's nice to be able to get him some attention because he does so much for our brand and so much for our cigar-production capabilities. So yeah, I love smoking that in the Robusto because it reminds me of stealing cigars from him.

[TC]: For sure. Thanks everyone, make sure to check out our full portfolio of Dapper Cigars at Smokingpipes. We have a plethora of different sizes for each blend we've mentioned today, as well as some other blends that are available there as well.

[IR]: Thank you.