I am here with Jeremy Casdagli of Casdagli Cigars. Today we want to talk to you about something new from the Daughters of the Wind line, the Rosado, as well as share the story of Casdagli and the line's inspiration.

[Tyler Caldwell]: Let's talk about Daughters of the Wind's origins.

[Jeremy Casdagli]: Those who know the Casdagli brand know we make cigars in both the Dominican Republic, with Hendrik Kelner Jr., and in Costa Rica. To understand Costa Rica, you really need to understand two main factories there: Tabacos de Costa Rica, which makes brands like Byron and Atabey, and Inversiones González Martínez (IGM), a Cuban expatriate-run factory. Both are based around San José and Puriscal.

The Origins of Daughters of the Wind

Daughters of the Wind came about, I suppose, because of my own background. I spent about 15 years working with Cuban tobacco, and when I left that behind in 2012, I became director alongside a group of Cubans who had a plantation about 1,000 feet above sea level in the mountains of Costa Rica, in the Puriscal area.

Don Jose, his daughter Susanna, and his son Aaron run the whole operation — it's a family business, and I walked through their doors in 2012. I did some custom-rolled work with them at that stage, but it wasn't until 2018 when we were properly opening as a brand in the United States that I wanted to create something with them.

Daughters of the Wind was born because they had unique tobacco — at the time, they held a lease on that plantation, about 10 acres total, with roughly five in rotation, growing genuine Costa Rican tobacco. In the United States, Costa Rican cigars are fairly well known. Outside the U.S., people don't necessarily know Byron, Atabey, or Bombay.

What most people don't realize is that most Costa Rican cigars don't actually contain Costa Rican tobacco — they're simply made there. IGM is one of the only factories using homegrown Costa Rican leaf, and I found their tobacco was excellent for combustion.

What's interesting is that none of the three people who own that factory smoke. They grow tobacco, they process it, and they have a master blender to keep things consistent — but figuring out where to start with them wasn't obvious.

Building the Blend

Fortunately, I'd spent six years learning tobacco under Hendrik Kelner Jr., so I had a sense of what I wanted. I also had a friend from my old Habanos days, Jorge, known as El Greco, who defected and understood exactly what I'd been developing with Kelner Jr.: Cuban-esque blends. Not cigars that taste Cuban, but cigars that are mild-to-medium in strength while still full-bodied, with a distinct flavor.

To build Daughters of the Wind, we ran a fuma tasting to see what tobacco IGM actually had available, since we hadn't worked with undisclosed blends from them before. The key to understanding this blend is Peruvian tobacco. I first encountered it working with Kelner Jr. who taught me that pairing a delicate leaf like Peruvian Pelo de Oro next to a much stronger tobacco — Nicaraguan, Zimbabwean, or, in this case, Dominican Oscuro — creates that elusive mild-strength and full-bodied character. The Peruvian leaf essentially disappears into the blend while taking the edge off of the stronger tobacco.

For our strong component, we used Dominican tobacco that had been fermented in a pilón for two-and-a-half to four years — an aggressive process using viso or ligero priming leaves that turns the tobacco nearly black.

Then there was a third leaf — a Dominican tobacco the factory wouldn't identify by name, out of concern I'd share the source with Kelner Jr. I nicknamed it the "caramello" leaf, because when I smelled it, it had notes of caramel and sea salt. For the binder, we used Ecuadorian Habano, chosen for its combustion qualities.

From there, we spent two-to-three tiresome days smoking different iterations with the master blender until we landed on the formula around the fourth attempt. That formula became what we now call the Dahman.

Where the Name "Daughters of the Wind" Comes From

[TC]: Where does the name come from?

[JC]: It traces back to my family's history breeding Egyptian racehorses, which began in 1918 when we bought stables from Lady Blunt — a woman known for riding Arabian horses Western-style rather than side-saddle. She was trying to preserve a breed called the Dahman.

The name itself comes from an old Bedouin poem, dated to around 600 AD, referenced in our cigar booklet. As the story goes, a lost tribe in the desert, running low on water, sent out their horses to find some. Four returned, and the names given to those four horses became the foundational bloodlines of Egyptian racehorses. Dahman was the breed my family helped save from extinction through a horse named Bint Bint Durra.

That's the origin of Daughters of the Wind. Our Toro, the original control blend from that first tasting, became the Dahman, and the rest of the line took its names from the horses' colors: Sabino, Cremello, Calico, and Rabicano.

[TC]: I love that.

[JC]: It felt like a fitting, sweeping name for the whole line.

Cigar Journal Award Recipient

The line was very well received. We launched it first in the United States, and last year it won a Cigar Journal Award — often called the "Oscars of cigars" since Cuban brands are included in the running. The awards cover Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic, plus a fifth category for the rest of the world, which is the one we've won, since our cigars are made in Costa Rica. Winners are chosen through public voting and a shortlist round.

Introducing Daughters of the Wind Rosado

[TC]: So that's Daughters of the Wind. Now there's a Rosado.

[JC]: Yes, and fittingly, there was a Rosado-colored horse in that same bloodline, so the name fits the pattern. To understand this cigar, you need to know that IGM lost the lease on that original mountain plantation around four years ago. Rather than keep leasing, they bought their own mountain. It is about 120 hectares, roughly 45 minutes further into the mountains past the Tabacos de Costa Rica factory. I hadn't been back in a couple of years, partly due to recovering from a bike accident, but Daughters of the Wind was in good hands with our quality control team on the ground.

A New Terroir Produces a Rare Wrapper

Last November, a Chinese partner reached out wanting a Year of the Horse release for February, just three months out. I called Jorge to check on capacity, and he told me something unexpected: on the new 120-hectare property, they'd cleared 10-to-12 hectares and started planting three years earlier. The tobacco from that first harvest had aged and was ready.

When I tasted it, I found the wrapper had a distinct pink hue — a genuine Rosado. Kelner Jr. has long argued there's no such thing as a true Rosado wrapper, insisting it's simply under-fermented tobacco. But his sister, Monica, has since proven that a proper Rosado is achievable.

It's a rare thing to get a Costa Rican wrapper leaf at all, let alone a Rosado. The blend also includes a Costa Rican filler alongside Nicaraguan ligero and Dominican viso, with the same attention to combustion in the leaf selection as always. Between this new terroir and the factory now producing almost exclusively for us, we're more vertically integrated with IGM than ever.

Rosado Vitolas

For the Rosado line, we're keeping some standard vitolas — a Toro and a Robusto — alongside more distinctive sizes: a box-pressed Piramide, a Figurado similar to the Sabino, and a Lonsdale, without the Nicaraguan component. The bands will echo the horse motif from the original line, adapted for the Rosado colorway.

We're targeting a July, possibly August, release. Part of the delay is that we're setting up our own box factory in Costa Rica, since sourcing boxes locally has proven difficult — we're building them in Spanish cedar.

This release, like the original line, is really a joint effort between Casdagli and IGM, built on Jorge's expertise and my palate, refined together over years of blind tastings and independent notes on each iteration.

[TC]: And trust — trusting them to understand your palate.

[JC]: Completely. Jorge and I have been smoking together since our early days in Cuban tobacco, and we know each other's palates intricately. We each want to keep pushing the line forward with something new, and this Rosado is a natural next step for Daughters of the Wind.

[TC]: Be sure to look out for the Casdagli Daughters of the Wind Rosado, coming this summer to Smokingpipes. Let us know what you think.